Snacks of Choice
While the entire snack-food industry enjoyed a 4 percent sales increase in 2007, the leading growth categories were snack/granola bars, up 11 percent; yogurt, up 8 percent; chocolate candy, up 5 percent; snack nuts/seeds, up 5 percent; and salty snacks, up 4 percent, according to IRI information shared at SNAXPO 2008.
Among salty snacks, categories that showed the strongest sales increases in 2008 were cheese snacks, tortillas, pretzels, and ready-to-eat popcorn, nuts, and seeds, according to the Snack Food Association. Salty snacks showing steady or declining sales include pork rinds, corn snacks, meat snacks (jerky), crackers, and microwave popcorn.
Demographics play a key role in snack choices. Consumers aged 18–34 are drawn to convenient portion–controlled packaging when they look for snacks, says Nancy Childs, professor of food marketing at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She has studied consumer food-purchasing behavior for several decades.
While trying to eat less, women look for flavorful snacks and hunger satisfaction, while men look for trendy items, Childs says. Baby boomers and seniors want healthier snacks, and the Millennial generation is more conscious of the planet’s health; they care about recyclable packaging and sustainable ingredients.
As he scopes c-store snack product trends, Lenard with NACS says two categories stand out most: energy snacks and fresh fruit.
“You’re seeing energy everything,” he says. “It’s astounding. It’s not just energy drinks but energy chips, energy sunflower seeds, energy jellybeans. … I don’t know what can’t be an energy thing anymore.”
With fresh fruit, the challenge is making sure the fruit presented is fresh.
“If they go to the register and see more spotted or brown bananas than yellow bananas, it sends a strong message that it might be more than bananas that needs to be looked into here,” Lenard says. “Fresh fruit can do a great job of saying, ‘Hey, look, we have fresh items,’ but it can have the opposite consequence.”
Childs believes there is great growth potential in healthy snacks, but only if operators can deliver quality and value.
New-product marketers are poised with healthy new snacks. In the good-for-you arena, Datamonitor predicts 2009 will bring more nuts-and-seeds products, chocolate bars with skin-nourishing ingredients, and brain-health items with omega-3s, as in Kellogg’s LiveBright Brain Health Bar.
Kellogg Co. is finding great success with items that combine convenience, portability, and health and wellness, says Eric Prosperi, director of single-serve snacks, foodservice & vending for the company’s Food Away from Home division.
General Mills is also focusing on products that address health. To that end, the company recently introduced snack products such as Fiber One Chewy Bars and Nature Valley Chewy Trail Mix Dark Chocolate bars.
General Mills is also focusing on extreme- or indulgent-flavor trends, which has led it to introduce Jalapeño Cheddar Chex Mix, Gardetto’s Chipotle Cheddar, Chocolate Chex Mix Peanut Butter, Caramel Bugles, and Chocolate Peanut Butter Bugles.
Quick-Serve Considerations
Part of the challenge of quick-serve restaurants is that they have not positioned themselves as a snack provider until recently.
“This past year we’ve seen more of that kind of positioning coming from the quick-serve segment,” Childs says. “But it takes a while for consumers to change their habits. They’ve been familiar with c-stores as that easy source, and the c-stores have been effective in expanding the variety of products to meet snack desires with hot and packaged snacks.”
Consumers aren’t rejecting the quick-serve segment; they just don’t see it as a snack choice, Child says, adding, “Over time, we’re seeing a blending of c-stores getting into meal occasions and now the attempted blending of quick-serve into snack occasions.”