Isabella Chia is chief marketing officer at Wells Enterprises. Her favorite Wells products are the Blue Bunny Big Bopper Sandwich and Vanilla Mini Swirls. Image courtesy Wells Enterprises

Created to expand the frozen category, Wells Enterprises and Ferrero partnered to launch a Nutella Ice Cream and a Kinder Bueno Frozen Dessert, available in both pints and cones.

Originally retailed in convenience stores, distribution expanded this spring, proving to be powerful category builders. In just nine months, the portfolio has generated more than $18 million in retail sales and added 2 million new households.

With prior roles as Mars, Incorporated and the Fresh Factory, Isabella Chia serves as chief marketing officer at Wells Enterprises, the largest privately held ice cream manufacturer in the United States.

Wells Enterprises recently launched Kinder Bueno Frozen as part of its collaboration with Ferrero. From your perspective, what is driving the opportunity for crossover and how does Wells view the future of cross-category brand partnerships and product development?

Cross-category partnerships create the greatest opportunity when they combine the equity of a trusted brand with a genuinely differentiated product experience. Brand recognition may encourage consumers to take a first look, but long-term success depends on delivering an experience that feels authentic to the brand while offering something new and relevant within the category.

Kinder Bueno Frozen is a great example of that approach. By bringing Ferrero’s confectionery craftsmanship together with Wells Enterprises’ long-standing ice cream heritage, we were able to translate the distinctive taste and multisensorial (crispy, creamy) experience that defines the Kinder Bueno brand into a frozen format. The result is a product that feels true to the brand while offering consumers a new way to experience it.

Looking ahead, we see significant potential for cross-category partnerships to unlock growth in ways that traditional line extensions often cannot. When done well, they can create entirely new consumption occasions, attract new consumers to a brand, and bring fresh energy to established categories. Our work with Ferrero has reinforced the opportunity to thoughtfully extend beloved confectionery brands into frozen while maintaining the qualities that made those brands successful in the first place.

What insights did the company uncover about consumer purchasing behavior and brand loyalty through the product’s early market performance?

What’s exciting about the early performance is that we’re seeing evidence that the brand is attracting consumers beyond the existing Kinder Bueno buyer base. Our first panel read showed approximately 950,000 households purchasing Kinder Bueno Frozen products without a corresponding Kinder Bueno confectionery purchase, suggesting the frozen aisle is introducing the Kinder Bueno brand to new consumers and serving as a meaningful point of entry into the franchise.

Consumer research provides additional context around those results. Across our testing, consumers consistently responded to the combination of crispy and creamy layered textures, which contributed to stronger perceptions of Kinder Bueno Frozen as a unique and differentiated offering. We saw similar feedback across both cones and pints, with consumers highlighting the overall taste experience and combination of textures as key drivers of appeal.

The Kinder Bueno Cone earned Product of the Year in the Frozen Dessert category by Product of the Year USA, the nation’s largest consumer-voted awards program. Image courtesy Wells Enterprises

Frozen novelty and indulgent dessert categories continue to evolve alongside changing consumer expectations. How does Wells approach R&D and manufacturing to deliver consistency across large-scale production?

Quality and craftmanship are always at the forefront of everything we do. The reality is that consumers don't separate innovation from quality; they expect both. That's why our product development and manufacturing teams work closely together to ensure every innovation can be executed consistently at scale.

Thanks to our best-in-class manufacturing and technology capabilities, we embed quality, efficiencies and reliability into every aspect of our work. For instance, we recently expanded our manufacturing facility in Dunkirk, New York, by bringing a first-of-its-kind chocolate production onsite that meets our high standards for use in our products and newest innovations.

We approach product development and innovation like the ice cream experts that we are, constantly testing flavor, texture, sensory experience and so much more until we achieve perfection. Thanks to our operational excellence, we deliver products that not only excite but exceed expectations for our consumers.

What role does consumer data play in guiding new frozen dessert innovation, particularly when deciding which confectionery brands or flavor profiles are best suited for frozen applications?

Consumer data plays a critical role in innovation because it helps us identify where we have both consumer demand and permission to extend a brand into a new category. Whether we're evaluating a flavor profile, product concept or brand partnership, insights help us understand where there is an opportunity to create something meaningfully different for consumers and solve unmet needs. Within frozen, that feedback helps ensure we're delivering an experience that feels authentic to the brand while meeting a real consumer need.

The frozen dessert aisle has become increasingly competitive. Where do you see the greatest whitespace opportunities for ice cream manufacturers over the next few years?

As consumer expectations continue to evolve, I believe the greatest whitespace opportunities will come from brands that can meet incremental consumer needs and create stronger points of differentiation in an increasingly crowded category. That can take many forms, whether it's a unique flavor experience, a new format, a distinctive texture profile, or an entirely new way to think about frozen snacking.

We're also seeing consumers move beyond traditional category boundaries. They're looking for products that fit different occasions and moments throughout the day, which creates opportunities for brands to innovate beyond the conventional dessert experience. As a result, I think some of the most exciting growth opportunities will come from products that challenge traditional category definitions and give consumers a compelling reason to engage with frozen in new ways.

What encourages me most is that consumers continue to reward products that bring something new to the category. The response to launches like Kinder Bueno Frozen reinforces that innovation is most effective when it delivers something meaningful for consumers. For us, that provides confidence as we continue to build on the momentum we're seeing across frozen.