S03E69 The Monster Food Hit - Smucker's Uncrustables

Have you ever wondered why a simple sandwich like Smucker's Uncrustables has become such a sensation, loved by children and elite athletes alike? How did a Smucker sell $500 million of prepackaged peanut butter and jelly sandwiches last year?

We'll be revealing how this round, crimped, frozen sandwich took the world by storm, pulling back the curtain on the manufacturing process and examining its place in today's food market. Why is the Uncrustable so popular? Is it healthy? Should you be eating them? Plus we will actually try the sandwich for the first time on the podcast.

Finally, our weekly thankful is also a food item, but it couldn't be more different than an Uncrustable! Tune in for an episode chock-full of history, nutrition, and most importantly, the joy of food.

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0:05 The Popularity and Nutrition of Uncrustables

7:56 Weekly Thankful

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S03E69 The Monster Food Hit - Smucker's Uncrustables

Do you eat Smucker's Uncrustables? If not, you might not even know what they are. If you're watching me, you can see I'm holding one up right now. An Uncrustable sandwich is a round, individually wrapped frozen sealed crustless sandwich. It kind of looks like a giant ravioli made out of bread. The most popular Uncrustable is the traditional grape peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but you can also get Uncrustables in strawberry, hazelnut honey, and even ham and cheddar, turkey sausage and more.

Now Smucker does virtually no marketing, yet this brand has become a rapidly growing smash hit for the company. They started with a modest 10 million in sales in 2000, but over the past five years, sales have started to climb, with over $500 million of Uncrustables sold last year. Their factory makes over 4 million sandwiches a day, and they plan to hit a billion dollars in sales soon.

Uncrustables has developed a cult following among many athletes, including many elite triathletes, cyclists. Now, Smucker's has no pro endorsements, yet there are athletes such as San Francisco Giants second baseman, Thairo Estrada, who eats one before every game.

Even top ranked pro golfer Sam Burns can be seen eating them while he's playing. And former pro basketball player and sports commentator Charles Barkley rhapsodizes about them, and I quote loosely, "I gotta say, that play was terrible, terrible. But one of the greatest things ever created were those Uncrustables."

So I found out about these sandwiches a couple months ago when I saw people all around me eating them. But it was only when I saw a Wall Street Journal article recently detailing how big Uncrustables were for Smucker that I realized how big a hit these ultra processed, expensive, gluten filled sandwiches have been amongst children and adults alike.

How did this sandwich become so popular? And should I start eating these things? I'll try one for the first time on this podcast and I'll let you know what I think.

Smucker is not the sort of company you would think would have such a wildly trendy and popular food product.

Founded in 1897, JM Smucker first started selling apple butter from the back of a horse drawn wagon. And the current CEO and chairman, Mark Smucker, is the great great grandson of that founder. And the company is still based in Orrville, Ohio. In addition to selling their Smucker jams and jellies, their core products now include long standing brands such as Jif Peanut Butter, Folgers Coffee, Milk Bone Dog Treats, and Meow Mix Cat Food. I mean, I remember watching the commercials for these products when I was a kid.

How did a company that seems as bland as Smucker figure out how to sell 500 million dollars of PB& J sandwiches last year? Well this smash hit was actually a long time coming. Smucker first bought the product from a couple of guys who developed it in 1999.

And then Smucker then tried to patent the concept of a sealed, crustless sandwich over the next several years, but they failed, mainly because creating a crimped sandwich with a little filling in the middle was something that was done as far back as the 1940s. And the concept is actually pretty similar to a dumpling or even a ravioli.

So after they named the sandwich Uncrustable, they began selling these in schools as well as to regular consumers. And the company said they spent a lot of time getting the product right, figuring out how to bake the bread without creating air pockets. And Smucker claims their proprietary equipment and bread baking knowledge is the

And whatever the production method Smucker uses, the Uncrustable has caught on in a big way. The convenience factor is probably one of the biggest reasons for its popularity. They come individually wrapped and frozen, and after you take it out of the freezer, you let it thaw. The company recommends letting it sit for about an hour at room temperature.

