The Expansion
Crafty Ramen, the Ontario-based fresh-frozen ramen brand, has secured national listings at Target and Kroger, adding roughly 4,100 U.S. doors and bringing its combined North American retail footprint to approximately 6,400 locations. The listings, effective October 2026, place the brand alongside existing U.S. accounts at Sprouts Farmers Market, Schnucks, Meijer, Albertsons, and Kings/Balducci's. Retail pricing is set at $7.99 per bowl across five SKUs.
Scale and Production
The Target and Kroger wins represent a sharp acceleration for a company that operated out of roughly 150 retail doors just four years ago. CEO Khalil Khamis said the brand has sold more than 2 million bowls to date — principally in Canada, where it holds more than 2,300 doors — and has expanded weekly production capacity from 2,500 units to more than 55,000 to meet growing retail demand. Manufacturing remains in-house at the company's Ontario facilities, where noodles are produced daily on Japanese noodle machines, mirroring the process used at its full-service restaurants. That vertically integrated model is central to the brand's positioning in an increasingly crowded frozen-entrée segment.
Why It Matters
Crafty Ramen's retail push lands at a moment of sustained consumer interest in premium frozen meals. The frozen-food category has continued to attract investment as grocery operators look to drive higher average unit values and destination traffic in freezer aisles long dominated by legacy brands. At $7.99, Crafty Ramen sits above most conventional instant-noodle products but below the price point of restaurant delivery — a gap that better-for-you frozen brands have aggressively targeted since the pandemic reshaped at-home eating habits. The brand's format — a layered frozen "puck" combining bone broth, scratch-made noodles, protein, vegetables, and toppings in a single unit — is designed to differentiate on ingredient quality and convenience simultaneously, a combination that has resonated with premium private-label and restaurant-branded grocery entrants across the food and beverage sector.
Founded in Guelph, Ontario in 2017 by chefs Jared and Miki Ferrall following training at Japan's Yamato School of Ramen, the company began as a 24-seat restaurant before pivoting aggressively into retail. Khamis, who joined as a customer before becoming a business partner, assumed the CEO role in 2021 with an explicit mandate to scale the retail channel. "We have sold more than 2 million bowls, while scaling production capacity from 2,500 to 55,000-plus bowls per week to support continued growth across North America," Khamis said. The five available varieties — Spicy Chicken Tantanmen (the top-selling SKU), Brisket Birria, Chicken Shoyu, Spicy Pork Miso, and Shiitake Pork Shoyu — draw directly from the restaurant menu, reinforcing the brand's restaurant-to-retail narrative that operators and retail buyers have found persuasive in recent frozen-food category reviews.
The scale of the Target and Kroger distribution agreements signals meaningful buyer confidence in the segment. Both retailers have become key proving grounds for emerging food and beverage brands seeking to establish national velocity data, and a simultaneous launch across both chains materially reduces the timeline to broad consumer trial.
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.
