Ancient Crunch, the New York-based company behind MASA Tortilla Chips and Vandy Potato Crisps, is crossing into the frozen food aisle for the first time with the launch of Vandy Classic Steak Fries — a move that broadens the brand's grocery footprint beyond the snack set and into a category dominated by mass-market players.
The product enters at a $12.99 retail price point and will be sold exclusively through Sprouts Farmers Market locations nationwide at launch. It arrives in two SKUs — Original and Salt & Pepper — and is positioned squarely in the premium tier of a frozen potato segment that generated roughly $6 billion in U.S. retail sales last year, according to industry data.
The Ingredient Angle
The formulation is the brand's clearest differentiator. Vandy Classic Steak Fries are made with organic potatoes and cooked in 100% grass-fed beef tallow — a cooking fat that has gained traction among a growing cohort of consumers and operators seeking alternatives to seed oils. The seed-oil-free positioning has become a measurable retail trend, with several natural and specialty retailers reporting accelerated velocity in products carrying that claim. Ancient Crunch's existing chip lines carry the same no-seed-oil standard, giving Vandy a consistent brand architecture across both ambient and frozen.
The company's co-founders, Seth Goldstein and Steven Rofrano, framed the launch as a logical extension of the chip line rather than a category bet. "Our chips have always had that unmistakable french fry flavor, so making fries felt like a natural next step," they said in a joint statement. "We wanted to create a steak fry with a crispy outside, a fluffy center and the kind of real potato flavor that makes you want another bite."
Supply-Chain Origins
The expansion was partly supply-chain-driven. An above-average potato harvest last season left Ancient Crunch with more raw material than its chip production could absorb. Rather than sell the surplus into commodity channels, the team redirected it toward product development — a decision that compressed the typical timeline for a frozen-food launch and allowed the company to control input quality from the same supplier base already vetted for its chip operations. That vertical coherence is increasingly valued by specialty retailers like Sprouts, which has leaned into better-ingredient frozen offerings as a point of differentiation against conventional grocery.
Retail Strategy and Outlook
The Sprouts-exclusive launch is a common staging strategy for emerging brands entering a new category: it limits initial distribution complexity while reaching a shopper base already predisposed to premium, ingredient-transparent products. If velocity metrics support expansion, wider natural and conventional channel distribution would be the logical next phase. The $12.99 price point sits well above the mainstream frozen-fry average — typically $3 to $6 — but aligns with comparable premium frozen potato products at specialty retail.
For Ancient Crunch, the frozen launch represents a second act for the Vandy sub-brand and a test of whether its snack-aisle consumer base will follow it across the store. The company's ability to maintain ingredient integrity at frozen-food scale — where tallow's stability is an asset — will be closely watched by natural-channel buyers evaluating the category's next generation of brands. Coverage of the broader better-for-you frozen food segment has tracked rising demand for clean-label alternatives in the freezer aisle.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
