The National Provisioner is pleased to introduce meat snacks brand New Primal as its 2026 Processor of the Year.

An early innovator in the clean-label meat snacks category and the use of chicken in a category long dominated by beef, New Primal’s responsiveness to its key consumers -- families with children – through innovations such as kid-friendly flavors and family-size value packs has fueled a national retail distribution expansion that includes deals with aggressively expanding value retailer Aldi in January 2026 and a launch at Coscto stores in Texas on April. Starting in June 2026, six New Primal meat snack products will roll out on the shelves of 2,000 Target locations.

 The Charleston, S.C.-based company projects its sales will surpass $100 million in retail sales in 2026, said Jason Burke, founder and CEO of New Primal.

“This year we’ve increased our distribution footprint by over 40%,” Burke said, including adding new retail accounts with Aldi, Kroger and Stop & Shop stores. “All places where we didn’t have any retail distribution historically.”

Burke said the nationwide rollout with Aldi – announced in January 2026 -- provides access to the clean-label meat snack brand’s 'hero' product on a national scale of which the company has never had. “Our product has been available at Whole Foods for a long time. Our product has been available at Sprouts for a long time, with sporadic -- I would say regional distribution -- at H-E-B, Wegman's or Raley's on the West Coast. While Whole Foods is a fantastic partner, they have 500 stores -- Aldi has 3,000 and is the fastest growing chain in America."

Burke said that boosted retail presence for New Primal creates a broad-level awareness of the company and its products that funnels across the brand and New Primal’s other retail partners.

Image Courtesy of New Primal

“Aldi is crucial in that story,” Burke said. “They don't leave a lot of room for branded products, so we're quite honored that we were one of the few they brought into the store as a branded item.”

New Primal meat sticks appear on the shelves at nearly 20,000 retail locations nationally, he said, including expanded shelf presence in national grocery giants including Kroger, Albertsons/Safeway and Stop & Shop. Club stores including Sam's, Costco and BJ's are also a growing focus for New Primal.

"Our first priority now is to support and execute against our current retail partnerships," Burke said.

Innovation fuels growth

The New Primal meat snack brand launched in 2012 in Charleston after Burke left a corporate sales job to pursue his passion for creating healthy, flavor-inspired protein snacks.

Burke was working in tech sales when his parents' struggle with chronic diet-related illness kindled his interest in diet, food and food systems. “That kind of took me down this path of livestock, sourcing and supply chains."

Flavor and new product innovation at New Primal continues to build off the company’s roots as an early entrant into the grass-fed meat snacks category (debuting its grass-fed beef jerky in 2012).

“No one was doing that, so it was very easy to stand out because meat snacks were very much like a gas station-quality snack,” Burke said.  “No one was doing anything in this premium better-for-you realm.”

The meat snacks category has evolved rapidly in the past three or four years, Burke said. Today, meat snacks boasting zero sugar, no artificial ingredients, grass-fed or similar claims are prevalent.

Image Courtesy of New Primal

Burke credits feedback from New Primal customers for what has become one of their most popular products – Mini Sticks.

"We listened to a lot of our early consumers -- a lot of parents -- and they were asking for the meat sticks to be cut in half, and they are asking for less spice and for it to be a little more plain,” he said. “So we had this novel idea: that we would take these meat sticks and invite an entirely different consumer into the category. No one was serving them. So we cut our meat sticks in half and we created a new flavor profile that would meet a kid-friendly palate."

Today, that product innovation has grown with New Primal's Snack Mates product line -- clean-label mini meat sticks designed for the lunchbox, boasting sweet and savory kid-friendly flavors such as Pizza, Chicken & Apple and Chicken & Maple.

Burke said that product line dovetails with New Primal's "adult" product offerings, with familiar yet unexpected flavors for meat sticks, such as their Rotisserie Chicken flavor launched in spring 2025.

Image Courtesy of New Primal

"We're very heavily focused on chicken protein, although we do offer turkey and beef," he said. "We kind of lead with chicken with everything we do. Many of our competitors start with beef. It gives us a really unique position to play in."

New Primal’s newest flavor in its Mini Sticks product line debuted during Expo West 2026 -- Honey BBQ Chicken Mini Sticks.

"To bring in a new consumer you have to go with a lighter flavor profile,” Burke said. “That's where poultry, and chicken specifically for us, came into play. Chicken a year ago was 1% of category sales. This year, it's 2% of category sales. It has doubled. It's the fastest growing segment but still small, so we've leaned in to innovation there. We're having fun with chicken and there is a lot more opportunity to expand these items into more households."

Promotions

Meshing with New Primal’s focus on kids’ lunchbox sales, aggressive back-to-school promotions help grow brand awareness and sales, Burke said. Summer camps are another product placement focus for New Primal to connect with young consumers, along with other active lifestyle brand such as GoPro.

Image Courtesy of New Primal

New Primal's marketing efforts include in-store promotions such as temporary price reductions, off-shelf secondary displays, building brand awareness through social media engagement and working with shopping channels such as Instacart, Burke said. "Amazon is a very strong channel for us. We're a top five meat sticks company across the entire Amazon network."

Automation collaboration

New Primal employs 17 full-time staffers, with many of them working remotely from across the US, Burke said. New Primal collaborates with Galesburg, Ill.-based Western Smokehouse Partners and Wisconsin-based Stoneridge to produce its product lines. “We manufacture the majority of our meat sticks in Galesburg today.”

Some additional New Primal products are made at the StoneRidge processing facility in Wisconsin, he said. “Sometimes we do some repacking into multi-packs and things like that at a secondary repack facility. Western is our primary partner. We have co-invested in equipment and things there. We have some production lines that are dedicated to our production.”

That includes a recent investment in a fully automated production line at Western Smokehouse Partners, Burke said. “Once it comes out of the oven, the fully automated packaging line works miracles and increases throughput significantly.”

In addition to helping enable the production volume needed to satisfy New Primal’s growing retail demand, the automated packing line helps address the evolving way consumers buy meat snacks, Burke said.

“The days of meat snacks being a single-item purchase at the gas station checkout have evolved into one where meats snacks have become a pantry item,” he said.

That means rather than packaging individually wrapped snacks into a shelf-ready retail carton, today’s meat snack consumer increasingly wants wrapped meat snacks packed in a multi-count pouch bag for their pantry. That packaging is labor intensive, Burke said, driving the investment in automated packaging upgrades.

New Primal packs its Mini Sticks and full-size sticks in five- and 20-count bags. “Our fastest growing product today is our 15-count of Mini Chicken & Maple Snack Mates Sticks,” Burke said. "What's crazy about that is five years ago you couldn't have convinced me you could sell a meat stick for more than $1.99 -- today people buy 15-packs for $16 to $17 to keep their pantry stocked. It's convenient, portable, and it's real protein.”