Cookie Time Teams With Amazing Race TV Star In US

Media release
EMBARGOED 1800 – 25 FEBRUARY 2009

Cookie Time Teams With Amazing Race TV Star To Take One Square Meal Bar Into The United States

Christchurch cookie manufacturer Cookie Time will tonight dispatch its first export shipment to the United States, in partnership with Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan.

The company has signed a major distribution deal with General Nutrition Center – the United States’ largest specialist retailer of vitamin, mineral, herbal and sports nutrition supplements – to supply 1,000 stores throughout the US initially, gearing up to supply 6,500 stores. Cookie Time has added 27 staff to its Christchurch production line, setting up an additional shift to service the deal.

The partnership with Phil Keoghan will see the One Square Meal product co-branded NOW (Keoghan’s No Opportunity Wasted brand) for the US market.

Lincoln Booth, Cookie Time General Manager, says the distribution deal is a major coup for the company, and the partnership with Keoghan an extraordinary opportunity.

“Taking on one of the world’s largest markets in challenging economic times is a calculated risk, and a huge investment for us. As an entrepreneurial company, however, we firmly believe there are opportunities in every crisis; you just have to find them. Phil’s a household name in the US, so we are very privileged to have him on board for this venture,” Booth says.

Phil Keoghan says the product is the ultimate food, and unique in the US market.

“I discovered One Square Meal in a store in Mission Bay a few years ago and since then I’ve been taking suitcases full back to the States. I pretty much live on them during the Amazing Race, when food can be hard to get hold of and you can’t afford to get food poisoning.

“Yes the US market is really tough and there are literally hundreds of food bars available, but none of them are nutritionally balanced like this. This is the ultimate food – convenient, great tasting and well-priced.”

The first order, worth $1 million, equates to 36 tonnes of NOW OSM product and will be freighted in six Air New Zealand plane loads.

“This first order is a substantial one, and we have plenty of interest going forward. Cookie Time may be a small company, but it’s got a big heart, and we see innovation and opening new channels as the best way to drive incremental growth,” Booth says.

Air New Zealand and Mainfreight have provided favourable freight pricing to get the first order away.

“Partnership and support are really critical to getting deals done in this turbulent market, and it was also important to us that we were able to partner with the best in the business, such as Air New Zealand and Mainfreight.”

Keoghan plans to launch the product in the US with “The Amazing Ride” – biking 42 days across the US from Los Angeles to New York, leaving late March and arriving in New York in early May.

ENDS

About Cookie Time
Founded in February 1983 by 21-year old Christchurch entrepreneur Michael Mayell, Cookie Time is a privately owned company which manufactures all product locally. Its first product, a Chocolate Chunk Cookie, was the first individually wrapped cookie available in the New Zealand market. It held the Guinness Book of Records for making the world’s biggest cookie for 12 years from 1996 through to 2008. Today it manufactures a range of cookies and bumper bars, along with One Square Meal. Launched in 2005, following several years of research and development, One Square Meal is a meal replacement bar supplying one third of daily nutritional requirements. Billed as the ultimate food, it has won three Massey University Food Awards and is subject to international patent applications.

About Phil Keoghan
Born in Christchurch, Phil Keoghan has won six Emmys for his role as host of the Amazing Race – one of the world’s most popular television shows. The show debuted in 2001 and is now in its 13th season. He is also the creator of No Opportunity Wasted, originally a television show dedicated to encouraging people to live life to the full and shown in the US, Canada and New Zealand. Keoghan now runs No Opportunity Wasted seminars. Keoghan, now based in Los Angeles, spent much of his childhood in Antigua and Canada and has worked in more than 70 countries as a television host, producer, writer and cameraman.

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