Home Grown Golf Snack Scores Big

Contact Mary Purdham
Business Development Manager
843-846-4569
www.tee-zel.com

(August 2, 2002) - Michael Smoak's 19th hole brainstorm is going nationwide.

Smoak, an airline pilot and avid golfer living in Beaufort, S.C. was taking a breather on the links one afternoon. He had just bought a bag of pretzels and a drink when inspiration hit him.

"As I was snacking on the pretzels a light bulb went off in my head," Smoak said. "I thought, 'if someone could make a pretzel in the shape of a golf tee, it would be a hit.'"

Smoak was so excited by his idea that he patented it, then contacted several friends who were both successful businessmen and golfers who agreed the idea had great potential. Then they set about making it a reality.

The result was TEE-ZELS(TM), the world's first golf snack, said Skeet Burris, President and CEO of TEE-ZEL(TM) Company, Inc.

"We had dies made and ran a test product," Burris said. "The acceptability was so overwhelming that we knew we had a winner."

But Burris, while appreciating the creativity of the idea, also did his research. And the numbers, he said, were more than strong enough to press on. Consider the following:

• In 2000, the salted snack industry was a $20.7 billion dollar industry at the retail level, according to Snack Food and Wholesale Bakery Magazine. In 2001, the industry increased about 5 percent to $21.7 billion.
• In 2000, about 6 percent of that industry, or $1.2 billion, was in pretzels alone. Pretzel sales increased about .9 percent in 2001.
• There are about 26 million golfers in the U.S. and Canada.
• There are more than 20,500 active golf courses and country clubs in the U.S. and Canada.
• The average club, in season, uses 100-150 pounds of pretzels and snack mixes a month.

Burris said when they combined those statistics with the number of golfers and the millions of baby boomers who are retiring and taking up golf, it just seemed like the timing was right.

So far, the tasty tees have done very well, Burris said. TEE-ZELS(TM) made its debut at the PGA show in Orlando, Fla., in January 2002; it was one of six products featured by the Golf Channel the first day of the show. Introduced in February 2002 at a few local golf courses and pro shops in Lowcountry South Carolina, as of July 25, TEE-ZELS(TM) are sold in 831 venues in 47 states. The success of the golf tee shaped pretzels has inspired the TEE-ZEL(TM) Company to launch a second product: CHEEZ-TEEZ(TM), golf tee shaped cheese crackers, which will make its debut at the PGA Fall Expo in Reno, Nevada on August 2nd and 3rd.

"We're very excited about it," Burris said. "We think the CHEEZ-TEEZ(TM) will be just as well-received as the TEE-ZELS(TM)."

Golf course food and beverage managers across the country are finding that TEE-ZELS(TM) score well with their customers and members. Richard Lowder, publisher of Doc Golf, a California based golfing magazine for physicians, said he discovered TEE-ZELS(TM) at the Orlando PGA show. Lowder said he was so impressed with the idea, and enjoyed the snacks so much, that he became a distributor.

"It's a great product," Lowder said. "They're unique and they're tasty. We've been pretty successful so far."

Lowder said he has put them in ten golf courses thus far; the response has been very favorable, he said.

"We go through at least 20 pounds of them a week," said Wendy Bell, F&B Manager for the Cassigue Club, located on Kiawah Island, S.C. "We use them in a number of places, in the bar, as snacks in the locker room, at golf tournaments. We order them for members. And the kids just think they're the coolest things on earth."

Bell also pointed out that TEE-ZELS(TM) are the only snacks the Cassigue Club purchases from the outside; everything else served in the club is made fresh at the club, she said.

Bell said she has doubled her orders in the past six months. And when the new CHEEZ-TEEZ(TM) are available, she will be adding them to her weekly orders as well, she said.

George Arnold, F&B manager for Innis Arden Golf Club in Old Greenwich, Conn., said TEE-ZELS(TM) do very well at his club, too.

"I go through a case about every two weeks," he said. "They're definitely the right way to go for a golf club. They're salty enough and the right shape, and they're a good conversation piece."

Chris Dunken, Sous Chef for the Fountain Grove Club in Santa Rosa, Calif., said the general manager of the club discovered TEE-ZELS(TM) at a food show, decided to try them, and they have been steady customers ever since.

"People love them, think they're the greatest thing in the world," Dunken said. "We probably go through about two cases a month."