MASA, the seed-oil-free tortilla chip brand from Ancient Crunch, is entering the club channel for the first time, securing a 55-door Costco placement spanning Washington and Oregon. The launch marks a meaningful channel expansion for a brand that has scaled to more than 3,000 retail doors nationwide in just a few years, and signals that premium-positioned snack brands with a clean-ingredient platform are increasingly viable at high-velocity, value-driven club formats.
Retail Footprint
Prior to the Costco listing, MASA had built its distribution base through a mix of natural/specialty and conventional channels, with doors at Whole Foods Market, Sprouts, Erewhon, Wegmans, The Fresh Market, Target, and HEB, among other premium grocery partners. The addition of Costco's Pacific Northwest region represents a distinct merchandising model — club-pack format, larger unit size, and a membership shopper base that skews toward bulk purchasing and brand discovery. MASA's Original flavor will anchor the Costco set.
Club Channel Calculus
For emerging snack brands, winning a club-channel placement typically requires demonstrated velocity at conventional and specialty retail first — the same proof-of-concept trajectory MASA appears to have followed. The brand reports producing more than 400,000 bags per month, and cites a #1 selling tortilla chip position at select retail accounts. Those scan-data credentials are generally prerequisite to clearing Costco's buyer review, where turn rates and item productivity benchmarks are among the most demanding in the channel.
The broader tortilla chip category has seen sustained growth as consumers trade up from commodity offerings toward premium and better-for-you SKUs. MASA's three-ingredient formulation — organic nixtamalized corn, salt, and 100% grass-fed and finished beef tallow — differentiates sharply from the seed-oil-based mainstream, a positioning that has resonated with a growing consumer segment tracking ingredient quality and ancestral-food trends. The no-seed-oil attribute has become a genuine purchase driver in better-for-you snack sets, showing up across natural/specialty planograms with increasing frequency alongside brands competing on similar claims.
What's Next
"Costco plays an important role in how millions of Americans shop, and their longstanding commitment to quality and value makes them a natural partner for MASA," said Steven Rofrano, CEO of Ancient Crunch. The executive framed the club launch as an accessibility play — using the larger-format club pack to lower the per-ounce cost barrier for shoppers already interested in real-food snacking.
For category managers watching the better-for-you snack aisle, MASA's club entry is a signal worth tracking. Brands that demonstrate strong velocity in natural/specialty before crossing over to mass and club channels tend to sustain premium price positioning better than those that lead with broad distribution. With existing placements at natural and specialty retailers and a growing conventional footprint across snack category leaders, Ancient Crunch appears to be executing a disciplined channel sequencing strategy rather than chasing doors indiscriminately. Whether the Pacific Northwest test expands to additional Costco regions will likely depend on club-level turns over the next two to three buying cycles.
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.
