Coast to Coast Kitchen is adding three new frozen appetizer SKUs to Target shelves nationwide — a Lobster Empanada, a Sweet Chili Shrimp Empanada, and a Crab Rangoon — deepening a retail partnership that has already generated millions of dollars in sales since the brand's initial Target debut in February 2026. The two empanada flavors were developed exclusively for the mass retailer; the full assortment ships to all U.S. stores, including Alaska and Hawaii.
The Sales Story
Since entering Target roughly seven months ago, the brand has drawn nearly 100,000 consumers new to the frozen-seafood appetizer category. Millennials accounted for 80% of those new shoppers — a demographic grocery and mass-channel buyers have chased for years with premium and heritage-forward frozen items. Notably, 40% of new-to-category transactions included three or more units per basket, a basket-size metric that signals strong trial-to-repeat conversion and favorable shelf productivity for the retailer.
For convenience and adjacent food-at-retail operators tracking the frozen appetizer segment, those attachment numbers matter: multi-unit basket behavior in mass channels often precedes category expansion into club and specialty formats, and increasingly into c-store grab-and-go and heat-and-eat sets.
Behind the Brand
Emma Hernan, founder and CEO, is a third-generation food manufacturer with two production facilities outside Boston — an original plant valued at $5.5 million and a second at $7.5 million. Combined, the facilities employ more than 100 workers, the majority of them women. The vertically integrated manufacturing model gives the brand control over supply and margins, a structural advantage that has become a differentiator as private-label frozen competition intensifies across mass channels.
The new empanadas carry regional storytelling that aligns with where premium frozen is headed: the Lobster Empanada references Hernan's Massachusetts roots, while Sweet Chili Shrimp nods to her California years. The Crab Rangoon draws on her grandfather's cooking. "These flavors bring together my love for both coasts and make my products truly coast to coast," Hernan said.
Shelf Set Context
The three new items join an existing Target lineup that includes New England Crab Cakes, Bacon Scallops, Shrimp Spring Rolls, and Crab Minis. As a frozen-appetizer set, the breadth is notable: most emerging frozen-seafood brands earn two to four facings in mass before proving velocity; Coast to Coast Kitchen is now running seven SKUs chain-wide.
For food-at-retail buyers and category managers, the brand's performance benchmarks — millennial over-index, high units-per-transaction, exclusive flavor development with the retailer — represent a template increasingly used to justify premium frozen placement in high-traffic perimeter-adjacent cases. Operators watching the frozen-food category's trajectory in convenience and specialty retail will recognize the format: bite-sized, dual-protein, globally inspired appetizers that bridge snack and meal occasions are among the fastest-moving segments in the broader frozen-food aisle.
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.
