LAS VEGAS and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 22, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TAAT® GLOBAL ALTERNATIVES INC. (CSE: TAAT) (OTCQX: TOBAF) (FRANKFURT: 2TP) (the “Company” or “TAAT®”)is pleased to announce that it has fulfilled purchase orders for an initial supply of TAAT® Original, Smooth, and Menthol (along with countertop and point-of-sale promotional materials) for 23 franchised convenience stores that are part of a global convenience chain with over 70,000 stores worldwide and over 9,300 stores in the United States. These purchase order shipments arrived at the stores on April 21, 2022. The 23 stores are located in Southern California where the Company has numerous existing retailers; thus allowing for TAAT® to be launched in these new stores as an “established” brand locally within the tobacco category, providing the ability to leverage the product’s current market footprint as an alternative to tobacco cigarettes. As announced in a press release dated January 21, 2022, the Company already has a presence in other national chain retailers with placements in several gas station chains in the United States, through which it is currently undertaking an in-store activation strategy to facilitate efficient and scalable expansions within a given chain.

These purchase orders were facilitated through the Company’s relationship with a franchise owners’ association based in Southern California (“FOA”) during a trade show held by the FOA in April 2022. The FOA could prove instrumental to the Company’s ability to place TAAT® products throughout Southern California, and potentially to other franchisees in the convenience chain in other geographies. Resulting from positive reception of TAAT® at the April 2022 trade show held by the FOA, the Company has been invited to exhibit at additional franchise owner association events scheduled to be held in Northern California and Chicago. The “Chicagoland” metropolitan area is a key market for the Company, as unique combinations of city, county, and state taxes on tobacco cigarettes result in the highest combined cigarette taxes in the United States amounting to USD $7.16 per pack in Chicago, representing taxes alone in addition to the actual retail price and the federal per-pack excise tax1.

Although the Company initially sought to place TAAT® in independent retail stores (e.g., convenience, gas stations, tobacconists) to build an early-stage market position, it has started to pursue independently-owned franchises of chain stores as TAAT® points of sale to observe how the products perform in an inherently “corporate” environment (i.e., in comparison to non-chain retail settings). This strategy has enabled TAAT® to overcome barriers to becoming a network-wide supplier to retail chains, which expands the Company's opportunities for building a market presence in the tobacco industry in the near-term.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d8c17f6c-edcc-4323-bbb0-ed04d21140f0

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TAAT® Chief Executive Officer Setti Coscarella commented, “We are excited to have this opportunity to enter stores in a prestigious global convenience chain, with the help of the FOA and the support of its members who have placed initial purchase orders. The tobacco category is extraordinarily difficult to penetrate when it comes to gaining distribution; not just because of the complex nuances of aligning your availability with smokers’ shopping routines, but also because tobacco companies everywhere do everything they can to impede new entrants to the market. Given how much of a challenge it is to enter chains through their corporate headquarters based on factors such as this, we’ve taken a different approach to getting into their stores by working directly with individual franchisees, which has already landed TAAT® in several national U.S. gas station chains. Based on our performance in those stores we are now scaling things up by working with franchise owner associations, who provide us a warm introduction to the decision-makers for each store who can choose to carry TAAT® once they are introduced to the product. It’s a compelling proposition for franchise owners, because the profit margins they earn on TAAT® are much higher than what they can earn selling tobacco cigarettes at mandated pricing. We are thrilled to have landed these initial TAAT® purchase orders resulting from just five hours at an FOA trade show, and we look forward to hopefully expanding our presence within the ecosystem of franchisees in the global convenience chain, particularly as we start to attend additional events for their franchise owners.”

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