Before Almondos was ever a bag, I wanted it to be a can. Not a fancy can — the old-school kind. If you grew up in the 90s, you remember those six-pack containers, the way they looked lined up in a cooler at a barbecue or a tailgate. I loved that image. I still do.
Why a Can, Specifically
It wasn't just nostalgia for the look, though that was part of it. I loved the idea of popping open a can of almonds and just tilting your head back in the car, throwing a few back like you would a cold drink. I loved the idea of a can sitting in the cup holder on a boat, sweating in the sun. I loved the idea of them lined up at a baseball park, right next to the peanuts and Cracker Jack. There's something about holding a can in your hand — it just feels like a drink, even when it's not one.
Beyond the feel of it, cans have real advantages a bag doesn't. They're widely recyclable. They don't get crushed by outside forces the way a bag can in a backpack or a cooler full of ice. A can protects itself.
Early can concepts for Almondos — the vision that never quite left my head.
The Reality Check
So I called around. Every single canning company I talked to told me the same thing: to run a custom canning line for a product like this, I was looking at close to a million dollars in equipment and setup. That's not a number a brand-new almond company starting out of a home kitchen has sitting around. So I let the can idea go, at least for the almonds themselves — even though the name Almondos came from playing with that exact vision in my head. We pivoted to bags, and honestly, bags have served us well. They're light to ship, and they were the right call to actually get this company off the ground.
The bags we actually launched with — all four flavors.
The Can Idea Isn't Dead
Here's the thing — I never stopped wanting it. And recently I came across a company in Canada called Snack Pow that specializes in exactly this: canning snack products at a scale that doesn't require a company to own a million-dollar line outright. Working with them, we could fit a full 5 oz of Almondos Seasoned Almond Slivers into a can — double what fits in one of our current bags.
I don't see this as replacing the bags. The bags are built for the pantry — easy to portion out over a week, perfect for lunchboxes and subscriptions. A can is a different occasion entirely: the cooler at a tailgate, the cup holder on the boat, the seat next to you at the ballpark, the kind of snack you finish in one sitting because that's exactly what it's built for.
So the can dream that started this whole thing in my head years ago might not be as far off as I once thought. If it happens, you'll hear about it here first.
