Chris’ Foods, a Greek-owned market leader in dips and spreads in Australia, is growing in global popularity, namely in the United States.
Speaking with the Australian Financial Review (AFR), Chris’ Foods CEO, Arthur Xipolitos, said the company is planning an increase in stock exports to the US and described the move as a “big prize.”
Chris’ Foods caricature portrait is a familiar logo in the dips aisles of Australian supermarkets and is becoming much more well-known in the US too, with their goat’s cheese and truffle dip proving popular in Manhattan and their cheddar and jalapeno dip a top seller in California.
Mr Xipolitos said it was a “very proud moment” to see their products on the shelves of gourmet food stores in New York.
The company is on track to lift overall annual sales revenue by up to 15 percent in 2022-23, up from $66 million last year.
Chris’ Foods was established in 1982 by Christos and Panayiota Tassios in Prahran, Victoria. Christos died in 2012 and Panayiota is now the owner, with no intent to move away from family ownership.
Despite global interest, Xipolitos insists the brands family roots will remain.
“We’re not about flash in the pan stuff,” he said. “It’s definitely old school… We’ve got Chris as a mascot. We relate it back to the person.”
Chris’ Foods initially pushed to enter the US market in 2019, though COVID-19 pandemic restrictions proved challenging for logistics.
“We got some traction and then everything stopped… We kept persevering. It seems to take a few years to become an overnight success,” he told the AFR.
The company has now redoubled its initial efforts and is stocked in 1,200 stores on the east and west coasts of the US.
Source: The Australian Financial Review.
