Sunnie Redefines The Kids Snack, Making Nutrition Fun, Delicious And Accessible For Families

Lunchables solve an important dilemma for parents: the satisfying solution of convenience. And for kids, they’re interactive, making them not just practical, but able to provide the feeling of solving a puzzle, all while eating.

The concept is evergreen. But the food itself–concerning for human health.

Katy Tucker and Lisette Howard, two Southern California moms who wanted better for their children, have taken control of a new narrative, providing a new solution that’s uncompromising on ingredient integrity while adding nutrition to a child’s diet. They’re working diligently to get the product of this mindset, Sunnie, into as many families’ pantries as possible.

Today, Sunnie snack pack dippers, like Flatbread Pizza and S’more, increase their presence not just in natural grocery stores, but today entering 500 Target stores in every state across the US. Individual bags of its Sea Salt and new Cheddar crackers also enter Whole Foods Market shelves across the nation, Sunnie Snacks cofounders Katy Tucker and Lisette Howard share with me.

“We don’t want parents ever to feel guilty for what they buy,” Tucker tells me. “We are providing another option…making sure that there’s room for everybody in the different journeys they might be on in their clean eating or cleaner products life cycle.”

Moms On A Mission

Not only do Tucker and Howard each have three kids under 12, but they became friends in the first place via being moms–meeting 12 years ago at a group for their then-babies.

As younger moms, they each wanted to feel fulfilled in ways they hadn’t yet realized. “There was something pushing me to say ‘this isn’t your life,’” Howard says about eventually leaving her corporate job. Similarly, Tucker left her 80-hour a week gig when she got pregnant, hoping to focus on a career that aligned more with her personal values. “One thing I knew is that I wanted to go into food…so I went to cooking school,” she says. “I wanted [my daughter]

to have the highest quality ingredients and to make my own baby food.”

As their kids got older, Howard would buy Lunchables for her kids the same way her parents bought them for her when she was younger. “I would grab it for them because I wanted something convenient,” she says. “Then I started getting really into food, being like ‘what is in this?’” She and Tucker had ideas of forming a healthy kids snack brand, and finally, in 2020, pulled the trigger. “We didn’t want it to just taste like kid food. We wanted it to be elevated, good food,” Howard says.

The first iteration of Sunnie looked more like a full, convenient lunch–a more direct competitor to Lunchables. “It even included a smoothie, a veggie. It was the whole thing,” Howard says. “Katy and I were driving to people’s houses and dropping them off.”

But the growth curve of the grocery retail landscape began to kick in, realizing how much real estate each package would take up on the shelf, pivoting to a miniature version, stocked with grain-free, gluten-free sea salt crackers, and inventive dips like date- and pumpkin-seed based chocolate. “We wanted to create a product where everyone in the household could grab it,” Howard explains. “Everyone can feel good about it…one brand for the whole family that everybody loves.”

And while ‘Sunnie’ has an undeniable positive association, the brand’s name has a much deeper significance. “My grandma, Sunnie, who was 100 years old, passed away the year we founded the company,” Tucker says. “She was known for her sunny disposition, grew her own vegetables, amazing woman.”

Prioritizing Nutrition

What makes Sunnie’s products more difficult to formulate than they otherwise would be is that Tucker and Howard aren’t creating just one product. They have formulated nutritious sunflower butter, marinara sauce, chocolate dip and marshmallow dip–and of course, crackers–all for the snack pack format, each with their own supply chain restraints. “We couldn’t find suppliers that met the criteria of the ingredients that we were looking for,” Howard says.

The one exception is that they source the jam for the Sunflower Butter & Jam snack pack from Smash Foods, which contains chia seeds, because it met their high threshold for ingredients and macros.

“You wouldn’t believe the amount of things that people wanted us to put in our snacks,” Howard says. “But we really stick by those [standards].” Each product also meets the allergy criteria to bring into schools.

The sea salt crackers are made of cassava flour, made also only with avocado oil, flax seed, coconut sugar and rosemary extract. The cheddar crackers contain additional cheddar and parmesan cheeses. The crackers are thick enough to act as a sturdy dipping vessel and are baked just long enough to provide an ultra-hearty crunch when eating on their own.

While the dippable format is a playful way for kids to snack well, most importantly, it’s a practical format for snacking itself. “When I think of snacks, I don’t think of crackers. I think of two food groups to make it more nourishing, more satisfying, more sustaining,” says registered pediatric dietician and nutritionist Jill Castle, who is also a consultant to Sunnie. “The dips specifically offer either a fat, protein or fiber.”

