Club® Crackers and Butter Wines by JaM Cellars are executing their second co-branded retail activation, pairing an in-store shelf adjacency program with a receipt-based sweepstakes running through November 20, 2026. The grand prize — roundtrip airfare for four, a luxury Napa Valley stay, a build-your-own charcuterie class at JaM Cellars Wine & Music Studio, and a private chef-led four-course dinner — is designed to generate social proof and purchase-linked data simultaneously. Sponsored by Kellanova (now under the Mars portfolio), the program is open to consumers 21-and-older in the contiguous 48 states.
Why the Shelf Play Matters
The mechanics here are worth unpacking for operators and buyers watching cross-category partnership structures. Butter Chardonnay holds the #1 best-selling premium Chardonnay SKU position in U.S. total xAOC based on Nielsen data through December 2025, measured at the $13-and-up, 750mL tier. Placing it adjacent to Club® Extra Buttery — the brand's newest permanent SKU — on physical shelves creates a basket-building moment that neither brand can manufacture independently. NIQ Omnishopper data cited in the release shows adults aged 35–44 are 30.0% more likely to consume crackers and wine together, making that shopper cohort the clear bullseye for the adjacency.
This isn't the brands' first run at co-merchandising. Their 2023 launch of Club x Butter Chardonnay Minis — a wine-infused cracker sold in a limited "Ultimate Butter Box" — sold out daily in its first week and cleared remaining inventory before the campaign ended. That velocity gave both brand teams the confidence to invest in a second, more experiential activation rather than another limited-edition SKU. The shift from a product innovation to an experience-led sweepstakes reflects a broader pattern in CPG: brands extracting longer campaign windows and richer first-party data from promotional mechanics instead of one-time product drops.
Signals for Buyers and Vendors
For food and beverage buyers at retail, the structure signals that both Mars/Kellanova and JaM Cellars are willing to fund experiential co-op programs — not just trade dollars — to earn preferred adjacency. That is a meaningful negotiating data point when category managers are evaluating shelf reset proposals heading into Q4 2026. Receipt-upload sweepstakes also generate purchase-verified consumer data that both brand partners can use for retargeting and audience modeling, making the promotional cost do double duty as a growth-marketing asset.
For operators running charcuterie programs, wine bars, or snack-forward happy-hour menus, the pairing itself validates a menu architecture that many have already built intuitively. The 30.0% basket-affinity figure from NIQ is the kind of category data worth citing internally when justifying a wine-and-snack pairing section or a curated retail grab-and-go set. And for suppliers or brokers watching brand-launch mechanics in the snack and wine categories, the Club x Butter model — adjacency plus sweepstakes plus limited-edition merch — is now a repeatable playbook with two successful iterations behind it.
Carrie Foose, Director of Brand Marketing for Club Crackers, framed the second activation as a natural evolution: the sweepstakes is designed to translate the brand-affinity signal from 2023 into a deeper experiential relationship. Michele Truchard, co-founder of Butter Wines, emphasized the everyday-occasion positioning that has driven the portfolio's growth across its Originals, Light, Zero, and To Go collections. Together, those positionings — accessible luxury for Club, approachable premium for Butter — create a coherent joint brand story that translates well to both retail endcaps and on-premise charcuterie menus.
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 Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
