A quick tour through this year's supermarket industry trade show in Chicago on Sunday proves the trend toward convenience shows no sign of abating, as food makers try to shake things up in a slow-growing industry.
Big companies such as conglomerate ConAgra Foods and national US dairy Dean Foods, as well as lesser-known names like privately held Jel Sert, are putting their corporate muscle into developing pre-mixed or bundled foods that travel easily and offer consumers a greater variety of flavours.
ConAgra, the maker of Healthy Choice meals and Bumble Bee tuna, is making its pitch at the grab-and-go crowd with two snacks in a tube that take their names from Hershey Foods brands through a licensing agreement.
Hershey's Portable Pudding and Jolly Rancher Portable Gel Snacks come refrigerated in single-serve tubes and follow the success that cereal maker General Mills Inc. has had with its tubular yogurt snack line, Go-Gurt. The ConAgra products are set to hit grocers' shelves in June.
Dean Foods is adding a new Double Chocolate flavour to its roster of Milk Chugs, a line of single-serve milks introduced in 1997 that gave milk the portability of soda pop. The new calcium-rich flavour, available in 8-ounce, 16-ounce and 32-ounce sizes, is being introduced in parts of the Midwest and Florida.
Dean also said it is revamping the packaging on its entire Chugs line, which includes regular and reduced-fat versions, with a swirl design and bright new colours.
In a bid to take the work out of a task mothers have been performing for decades, Sara Lee is rolling out a new line of crustless bread under the IronKids brand. The bread, now sold in only a few test markets, is expected to be available in about 60 per cent of US groceries in July.
"Kids not wanting crust is nothing new," Sara Lee spokesman Steve Mura told Reuters. But demand for time-saving products is increasing, he said.
That is what drove Gel Sert, the little-known maker of well-known children's frozen snack Fla Vor Ice, to come up with its new Fruit Squeezer Snack Kit under the Mondo brand.
Under a distribution agreement with cereal maker Kellogg, the kit packages a single-serve fruit-flavoured drink with a mini version of Kellogg's Rice Krispies Treats. The kit fits easily inside a child's lunch box.
Not wanting to leave adults out of the picture, West Chicago-based Jel Sert is also adding a line of tubular-shaped frozen ices under its Wyler's brand. Available in Cappuccino and Mocha flavours, Wylers Coffee Ices are fat free and made with real decaffeinated coffee. Wyler's Fudge Sticks offer a version made with real cocoa and have just 0.5 grams of fat.
"Adults today are looking for foods with taste and nutrition that are also convenient and fun to eat," said Jel Sert president Ken Wegner. "We took the key insights from those consumer trends and designed unique products to fulfil those needs."
These products and many other new foods coming to market are being debuted at the Food Marketing Institute's trade show at McCormick Place.