Double Your Money by Reselling TRUFF Ranch

News

By RC Staff

02 May 2023

In August of 2022, Hidden Valley announced they would team up with hot sauce brand TRUFF for a limited-time collaborative condiment. The product, dubbed TRUFF x Hidden Valley Ranch, was an 18-oz jug of the hot sauce infused ranch. Bottles were sold through TRUFF’s website on August 30, through a waitlist, and sold quickly. However, disappointed collectors who missed the drop were eager to get their hands on their own bottles and turned to resellers. Bottles sold for $24.99 from TRUFF typically sold for around $50.

What is the TRUFF X Hidden Valley Ranch?

According to Nick Ajluni, TRUFF’s Co-founder and Co-CEO, the idea for the collaboration may have come from customers. TRUFF has made a name for itself with its black truffle-infused hot sauces and received many requests for a truffle-infused ranch. Evidently, this idea was passed along through the company until they got ahold of Hidden Valley and brought the dream to life.

While most of the recipe is Hidden Valley’s ranch, TRUFF brought its unique flavor and bottle design to the table. TRUFF products have recently gained a lot of attention for their distinctive branding, including their signature truffle-shaped bottle cap featured on the TRUFF x Hidden Valley Ranch bottles.

The limited time collaboration sports a unique forest green label and bottle cap, reminiscent of Hidden Valley’s branding, while the rest of the bottle is more or less identical to previous TRUFF offerings. Additionally, each 18 ounce bottle ships with it’s own “VIP box”, which is green with gold foil. It’s pretty clear that both TRUFF and Hidden Valley wanted this ranch to stand out.

After its announcement on August 23, TRUFF put up a waitlist on their website in preparation of the August 30 release. The collab gained decent attention on social media, as well as had several articles written about it by various food blogs. Supplies quickly sold out on the 30th, despite a one per customer limit.

Why did the TRUFF X Hidden Valley Ranch resell?

Both TRUFF and Hidden Valley hyped the product up a fair amount, and made it clear that supplies would be limited. TRUFF indicated that all bottles had sold by noon EST. This remarkable short term demand combined with the limited production of the product set the stage for people willing to pay resellers for their very own bottles.

Following the sellout, bottles began being listed on eBay. Initially, sellers attempted to get around $100 for them, but it seems buyers were not willing to go that far, and prices eventually declined to around $50, where they remain today.

Interestingly, the TRUFF x Hidden Valley Ranch collaboration may not be one-off. TRUFF has replied to several tweets implying a wider scale rollout of the ranch is in the works.

While this may be a simple PR effort, the ramifications of mass produced version of the sauce do not bode well for the resell price of these bottles. Any larger scale production would likely feature the same branding and bottle design as the initial release, and the only distinguishing feature would be the boxes they shipped in.

For now, the ball is in TRUFF and Hidden Valley’s court. Sales numbers through eBay indicate that while demand was strong, enough bottles made their way to resellers for prices to stabilize at the $50 mark. While food and beverages typically have an advantage to resellers in that supply tends to dwindle over time, if TRUFF ends up producing more of these, the resell price will almost certainly tank.

What do you think? Is this something you’d throw money at, or would you prefer something a little less perishable? This isn’t the first time a collaboration between food brands has resold. Check out our article on the Ritz Oreo mashup here.