Snack Food Trends in the United States
healthy categories, fruit snacks and dried meat snacks, also posted good returns, up $127 million and $68 million, respectively.
As Pat Callaghan, president of Norwalk, Connecticut-based Pepperidge Farm, recently told Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery (February 2006), bakers and snack producers are monitoring consumer awareness of health and nutrition and their proclivity to trade up to better-tasting products, which are two trends that have deep roots and are accelerating, especially in terms of how they are transforming the food industry. “Specifically, there are two things causing this acceleration, and they’re both demographic and attitudinal, Callaghan says. “What we’re seeing is this baby boomer aging issue. You’re seeing fewer households with kids, which are heavy bread consumers and white bread consumers. As a result, consumers are becoming more health aware and are significantly trading up for products that offer health, nutritional and great taste.”
These trends underscore the ongoing shift in the snacks market towards healthier fare-and not just in the inherently healthy categories noted above. Across the board snack marketers are scrambling to reposition and reformulate products to bring them more in line with current health recommendations with, for example, candy and cookie marketers cutting the trans fat and sugar, and cracker and popcorn/rice cake marketers emphasizing whole grains. The other key bargaining chip for marketers of healthy products as well as those typically perceived as less healthy, from candy to potato chips, is natural/organic, and this type of health-related activity will be increasingly essential in the years ahead, especially for the marketers seeking to reverse the generally poor performance of the “less healthy” snack categories.
Trends in Kids and Teens Snacks
The shift toward healthier but also better-tasting snacks is the broadest and most important trend affecting the snack market right now, and nowhere is this more apparent than in children’s snacks. One popular kids’ snack that is already meeting the demand for both healthier snacking and convenience is drinkable yogurt. Popular new formats with good growth potential include yogurt in squeez-able tubes and drinkable formats, which are perfect for grab-and-go consumption, as well as fortified versions. In keeping with trends in the overall snacks market, one of the biggest moves toward scaling up kids snacks health-wise involves the addition of more natural and organic child-targeted fare.
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