Mars-owned Cheez-It is activating a branded food court stall inside Westfield Topanga Mall in Los Angeles from Sept. 2 to Sept. 30, the brand's latest in a string of experiential retail plays designed to stretch its snack positioning into full foodservice occasions.
The Cheez-It Court operates as the inaugural brand-partner stall within Chain's six-month mall residency — a rotating-partner format that gives consumer packaged goods brands a physical retail proving ground inside an established food hall structure. The 29-day run gives Mars a dedicated brick-and-mortar touchpoint without the capital commitment of a permanent restaurant concept.
The Menu
Three limited-edition dishes anchor the stall, each built around Cheez-It crackers as a functional ingredient rather than a garnish. The Cheez-Y-Bun pairs a cinnamon roll format with Cheez-It Extra Cheesy-seasoned cream cheese frosting and a salted caramel crunch topping. The Crunchy Cheez-Dog coats a Wagyu hot dog in a panko-and-cracker crust, drawing on the Korean corn dog format that has proliferated across U.S. food halls over the past three years. The Cheez-Steak adapts the Philly cheesesteak onto a Cheez-It Extra Cheesy seasoned hoagie roll with ribeye, American cheese, grilled onions, and a Hot & Spicy cracker crumble. Recipes for all three items will be published on CheezIt.com following the grand opening, extending the campaign's reach beyond the physical location.
Experiential Strategy
For Mars's snacking division, the activation follows a documented pattern of IRL brand experiences. Prior executions include Studio Cheez, a late-night party concept in New York, and the Cheez-In Diner, a road-trip-themed pop-up restaurant. Each successive event has escalated in operational complexity, and the Chain partnership introduces a co-branded, structured foodservice partnership for the first time — a model that transfers venue management and food-court logistics to Chain while Cheez-It controls the menu and brand environment.
"Cheez-It fuels unforgettable snack moments with IRL experiences that bring to life the versatility and flavor of Cheez-It crackers in new ways," said Nicole Sorensen, VP of Marketing for Cheez-It. The framing underscores a broader CPG industry shift toward using experiential foodservice as a brand-building vehicle, a strategy that sidesteps crowded retail shelf competition by putting the product directly into a prepared-food context.
Mall Retail Context
The venue choice is deliberate. U.S. enclosed mall traffic has shown selective recovery, with destination food halls and entertainment-anchored properties outperforming traditional soft-goods-heavy centers. Westfield Topanga, among the highest-volume enclosed malls in Southern California, gives the activation access to a high-footfall environment where both Gen Z consumers discovering mall culture and older millennial shoppers already steeped in Y2K nostalgia represent a viable audience.
Chain, founded by actor and writer B.J. Novak, has positioned itself as an "American Pop Cuisine" operator that transforms culturally familiar food formats into premium experiential concepts — a positioning that aligns with Cheez-It's nostalgia-forward creative strategy. Nicholas Kraft, Chief Creative Officer of Chain, noted that a younger generation is rediscovering in-person social commerce that earlier generations "kind of took for granted," a dynamic that food and beverage brands with broad recognition have moved quickly to exploit through limited-run foodservice concepts.
For operators and retail landlords, the Chain residency model — brand-partner stalls cycling through a food court footprint over six months — represents a potential template for monetizing mall common areas while offering CPG brands measurable consumer engagement data that traditional retail placements cannot deliver. The Cheez-It Court stall is open weekdays from noon or 3 p.m. through 8 p.m. PST and weekends through 9 p.m. PST.
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.
