Stride Bets on Clio’s Chocolate-Dipped Yogurt Bars

Stride Consumer Partners has acquired Clio Snacks, a refrigerated Greek yogurt bar maker, from Alliance Consumer Growth.

Clio Snacks makes refrigerated snack bars built around strained Greek yogurt and wrapped in a chocolatey coating, sold from the dairy aisle as a grab-and-go stand-in for a candy bar. The company’s flagship Original bars pair a cheesecake-like center with a chocolate shell in flavors that include chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. The company also sells Minis, bite-size bars in multipacks; a Zero Sugar line; and Drizzled bars, which fold in real fruit under a chocolate drizzle. The Clio brand ranks ninth on Instacart's list of top-selling Greek yogurt brands.

Clio sells its products through grocery, mass, and club retailers, and they are stocked in roughly 60,000 stores nationwide. The company operates a single 86,000-square-foot facility in Piscataway, New Jersey, where the company expects to make more than 150 million bars this year.

Clio sells into a category marketers call "permissive indulgence" — snacks positioned as a better-for-you stand-in for candy and ice cream, where protein, probiotics, or lower sugar are meant to make a sweet treat easier to justify. Greek yogurt, strained to concentrate its protein, has anchored that pitch across the dairy case for more than a decade, and brands have pushed it beyond the cup into bars, bites, and frozen novelties.



Clio was founded in 2015 by Sergey Konchakovskiy with John McGuckin joining as chief executive officer in 2021. "When I joined Clio, we already had an incredible product and a passionate consumer base. We saw a tremendous opportunity to build the infrastructure and scale the business," said Mr. McGuckin. "Partnering with Stride gives us the resources and support to build on that momentum."

Clio's refrigerated format sets it apart from the frozen Greek yogurt bars sold by Yasso, a brand that now sits within The Magnum Ice Cream Company. Yogurt makers such as Chobani compete chiefly in the cup and the drinkable-yogurt aisle, leaving the handheld, chocolate-coated bar as the lane Clio has staked out.

[caption id="attachment_241774" align="alignright" width="120"] Juan Marcos Hill[/caption]

The investment in Clio was led by Partner Juan Marcos Hill and Vice President Emma Greenwood. "We have been trying to partner with Clio for years, admiring the brand's vision and how the team has truly built a differentiated brand in the rapidly growing better-for-you 'permissive indulgence' snacking space," said Mr. Hill.

Stride Consumer Partners invests in consumer "passion brands" across beauty and personal care, food and beverage, active lifestyle, and multi-unit consumer services. Its portfolio includes Chomps, Skinfix, Odele, Patrick Ta Beauty, Serenity Kids, Crown Affair, Peachy, and Truewerk.

The deal comes days after the firm closed its oversubscribed second fund at its $550 million hard cap. Clio had been backed by Alliance Consumer Growth, which led the company's $8 million funding round in 2020.

[caption id="attachment_241773" align="alignright" width="120"] Emma Greenwood[/caption]

"We jumped at the opportunity to partner with the Clio team and support the company as it scales," said Ms. Greenwood.

Clio deepens Stride's position in better-for-you snacking, a category it entered when it backed Florida-based meat stick maker Chomps in January 2022. At the time of Stride's investment, Chomps was sold online and in more than 18,000 stores, including Walmart, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.

Stride was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Boston.