4 minBusiness
Gen Z consultant launches frozen PB&J brand to challenge Smucker's Uncrustables
Connor Blakley, who spent years advising major brands on Gen Z consumers, has launched Jams, a frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich brand now sold at Target and set to become the NFL Players Association's first official PB&J.
Connor Blakley spent his teenage years telling America's biggest brands how to reach Gen Z consumers. Now the 25-year-old entrepreneur is competing with them directly, and his frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich brand is already outselling the industry leader in some stores.
Blakley's company, Dropout Cos., launched Jams in July 2025 as a better-for-you frozen PB&J sandwich. By November, the product had entered Target stores, and within six months one flavor began outselling its counterpart from J.M. Smucker Co.'s Uncrustables, the billion-dollar brand that has dominated the frozen snack aisle for a decade.
The rise has been rapid. Jams are now stocked in half of NFL locker rooms, and when the new football season begins September 9, the brand will debut as the NFL Players Association's first official PB&J, a designation Blakley spent a year quietly engineering. The company also gained a high-profile co-owner in June when Pat McAfee, the former NFL all-star turned sports media personality, joined the team after Dropout spent months sending samples to his show.
Blakley's path to challenging Smucker began in 2018, when he was 18 and mailed a handwritten letter to Mark Smucker, the company's CEO, pitching his Gen Z marketing consultancy YouthLogic. Smucker executives responded favorably, noting that Cleveland, where Blakley grew up, was close to the company's Orrville, Ohio headquarters, and suggested they find time to meet. Blakley says he followed up ten times, but the meeting never happened. Smucker declined to comment on the exchange.
Blakley recently rediscovered the letter and decided to direct message it to Mark Smucker on Instagram with the message "Remember this?" The gesture underscores a warning Blakley issued in a 2023 interview: "If you do not pay attention now, you will end up overpaying for the companies we [Gen Z] create to crush yours."
Dropout's approach combines entertainment, food, and nostalgia, with athletes, sitcom actors, and country singers holding equity stakes. In January, the company released a second frozen brand, Bronco, offering breakfast bagels that secured immediate nationwide distribution at Target. Blakley says Jams' weekly sales at Target nearly quadrupled from December to April, with no signs of plateauing.
Blakley, a high-school dropout who has run businesses since age 13, built his early career in social media and youth marketing alongside figures like Jake and Logan Paul. He later left that world, saying brands built around fads lack staying power. "When you're creating a brand around a fad, I just think it's a fake spirit," he said. "How can this last 100 years if that's the basis on which it was founded?"
His bet is that Gen Z's complex relationship with childhood foods, combined with demand for authentic culture, represents a multibillion-dollar opportunity in the consumer packaged goods sector. With Jams now positioned as a direct competitor to Uncrustables and the NFL seal of approval secured, Blakley appears focused on proving that the brands he builds can outlast the ones he once advised.
