After years working as a contract manufacturer, Anastasia Karpoukhina launched her own sweet snack brand in 2023 – Crumble Charms. Keira Joyce speaks to the founder about establishing the company and its progress so far.
Before launching Crumble Charms, Anastasia Karpoukhina spent five years working as a contract manufacturer, but developing products for other companies, across a range of sectors, lacked the creativity she was looking for.
In late 2023 she took the leap to start her own business, and since then, the Crumble Charms brand has secured national distribution with health and wellness company, Bioliving.
“The reason I started my business is because I was always experimenting with different dairy- and gluten-free treats,” says Karpoukhina.
“I was just experimenting from home a while back, and I got a few orders from local cafes, and it grew from there. I never actually set out to start a business, but here we are.”
Crumble currently encompasses a range of 12 better-for-you sweet treats, with plant-based and gluten-free biscuits as the foundation.
The products are gaining international attention, with the Raspberry Love Wheel awarded a 3 Stars Vegan Award in the 2024 Nourish Awards, the UK’s leading health food industry awards.
Karpoukhina says that she was always surrounded by health and wellness growing up, and her dairy allergy made her want better and healthier options for sweet snacking.
“My best friend was a bodybuilder when I started, and when I brought her a jar of granola she told me I should start selling it,” she says.
“So I started out selling granola and baking mixes online, but feedback from customers says they didn’t want to have to make it, they wanted me to make it for them. So it moved into that, and then that turned into wholesale.”
The creation process
Crumble currently has five employees at its factory in Sydney, and just started outsourcing marketing, but Karpoukhina is adamant about being involved in every aspect of the company. She tells Food & Drink Business that as a creative person, product development was her favourite part of the process, and she constantly has new ideas.
“Sometimes I’m lucky – some products I’ve made work the first time that I make them, but then other products will take me a year of testing,” she explains.
“I do all of the product testing myself. It’s up in my head, and then I test it in the kitchen at home, and then I’ll move it along to our machines at work. I always have more product ranges in mind, my brain never stops.
“The hazelnut wagon wheel took the most time to develop, because I was going for a very strong nut flavour.
“You’d think it would be simple, but I’m very particular and couldn’t get it right. The biscuit for the wagon wheels also took a lot of time, it was an ongoing tweaking process I was doing for continuous improvement.”
Behind the scenes
Moving from home kitchen to factory led to some challenges, with Karpoukhina carefully sourcing and custom designing equipment that would keep the products as handmade as possible, while streamlining the process.
This includes equipment like the chocolate coating machine and a drum that presses out biscuits, which helped reduce the number of employees needed from around 18 to the five that work at Crumble.
“We have a range of suppliers – some of our equipment is custom-made and some is ordered from here. The custom equipment is ordered from China,” Karpoukhina says.
“For safe distribution, we package the products individually, and then put them into a display box of eight and into a carton. That prevents breakages on the shipping side of things.
“We ship everything via chilled freight, with distribution Australia-wide for both the consumer facing and food service sides of the business.”
Karpoukhina says the colourful packaging, which is “perfectly aligned” with the aesthetic of Crumble’s branding, was commissioned via social media.
“I found this girl on Instagram from overseas, and her whole page was very similar to the vibe that I was going for.
“She’s so good – I’ve worked with a designer here before, and I didn’t really get the same result. Once we have the design, the packaging is produced here – we use a supplier in Victoria.”
Looking forward
Landing a national distribution agreement was the moment Karpoukhina realised her hard work had started paying off, and the brand could really go somewhere.
“We didn’t have to look for any distributors, all the distributors that we have now reached out to us,” she says.
“It made me realise our brand was wanted. We relied on producing for other brands for so long, it was really hard to manage the sales side of things for Crumble, because I couldn’t focus on where the brand was going.”
Karpoukhina says when it comes to the business side of Crumble, she embodies the biggest challenge.
“The longer I’ve been in business, the more I become aware of this.
“It’s just me doing all the management side of things, and I’ve got a production manager for new product development. I get new ideas and my mind goes off in different directions.
“Instead of focusing on one goal that I wanted to reach over a number of years, I was circling around and not actually putting my all into one thing. I think that really impacted the company’s ability to grow steadily,” she reflects.
Looking to the future, Crumble Charms aims to expand into the international market. Karpoukhina says she is working with a distributor for New Zealand and is exploring accessing the US and Singapore markets. There has also been interest from the UK.
“Locally, I wouldn’t mind trying again with Coles and Woolworths. We’ve worked with them indirectly, through contract manufacturing, but I wouldn’t mind trying to get my own brand in there instead. There’s a lot to think about,” she says.
With steady growth and brand awareness increasing, Karpoukhina and her delicious treats are sure not to crumble.
This article first appeared in the October/November edition of Food & Drink Business magazine.
