Snacking is the big new trend, one that seems to have been around for donkey’s years but only now is creating a buzz across many categories in the fresh produce business. That, at least, is one of the takeaways I returned with from northern California last month after the Global Berry Congress had pitched its tent successfully for the first time in Monterey, the charmingly historic coastal town that is at the centre of the US berry business.
The three-day conference, which brought together a total of 190 professionals from 16 different countries, looked at all of the latest berry trends in the US and Europe, the world’s two big consumer markets for strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and so on. Even without the help of a conference programme, I know I’m not alone in returning from my visits to the US with a whole bunch of those compare-and-contrast lists in my head.
In Europe, the major food retailers have made their fortunes in recent years by affixing their own in-house brands to fruit and vegetables – the hero category in their fresh food assortment. The application of traceability technology has meant that shoppers can now discover who grows, packs and ships their produce too. US supermarkets feel quite different, not least because of the comparative absence of own-label products. When it comes to the fruit and vegetable department, it’s the big producer groups that dominate, supplying food retailers with their own quality assortment of brands. Stateside, shoppers do recognise these brands and look for them too. So far, so different.
The differences continue outside food retail. The mass of quick-service restaurant chains lining up along the highways and main streets of America to welcome automobiles filled with consumers is testament to their importance in the US food economy. Indeed, a decision by any one of the major qsr chains to include a particular product on their menus – let’s say a cocktail tomato in a McDonald’s salad (mcd.to/eurofruit) – is bound to have a transformative effect on that product line’s future commercial prospects.
Given that an estimated 50 cents in every food dollar are now spent outside the home in the US market, you quickly understand why the fresh produce sector sees huge opportunities to grow sales by servicing more effectively the foodservice business itself (visit bit.ly/gKE52C to see what the Chilean blueberry sector is doing, for example). Creating sales that complement those you’ve already achieved via retail and foodservice is emerging as the big new target.
Snacking is that opportunity. That is to say it offers the chance to fill in those gaps between the three main meal occasions that punctuate most of our days. (Ignore for a moment the fact that Taco Bell is reportedly promoting a fourth meal, namely the late-night snack!) Many of our products seem ideally suited to the snack market: apples, bananas or easy-peel citrus are already the healthy, between-meal snacks of choice for many consumers, but in the trade we all know that really isn’t good enough. There are encouraging signs of produce companies fighting head-to-head with the big food brands – snackpacks of table grapes, blueberries, tomatoes or carrots have been in the market for some time – but they haven’t amounted to much more than a snack-sized portion of produce selling at a premium price.
Back at the Global Berry Congress, US marketer Naturipe was busy lifting the lid on its new blueberry snack product, one that demands some fairly sophisticated packaging technology for it to succeed. It has been a big investment, but this is where our business needs to be and, most significantly, Naturipe’s new product is targeting retailers and foodservice.
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