Mondelēz has been tweaking its $1 billion Chips Ahoy! brand and plans to continue using the 62-year-old cookie brand to push it past its current situation of being the replacement-level cookie in the aisle. Sure, it’s the second-largest cookie brand in the United States, but the company wants to get at the heart of a key issue: though 95 percent of customers know of Chips Ahoy!, internal data shows that only 30 percent of U.S. households actually keep the cookie in stock. Last year, the company started adding more cacao and vanilla extract to the cookies, which was their biggest tweak in years, and it’s been paying off. In the 26 weeks ending March 29, sales were up 2.3 percent, running ahead of the 0.3 percent decline in the cookie category as a whole and adding 2 million homes to the brand.
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