Mar 5, 2026
Forest Feast is a brand success story
Kestrel Foods’ Forest Feast brand is experiencing remarkable momentum, growing 35% year-on-year and now holding the No.1 position in the market for chocolate dipped nuts, chocolate dipped fruits and dried mango.
Founded in Northern Ireland in 1996 by founders who wanted to develop in plant-based snacks, Forest Feast has built its multi-award-winning range on quality and craft. The brand uses a traditional artisan panning process for chocolate ranges with nuts that are gently air roasted, not fried, delivering premium quality at accessible price points. This growth comes as snacking nuts saw a 7% rise in sales whilst crisps fell 3%, creating white space for premium, ethically-sourced products with distinctive flavour innovation. Exported to 26 countries worldwide with strong UK retail presence across major multiples and independent retailers, Forest Feast’s recent March 2025 partnership with Highlands supports growth in the UK and Ireland B2B market. The brand demonstrates how premiumisation and craft positioning can drive growth in the nuts and dried fruit snacking category.
Forest Feast is a brand success story. From small nuts, big things can grow.
The approach starts with consumers. Find a gap or a segment where you can satisfy a need or add value – nothing wrong with niches in this context – and single-mindedly go for it. Keep innovating and focus on quality. Oh, and most importantly, make sure you build a brand to enable people to find, remember and grow to love your fabulous products.
We love the way the identity is delivered through the packaging. The product imagery is super high quality and wrapped, or is it dipped, in appetite appeal. The colour palette is vibrant, modern, and fresh. It has category standout and is used to build a consistent level of brand distinctiveness. This is taken into advertising and communication creating a powerful wall of colours and simple imagery that magnifies ingredient quality and authenticity. Lesson here, sweat the details and put much more effort into your pack design and brand identity than might be considered healthy!
We appreciate the work that’s gone into creating a point of difference and reason to believe in a crowded space. The focus on production processes and details creates believable quality claims. The communication magnifies this and makes it engaging. It is joined up.
The key point for #whatbrandsdo is that if you did the product and insight elements without housing it in a brand, a consistent vehicle to signpost and build trust, we are certain a business like this could not, would not, have delivered this fabulous success story. Forest Feast is growing fast because the team took the time to go beyond their product passion to think about the long-term asset that would drive their sales and build their sustainable growth – THE BRAND!!
Great work.