But some people say you can eat it as quickly as 15 minutes, and they prefer that slightly chilled jelly, giving it an ice cream sandwich vibe. So the Uncrustable is supposedly good for 8 to 10 hours, which makes it perfect for throwing in a lunchbox, a briefcase, golf bag, road trips. And in 2018, the sandwich got a big boost of publicity when they were handed out to firefighters working the California wildfires.

Now the sandwiches are definitely a little more expensive than making your own. The last time I checked, it looked like a pack of 10 sandwiches cost $9. But given the convenience factor and the fact that people say the sandwich tastes good, Smucker's has seen sales grow by 30 to 40 percent year over year, with their stated goal of selling a billion dollars of Uncrustables a year soon.

And now Smucker has a variety of Uncrustables, starting with their meat and cheese sandwiches, with plans for even more types in the future, including pizza toppings, BBQ chicken, and even taco meat.

The popularity of Uncrustables has allowed Smucker to buy Twinkies maker Hostess last month for 5.6 billion dollars and now this one sleepy company is starting to grow bigger and bigger in the prepackaged food business. So Uncrustables is a bona fide hit but just because it's convenient and people like the taste doesn't make it good for you.

How healthy is it? Well, looking at the packaging of this grape PB& J sandwich, it has 210 calories, 28 grams of carbs, 9 grams of fat, and 6 grams of protein. If you track macros, that gives the average person about 10 percent of their recommended daily carb, fat, and protein intake.

In terms of unhealthy stuff, the sandwich has about 8 grams of added sugar, which is about 25 percent of what's recommended daily for most people. And it also has about 220 milligrams of sodium, which is about 10 percent of your recommended daily salt intake.

The ingredient list includes the bread, which is made up of wheat and barley flour, sugar, water, yeast, and soybean oil. The peanut butter contains peanuts and sugar, and the grape jelly is made up mostly of sugar and grape juice. So, nutritionally, it's not the worst food out there, unless you're going to go gluten free, but no one would claim that this is brain food.

And if you Google under 300 calorie meals out there, there are a million recipes that look amazing. But who has time to cook and prepare food? Just to see what else is out there that might be an alternative under the frozen or prepackaged food items out there, there are a number of choices in the 200 to 300 calorie range, but most of them are more expensive and they also have a lot of sodium.

For example, a Lean Cuisine Protein Kick Gluten Free Frozen Herb Roasted Chicken Dinner Entree. It costs $3.49, it has 180 calories, and 3 times the amount of protein as an Uncrustable, two-thirds of the carbs, and half the fat. But it has almost triple the salt. The other thing is you can't just throw a Lean Cuisine into your backpack and expect that it'll be ready for you whenever you are.

So how do these Uncrustables taste? Well, let's try it out right now.

It's really good. It's not bad at all. I like the jelly, the peanut butter, and the bread is super soft.

So, my weekly thankful is also a food item that is completely not an Uncrustable. It's actually steak. Specifically, a 16 ounce New York Strip medium rare steak that I had the other night at a local steakhouse. If you don't eat meat, I'm sorry if this doesn't sound very appetizing to you, but I haven't eaten a big steak in a couple months and it tasted awesome.

I didn't even know why it was called New York Strip in the first place until I looked it up. So basically, a strip steak is a cut from the short loin of the cow somewhere on the side. Delmonico's, a restaurant in New York City back in 1827, offered the strip steak as a signature entree.

And they called it the Delmonico Steak. But because the restaurant was in New York, the entree became popularly known as a New York strip steak. It's often a little denser than a filet mignon, but it's often considered more flavorful. Anyway, it was even better that someone else paid for my meal, but that's another story.

If you are a meat eater, what is your favorite cut of beef? Or are you also an Uncrustable fan? Let me know.

bo uh. As always, DM me @BotoxAndBurpeesPodcast on Instagram. Or leave a comment on YouTube.com/@BotoxAndBurpees. Thank you.