We’re a snack food nation: Research shows most Americans munch between meals multiple times a day.
According to Statista, the U.S. market eclipsed $50 billion in snack sales last year, making it a tantalizing global territory for cookies, chips and ice cream — our nation’s top three sellers. That’s a tempting number for both budding entrepreneurs and established brands to sink their teeth into.
Once known for producing cigarettes, Richmond has shifted from rolling hunger-dulling smokes to satisfying consumers’ salty and sweet cravings. The snack food industry is a key driver of the area’s manufacturing sector, according to the Greater Richmond Partnership, a regional economic development organization for the city of Richmond and the counties of Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico.
Big brands such as Mondelez International (Oreos, Wheat Thins) and noodle soup producer Maruchan have facilities here, and River City labels including Ukrop’s Homestyle Foods (an evolution of the beloved family-owned grocery chain) have fattened their outputs from fun sized to factory sized.
How does Richmond attract global firms such as Sabra Dipping Company and what makes the region a hotbed of successful hometown labels, from Nightingale Ice Cream Sandwiches to the up-and-coming Keya’s Snacks?
Scenes from the groundbreaking ceremony at Nightingale Ice Cream Sandwiches’ new production facility; founders Hannah Pollack and Xavier Meers are pictured at right. (Photo by Jay Paul)
Crafting a Sensation
“We all have this childhood memory of ice cream dripping down our fingers in the summer,” says Hannah Pollack, co-owner of Richmond-based Nightingale Ice Cream Sandwiches with her husband, Xavier Meers. “I wanted that nostalgia, but I wanted it to be handcrafted.”
Pollack conceived her ideal ice cream sandwich while serving as a chef at the bygone Greenleaf’s Pool Room in 2015, and the treat has become the couple’s golden ticket. Meers, a chef originally from Belgium and, initially, the primary salesperson for the brand, knew they had a hit after Pollack created the dessert one night at work. Even though Meers may not have fully anticipated the company’s later success, Pollack says, laughing, “He thought it was something special to sell 10 or 12 [ice cream sandwiches] at a time to restaurateur friends.”
After Meers encouraged Pollack to devote her energy to scaling up production, the brand took off. Nightingale sales have doubled year over year since 2016. In 2019, they moved into commissary space Hatch Kitchen, which they outgrew twice before moving into their own building at Clopton Siteworks in Manchester. The company now employs about 80 people who make over 2 million ice cream sandwiches a month; Pollack expects to exceed $25 million in revenue this year. In May, the duo secured and started renovations on a 28,000-square-foot production facility and corporate headquarters in Richmond — a $5.8 million move. The new site will house a production kitchen, walk-in freezers and four loading bays and should be ready next year.
Illustrations by Ryan Rich
Along the way, Nightingale has grown from selling to local markets, breweries and restaurants to specialty stores further afield and then national retailers including Harris Teeter, Kroger and Whole Foods. The company currently supplies more than 5,000 retailers. They’ve landed venue partnerships with Hard Rock Stadium in Miami and the international arm of JetBlue airline, where Nightingale Chomps, half-sized bars developed in 2022, are among the snack offerings. The miniature sandwiches are also stocked at all East Coast Costco locations. In 2024, Cookie Monster flavor sandwiches (a chocolate chip cookie sandwich with cookie crumb-infused vanilla ice cream) sold out at Costco warehouse chains in only a week, and this summer, a strawberry shortcake 18-pack exclusive to the store is setting sales records.
Nightingale’s seven core flavors — The Classic, Cookie Monster, Strawberry Shortcake, Chocolate Blackout, Key Lime Pie, Chocolate French Roast, and Pollack’s personal favorite, Banana Pudding — consist of 14% butterfat ice cream and gourmet mix-ins, sandwiched between two hand-pressed cookie bars. “No matter how much we scale up [production],” Pollack says, “we want to make a quality product. The taste, texture and eating experience must remain perfect.”
Taste is Quality Control Manager Emily Acevedo’s realm — Pollack calls her the company’s “flavor queen.” Acevedo oversees ingredient sourcing for Nightingale’s creations, many inspired by Southern and French cuisine.
