A growing number of direct-to-consumer brands are discovering that their largest growth audience isn’t who they initially thought it would be.
For Little Spoon, grandparents have quietly become one of the brand’s most passionate customer segments. Caryn Wasser, chief brand officer at Little Spoon, attributes this to more grandparents taking on caregiving responsibilities for their grandchildren. “Food decisions for a baby usually involve more than one generation,” she said. The company started to pick up on the trend earlier this year.
Wasser told Modern Retail that the emerging shopper cohort made sense, as “Food decisions for a baby usually involve more than one generation.”
“Our care team kept flagging that they were hearing from grandparents pretty regularly, and then we saw the same thing show up in our data,” Wasser said. Once the company saw more grandparents engaging, Wasser said the company didn’t just want to move on — it wanted to build out a parallel marketing strategy to reach these older consumers.
Right now, 3% of Little Spoon customers are over 50, which Wasser said is notable for a baby food brand. But another number is illustrating that this demographic is growing. “We have had 300 grandparent-related conversations in the past 18 months, which is roughly one every other day,” she said, meaning a steady stream of grandparents are reaching out unprompted.
