Hally Leadbetter growing golf snack brand

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Golf media influencer Hally Leadbetter is making inroads with her new snack brand, Bunchies. Leadbetter, the daughter of longtime golf instructor David Leadbetter, launched the brand in January alongside business partner Alex Thompson in pursuit of more healthy snack options at golf courses.

The product is slightly larger than a golf ball and comes as a single or in packs of three. Ingredients include nut butter, oats, dates and hemp hearts.

“We go to so many golf courses and I was like, ‘Where are the healthy snacks?’” Hally Leadbetter said. “I know there’s going to be candy bars and chips and hamburgers, but I just want to know that something is there that’s going to be healthy.”

Bunchies launched around the PGA Show in January and is available in around 50 golf club pro shops nationwide, including at Pebble Beach, Sleepy Hollow, Muirfield Village and every course in the Dormie Network.

Leadbetter also has had the product at a handful of LPGA events, a Korn Ferry Tour event and this week at the U.S. Open as part of an American Express activation. She expected around 14,000 packages of Bunchies to be distributed this week. At least one unnamed player at the U.S. Open also had the product.

At Pebble Beach, Bunchies’ first golf course partner, a pack of three costs between $8 and $9, Leadbetter said. Online customers can buy a pack of four (12 Bunchies balls total) for $23.99, or in a pack of eight or 12.

Leadbetter’s partner in Bunchies is Thompson, who has a background in the food industry and works on Patti LaBelle’s “Good Life” comfort food brand.

“From a brand lens, I can speak to what Walmart wants, where the Bunchies need to be, a deep network in food,” Thompson said. “Where she has the deepest network in golf. So, we kind of compare and contrast.”

Leadbetter has a handful of other investors in the company, including CBS’s Amanda Balionis, golfer-turned-broadcaster Iona Stephen and Dream Golf’s Chris Keiser and Glen Walter, the former CEO of Tropicana Brands Group. Leadbetter is repped by CAA and Tom Young.