Direct-to-consumer (DTC) sour candy brand Final Boss Sour is building its innovation pipeline with the help of $4 million in Seed 2 funding, while the brand is not rushing to the next level of the CPG game – i.e., retail.
Launched in 2021, Final Boss Sour was the brainchild of Co-founders James Hicks, Tommy Riggs and London Lazerson and built in the Science studio, the innovation hub behind iconic brands, like Liquid Death.
The candy brand specializes in dried fruits, like mango, kiwi, pineapple, cranberries, berries and others, coated or dipped in sour flavors at varying degrees of intensity.
“We found that if you treated things that were naturally sour – like a dried cranberry or a dried mango – like a sour candy, then coated it with sour acids and blended it in a proprietary way, that you could unlock that deeper level of sour,” Hicks elaborated.
Final Boss Sour gamifies eating by labeling the sourness level of each candy – level one being the least sour and level three being the most – encouraging consumers to one-up their taste buds, Hicks explained.
“I noticed that spicy was really having a moment in social – think of the Hot Ones podcast or the One Chip Challenge – and that really had not been done in the sour space,” he added.
The $4 million in capital from GFR Fund, Uncommon Denominator, Melitas Ventures, DMG Ventures, Simple Food Ventures and Air Ventures will fuel the brand’s innovation strategy, expand distribution and support programs with influencers, the company shared.
Final Boss Sour finds an audience TikTok
The gaming metaphor extends to the packaging and branding of Final Boss Sour, which features pixelated mascots and ’90s-style video game graphics. The candy brand even hired an Eastern European video game development company to design the branding and packaging to ensure the company authentically captured gaming aesthetics, Hicks explained.
Final Boss Sour’s website features a leaderboard, with customers who purchased the most bags of candy, emulating high-score leaderboards from video games.
With its nostalgic branding, Final Boss Sour cultivated a TikTok audience, which skews younger, by working with TikTok shop affiliates and content creators, Hicks explained. For the immediate future, Final Boss Sour’s focus is on growing its DTC channels, including Amazon, before retail expansion, Hicks said.
“The near-term focus is on DTC. We do not have any plans to be in retail this year. ... Our strategy as a whole has been to build up this giant swell of awareness online, so that if and when we do decide to go into retail, we will come with a position of strength,” Hicks said.
Fruit: Nature’s sour candy
Final Boss Sour is tapping into the growing better-for-you indulgences trend by using real fruit.
Additionally, sour candies remain on-trend, with companies like Nassau Candy releasing products, including its Clever Candy line of different-shaped sour gummies, at this year’s Sweets & Snack Expo.
“We made it very clear from the get-go that we do not want any sacrifice on taste, and in fact, we want to enhance taste. So, whatever better-for-you trade-off we are asking the customers to make, we are not touching taste. We want to create the best tasting, most sour products. The good news for us is we can do that by making our product generally better-for-you by using” actual fruits, Hicks said.