Keeping the treats consistent and meeting both internal standards and those of their partners — like the “clean label, clean ingredient” benchmark of Whole Foods — are key, and there can be hurdles. “It takes about six months to develop a new flavor,” Acevedo says. “We play with flavors. This spring we introduced raspberry croissant and lemon meringue pie [ice cream sandwiches]. We use fresh fruit, no [genetically modified organisms], no dyes. Sourcing non-GMO marshmallows for our lemon meringue pie bars was challenging, but we finally found a small, woman-owned marshmallow company that made marshmallows without GMO corn syrup. I see future partnerships with this maker.”
Workers at Nightingale Ice Cream Sandwiches boxing up treats (Photo by Jay Paul)
Courting Commerce
Satisfying Whole Foods’ specs wasn’t the only hurdle Nightingale had to jump. Accessing funds to buy and convert a former printing factory into a food factory was also a leap, one that required deep pockets with a silver lining in the form of assistance from the local government. The city of Richmond, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the Greater Richmond Partnership all helped Nightingale rise, and a grant from the Virginia Jobs Investment Program — a taxpayer-funded program that proffers dollars and business consultation to companies hiring new workers within the state — enabled the company to generate 166 new jobs.
VEDP Director of Food and Beverage Manufacturing Shaun Malik is a Virginia native who grew up in a restaurant family. He and Jennifer Wakefield, GRP’s president and CEO, are part of a two-pronged effort led by city and state government aimed at giving scrappy startups like Nightingale the legs to run in the region’s munchies marathon and luring larger manufacturers to Richmond.
A top priority for me at the VEDP is to help small businesses not only start in Virginia but thrive in Virginia.
—Shaun Malik, Virginia Economic Development Partnership
Wakefield is also the GRP’s site location consultant — one of about 200 across the United States — who attends business conferences hoping to convince companies to set up operations here. Chesterfield and Henrico counties have their own consultants, which are public-private entities, but Richmond is the lead economic development corporation. “We go and meet the companies together, traveling around the world to attend trade shows,” Wakefield says.
The financial factors that woo established companies such as Sabra Dipping Company to the region include commercial real estate costs that are 27% below the national average, commercial electricity rates 8% below the national average and a corporate tax rate of 6% (unchanged since the 1970s). Those stats would be appealing to any business, but what really sets Richmond apart for food commerce are its central location and speedy access to major markets from the East Coast via interstates 95 and 64, Richmond International Airport, and, for bulky supplies or products ferried internationally, the Port of Virginia.
Olugbenga Diyaolu, global chief research, development and sustainability officer at Sabra Dipping Company (Photo by Jay Paul)
Sabra, known for its many flavors of hummus, began in Queens, New York, in 1986 and moved its headquarters and manufacturing facilities to Chesterfield County in 2008. Site consultants from Chesterfield and the Greater Richmond Partnership were instrumental in enticing the company to open its 10,000-square-foot plant in the Ruffin Mill Industrial Park. Importantly, the factory was built in the Walthall Enterprise Zone, which can waive permitting fees and offer utility discounts, tax rebates and Virginia Jobs Investment Program grants.
In 2012, Sabra expanded with a research and development facility, made possible by a $250,000 grant from the Governor’s Opportunity Fund and VJIP, creating 90 additional jobs at the company. The Virginia plant employs 425 people.
Homegrown Success
Attracting industry whales with incentives including factory buildouts is the goal of the Greater Richmond Partnership and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, but smaller local brands need attention and assistance, too. “A top priority for me at the VEDP is to help small businesses not only start in Virginia but thrive in Virginia,” Malik says.
The up-and-coming Keya’s Snacks is a prime example. The company makes two flavors of clean-label (meaning no preservatives or dyes) potato chips topped with organic, crafted-to-order spice blends from India.
Keya Wingfield (Photo by Joey Wharton)
Founder Keya Wingfield, a former culinary instructor and the 2021 winner of Food Network’s “Spring Baking Championship,” has long incorporated flavors from her native India into her cuisine. Her brand’s Bombay Spice and Black Salt potato chips, bagged in what Wingfield calls “disruptive packaging,” offer a rush of aroma and tongue-tingling piquancy via dozens of freshly toasted seasonings.
