The seed-oil backlash just found more shelf space. Ancient Crunch, the parent company behind cult-favorite chip brand MASA, has landed its products in 326 Target stores across the West Coast—a move that pushes one of the buzziest names in "real ingredient" snacking deeper into the mainstream.
For a brand built on ancestral cooking methods and a hardline stance against seed oils, cracking a mass-market retailer of Target's scale is more than a distribution win. It's a signal about where better-for-you snacking is headed.
What's Hitting Target Shelves
MASA is a traditional tortilla chip made from organic, nixtamalized corn and fried exclusively in 100% grass-fed and finished beef tallow. Every chip is crafted using ancestral methods and simple ingredients—delivering authentic flavor with zero seed oils.
Target shoppers will now find four fan-favorite flavors on shelf:
- MASA Original (OG)
- MASA Lime
- Vandy French Onion
- Vandy Smokehouse
The Target launch adds to an already aggressive retail footprint. Ancient Crunch products are now available in more than 3,000 stores nationwide—including Whole Foods Market, Sprouts, Erewhon, Bristol Farms, Citarella, The Fresh Market, and Pavilions—plus Amazon.
"We're very excited to begin our partnership with Target and introduce even more shoppers to MASA and Vandy. We've seen how committed Target is to bringing high quality snacks made with real ingredients to their customers, and we are proud to work with them on that mission," said Seth Goldstein and Steven Rofrano, co-founders of Ancient Crunch.
A Bet on "The Way They Used To Be"
Ancient Crunch's pitch is refreshingly simple: no seed oils, no fillers, no artificial ingredients. The company frames its approach as reviving real-food cooking methods rather than reinventing them—craveable snacks made "the way they used to be."
That positioning has caught a genuine cultural wave. Consumer scrutiny of seed oils and ultra-processed ingredients has moved from wellness forums into everyday grocery aisles, and tallow—once a nostalgic throwback—has become a premium selling point. MASA sits squarely at that intersection of tradition, transparency, and craveability.
Why It Matters
For foodservice operators, grocers, and procurement teams, MASA's Target entry is a useful data point on how fast the "clean label, real fat" trend is scaling. When a challenger brand jumps from natural-channel darlings like Erewhon and Whole Foods into 326 mass-market doors, it validates consumer demand well beyond the coastal specialty crowd.
- Grocers and buyers: Seed-oil-free and tallow-fried claims are becoming shelf differentiators, not niche curiosities. Watch velocity on brands like MASA to gauge how much set space to allocate to premium better-for-you snacks.
- Restaurant and QSR operators: The same "no seed oils, real ingredients" narrative driving retail demand is a menu-marketing opportunity—chips, fries, and fried items cooked in tallow or clean fats can carry a premium story.
- Emerging brands: Ancient Crunch's path—natural channel first, then mass retail—remains a proven playbook for scaling a clean-label proposition without diluting the brand.
The takeaway: authenticity and ingredient transparency are no longer just marketing language. They're driving distribution decisions at America's largest retailers.
The Bigger Picture
MASA's expansion fits a broader shift toward high-integrity, better-for-you products across categories—from functional snacks to high-protein indulgences. For more on how operators and brands are riding these shifts, see our coverage of Fields Good's functional cookies and G.S. Gelato's protein-forward national launch.
Are you seeing seed-oil-free and clean-label claims move product in your stores or on your menus? Drop your take in the comments—and keep it locked to Food & Beverage Magazine for the trends shaping what ends up on the shelf and the plate.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Top 40 Under 40” for founding American Wholesale Floral. Politz is also the founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
