RFK is ditching sweet dinner rolls, naturally, but it’s due to a Bimbo conflict, and it all started with RFK’s desire to bed down with a major U.S. grocery conglomerate. With NASCAR’s consent, no less.
Huh?
Mr. Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks.
Here goes …
For the past three years, King’s Hawaiian Dinner Rolls has been a major sponsor for the No. 6 NASCAR Ford of Roush Fenway Keselowski (RFK) Racing — the car driven by team co-owner Brad Keselowski.
(Quick aside: Every time you see those dinner rolls on Kez’s car, you get hungry because, frankly, a King’s Hawaiian might technically be a dinner roll, but it’s better than 90% of the desserts out there. Frankly, slap an asbestos-dusted piece of liver between a King’s roll, and I’m diving in.)
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Major grocery chain Kroger, meanwhile, has been the biggest benefactor for JTG Daugherty Racing, which recently changed ownership and got a new name — Hyak Motorsports.
Kroger, seeking a higher profile within NASCAR (i.e. wants its logo in the lead pack more often) left Hyak for RFK, beginning with the upcoming 2025 season, when it will splash its company name and logo, at various times, on all three of the RFK cars.
RFK, Kroger and King’s: Three’s a crowd
The devil, that rascal, is always in the details. Let’s let the business insiders at Sports Business Journal describe the devil’s handiwork …
“Kroger employs a vendor model in NASCAR whereby it works with dozens of brands that sell products in its stores, to help pay for the sponsorship and share in the advertising benefits.”
Go to a Kroger display in a NASCAR fan village, one of the freebies you scarf down will likely be from something you find on the Kroger shelf. Might just be something from Bimbo Bakeries USA.
You heard me, Bimbo Bakeries. OK, you’ve never heard of it, but you’ve certainly heard of Thomas’ English Muffins, Sara Lee and Entenmann’s. All are part of the happy and highly carbed Bimbo family.
In the corporate marketing world, a King and Bimbo are a conflicting pair. Go figure. In this case, Kroger (and Bimbo, by extension) is the sponsorship whale compared to King’s Hawaiian’s partial-season financing. Marketing 101 says you don’t play nice with direct competition.
So King’s is now shopping for a new NASCAR home.
And that’s great news for NASCAR, by the way.
It’s a good sign that NASCAR isn’t losing the King’s bread
Twenty-ish years back, sponsorships were growing on trees, and NASCAR was surrounded by trees. Marketing strategies evolve, as always, and over time, NASCAR teams began losing season-long sponsors and cobbling together funding with a patchwork of corporate sponsors covering various parts of the season.
Some sponsors didn’t just cut back their involvement, but left entirely (where have you gone, Adolph Coors?). So the fact King’s isn’t using this brush-aside as a chance to jump ship … that’s big.
It’ll be even bigger for whichever team lands a part-time funding partner, whose yearly investment is estimated to be in the low seven figures, if there is such a thing as a low seven figures.
Maybe King’s will land on a new ride in time for the official opening of the 2025 NASCAR regular season, which comes Feb. 16 with the 67th running of the Daytona 500.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: RFK gains Bimbo, loses King in NASCAR deal. Kroger food fight of sorts