Tucker and Howard turned to Castle to help formulate the products in a way that would prioritize nutrition while making it an attractive product for kids. “I could see the role that the product was going to play in the marketplace,” says Castle. “It’s not just clean ingredients, it’s good nutrition…making a meaningful addition to a child’s daily intake.”

Sunnie’s Cocoa and S’More Snacks contain a creamy and delicious chocolate dip that’s made simply of toasted pumpkin seeds, dates, avocado oil, oats, cocoa powder, vanilla bean and sea salt–with 16% of the daily recommended intake of fiber. The marshmallow dip is made of dates, egg whites, vanilla and potato starch. Sunnie’s sunflower butter is made simply of sunflower seeds, maple sugar, sea salt and vanilla.

“What they’ve been really genius about doing is that every single ingredient [is about adding] nutrition,” Castle says, referring to ingredients like dates as a sweetener. “Lots of things can give sweetness, but give sweetness and also bump up fiber.”

“It’s that tension between wanting something really nutritious for your kid that they will eat, that meets the guidelines in schools and is convenient,” Castle adds. “Sunnie really lives in that area.”

Investing In Nutrition

Howard and Tucker had been operating Sunnie entirely by themselves up until a few months ago, when they were able to hire thanks to the $1.6 million they recently raised, the majority of which came from Santatera Capital, a food and beverage CPG fund from Redwood Ventures.

“We focus on founders who are reshaping categories with cleaner labels, functional benefits, and authentic brand identities,” Ignacio Reséndiz, Investment Associate at Santatera Capital, tells me. “Brands want convenience without compromising their children’s health, and Sunnie is one of the few companies addressing this gap directly.”

Reséndiz met Howard and Tucker at the 2025 Natural Products Expo West trade show in Anaheim, and although Sunnie was not raising capital at the moment, Santatera wanted to prove how serious they were about partnering with the brand, committing to a $750,000 check as a short-term bridge round to support the brand until it raises formally again. But market indicators showed momentum that Santatera wanted to double down on, increasing the check size to $1 million. Sunnie had previously raised about a $600,000 seed round. “Since we started the analysis, Sunnie has delivered exceptional growth and margin improvement over these last two years,” Reséndiz says.

Flowers Foods’ nearly $800 million acquisition in early 2025 of Simple Mills, the more established cracker competitor to Sunnie, peaked Santatera’s interest in that there is strong consumer interest in this specific space.

Santatera expects to write a significantly larger check when Sunnie is expected to raise its Series A round next year and shared with me that its follow-up investment rounds often involve checks between $7 million and $9 million.

Accessing Nutrition

Los Angeles’ boutique upscale grocer Bristol Farms became Sunnie’s first retail partner in 2021. With the nationwide Target and Whole Foods launches, Sunnie now has a presence in more than 1,500 doors across the country, including Fresh Thyme Market, Hy-Vee, and the online grocer Thrive Market.

As Target faces headwinds with a recent drop in its stock price, the mass retailer is focusing heavily on expanding its ‘better-for-you’ selection; its grocery category shows a rare uptick in sales in the most recent quarter. This week, Target is even hosting its first ever Wellness Innovation Summit, where emerging brands will have the chance to pitch Target buyers for precious shelf space.

Target is no longer an elusive retailer for natural food brands like Sunnie. A Target spokesperson tells me, “We know that consumers are looking for easy, grab-and-go snacks that can easily fit into their busy lifestyles, and Sunnie aligns directly with this core guest need and shift in consumer habits.”

This approach shrinks the gap between retailers like Bristol Farms and Target. But having wider accessibility is key to adding nutritional options in more households. “We always thought that there was an incremental customer there,” Howard says. “There’s this larger shift happening and Target seems to want to be at the forefront.”

Next year, Sunnie is expected to revive a more developed version of their original complete lunch product to compete once again with Lunchables.

Despite its recent growth, Sunnie is still at the very early stages of expanding to create a dominant presence in several aisles of the grocery store. But Howard and Tucker have laid out the necessary steps to building a brand that could have cultural significance, children asking their classmates which Sunnie they brought for snacktime today, licking the remaining chocolate and marshmallow dips with their fingers, or parents making sure their kids have their Sunnie in their backpacks as they run out the door to soccer practice.

“We see Sunny as an umbrella family brand…both in the pantry and in the fridge,” Howard says. “When I look at Gen Z and Gen Alpha as parents one day, my hope and wish is that they’re buying Sunnie for their kids.”