“The product came to life organically,” Wingfield says. “My husband is white and didn’t like Indian food. I used to make my Bombay spice blend out of homesickness. I put it on eggs, tacos. One day, I put it on my husband’s potato chips. It opened his palate.” And when she tucked packets of the chips into takeout meals she sold independently during the COVID-19 pandemic, they caused a sensation — and inspired the new company.
There’s a reason the chips struck a chord: The bags of crunchy, fried convenience are at the core of cultural snacking. According to FoodBev Media, Americans eat more potato chips than any other country. These spicy, salty, locally created chips tap into the global food trends beloved by millennials while hitting on other qualities younger consumers are willing to pay for: organic, single-origin ingredients sourced directly for Wingfield.
“I’m using, literally, whole organic garlic bulbs with the roots still on them, dried fresh mangoes and organic turmeric, among other spices that are grown and ground for me in India,” Wingfield says. “It took me two years to scale the blend for large production — about 2,000 pounds [of spices]. The flavors are volatile because they come from whole ingredients without preservatives to maintain flavors. That standard is nonnegotiable for me.”
Originally crafted and casually introduced in 2020, the potato chips were relaunched this spring. While the recipe didn’t change, the graphics and branding are now more vibrant. The brightly colored bags — featuring an Indian woman with a bindi, the vermillion dot symbolizing wisdom, adorning the center of her forehead — have gone viral on TikTok; landed at Pop-up Grocer, a New York City-based hub for the consumer packaged goods; and sold out at The Goods Mart, a New York convenience store boasting 100-plus women-owned food brands.
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R&D-licious: A peek inside the research and development facility at Sabra (Photo by Jay Paul)
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R&D-licious: A peek inside the research and development facility at Nightingale Ice Cream Sandwiches (Photo by Jay Paul)
Supersize Me
Living in Richmond, however, Wingfield lacks access to a local, economically viable co-packer, so Keya’s Snacks are currently produced and bagged in Pennsylvania. “I would love to be a Virginia-produced company,” Wingfield says.
It’s a common problem, one Malik is working to solve for the Richmond region. He says smaller companies usually start off in commercial kitchens and then move to co-op spaces or food accelerators. “The gap we find is that after $2 million in revenue, the companies need to expand,” he explains. “It becomes a chicken-or-egg situation. They’re typically not able to afford their own space without significant outside investment.”
A commercial co-manufacturer can help grow an expanding snack company without the maker taking the multimillion-dollar leap of buying its own factory — as Nightingale did — or selling off a substantial chunk of its brand to investors. “There’s a shortage of co-manufacturers,” Malik says. “The demand and contracts from the Krogers, the Walmarts, they’re there, but the smaller companies just don’t have the space, funding or resources to accelerate production. Our hope in developing co-manufacturing in Virginia is to bring people back and to grow what’s already here.”
But homegrown production solutions are just one slice of the return on investment Malik seeks from fostering competitive food and beverage manufacturing spaces in the region. The larger ROI comes from coinvesting in already established but growing food and beverage manufacturers from other parts of the country, such as the West Coast, that seek greater consumer access via interstate roadways and Europe through the Port of Virginia — access the Port of Los Angeles doesn’t offer.
“We hope, with our new approach to economic development,” Malik says, “that we can attract midsize [food and beverage] manufacturers [to expand in Virginia], those with one or two plants nationwide. This represents the greatest amount of job creation for the state.”
It’s a goal that could also make a difference to emerging companies, including Keya’s Snacks. Though Wingfield’s chips are selling out on end caps at specialty markets, she doesn’t have the numbers to build her own production line. Eclipsing $25 million in revenue opened financial doors for Nightingale. But Malik thinks he may hold the key to driving diverse businesses to the Tri-Cities of Virginia: converting former office buildings, or dormant city-owned properties, into co-packing plants.
“What better story is there,” Malik asks, “than going from $5 million in sales and 20 employees, to $100 million in sales a year?” That’s what access to financially feasible co-packing brings to the table.
At the Nightingale factory announcement this spring, Jose Romano, executive vice president of business development at the Greater Richmond Partnership, said of the treats, “They are a bold dream supported by resources that make them real.”
During that same debut, Pollack and Meers, the couple behind the cool confections, spoke about their success. The opportunity to own their own factory, reinvest in the local economy and share a product they are proud of has been a fulfilling and extraordinary experience. And it all started with an ice cream sandwich.
Illustrations by Ryan Rich
