MGT Foods has completed a 38,000-square-foot expansion of its Fort Monmouth, New Jersey manufacturing facility, adding critical capacity for Biti Bites, the brand behind Biteables — bite-sized, 60-calorie frozen snacks made from cookie dough wrapped around creamy ice cream. The expansion comes roughly 18 months after Biteables debuted in March 2025, a timeline that reflects how quickly retail demand overtook the company's original production infrastructure.
Retail Velocity
Retail pickup was the primary pressure valve. Orders from Walmart, Wawa, and Weis, along with a growing roster of private label partnerships, pushed production beyond what the existing plant could handle. For foodservice and retail buyers evaluating the frozen novelty set, the capacity upgrade signals that MGT Foods can now support broader distribution commitments — a key credibility factor for any emerging CPG brand negotiating shelf placement at scale.
The Product Behind the Growth
Biteables are the invention of Michael Emanuele, a third-generation member of the Emanuele family that has operated MGT Foods for over 60 years. Michael developed a proprietary cold extrusion process to miniaturize what the family describes as a classic chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream experience into one of the smallest novelty ice cream formats on the U.S. market. The clean-label positioning is deliberate: Biteables contain real dark chocolate chips sourced from Italy, real cane sugar, real strawberries, and ice cream made from Pennsylvania dairy, with no seed oils or corn syrup. "We wanted to make something authentic and delicious," Michael said. "Something you wouldn't need a degree in nutrition to understand the label."
The brand currently offers four SKUs in the frozen dessert aisle: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Strawberry Shortcake, Double Chocolate Chip, and Cookies and Cream. The 60-calorie-per-piece format taps into a broader consumer appetite for portion-controlled indulgence that has been reshaping the frozen novelty and better-for-you snack categories for several years. Operators and retail buyers in the frozen dessert space have watched clean-label, portion-forward positioning move from niche to mainstream, and Biteables' retail trajectory suggests the format resonates beyond early adopters.
Family Business, Industrial Scale
MGT Foods is a third-generation, veteran-owned business with in-house R&D, manufacturing, and distribution capabilities that also serve co-packing and private label clients — a model that gives the company both branded and contract revenue streams. The facility expansion strengthens MGT's ability to service those parallel tracks simultaneously, an important operational detail for prospective private label partners in the foodservice and grocery channels. Industry observers tracking CPG brands scaling through retail partnerships will note that MGT's vertically integrated infrastructure is a competitive differentiator as Biti Bites pushes for wider national distribution.
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.
