Strategic Thinking Needed To Sync With Snacking Trends

The produce industry wrestles with a dilemma that “dare not speak its name” when considering the issue of snacking. As grazing — eating multiple small meals throughout the day — becomes more common, meal occasions become snacking occasions, and the obvious default for the produce industry is to push snacking fruit, typically fruits that are easy to consume, such as apples, pears, bananas, perhaps some easy-peeler citrus, maybe grapes. In some cases, technology and packaging can make these items more appealing; say a cup of individual grapes that fits into a cup holder in a car.

Baby carrots are the vegetable star of the produce snack brigade and, perhaps, celery sticks pick up some business. But, on the whole, the snacking trend is not a friend to many produce items, with the fruits that are unwieldy to eat — say juicy peaches or large melons — and especially not to the salad and cooking vegetables.

Of course, there are different levels of snacking, and melon chunks in a cup can work just fine as part of a sit-down lunch, but cut melons don’t translate well into eating in the car.

Yet the fact that so few vegetables work well in the snacking mode is more than problematic for the produce industry. After all, not only do these items account for a lot of traditional volume, but they account for the bulk of the produce industry’s claim to be a major contributor to health and wellness.

Of course, sweet snacking fruit has a lot of nutritional attributes — vitamin C, potassium, fiber, etc. Yet sweet snacking fruit is, well, sweet! Now this doesn’t mean it is not good for people, especially children. Certainly eating fruit is an excellent nutritional choice, much better than snacking on candy or ice cream. If a person, certainly a child, is highly active, the sugar in sweet fruit can be burned off as useful calories.

If, however, the problem is obesity, not a rise of scurvy due to a shortage of vitamin C, and if there is evidence of a decline in physical activity whereby lots of sweet calories pose a problem to adults and children, then we must acknowledge that simply pushing snack fruit won’t do the job that the produce industry wants to do in terms of produce being a significant advocate in the war against obesity.

In a sense, the produce industry is thus challenged to switch from a general “More Matters” approach, in which boasting all produce consumption is an equal priority, to a new prism, in which the priority is boosting vegetables and especially consumption of bitter vegetables.

Now, the boom in things such as Brussels sprouts and kale certainly shows that people can be motivated to boost consumption of at least certain vegetables. It turns out, though, that a lot of this is driven by foodservice because the key is culinary technique. Cooked well, dressed properly, these items can boom. But they are booming from a small base.

It is often pointed out that more than 50 percent of the food dollar is now spent on food prepared outside the home. This is true, but it overstates the ability of chefs and culinary professionals to move the needle on consumption.

True chefs are now media personalities and can have a powerful impact on consumption if they parley their celebrity to drive healthier cuisine. Their direct impact, though, is smaller than one might think. Firstly, a lot of the star power in chefs comes from the white-tablecloth segment, and that segment isn’t even 1 percent of U.S. foodservice sales.

Secondly, although it is true that more food dollars are spent on food away from home than are spent on food at retail, these dollar figures include a lot of payment for the atmospherics associated with dining out and for the preparation of food. Measured in volume of food passing through the channels, retail is the Goliath, accounting for more than 70 percent of sales.

So though we can applaud the idea of selling more produce in the form of snack fruit, we also need to find ways to boost sales of vegetables and non-snack convenient fruits at retail.

Of course, one way for retailers to boost sales is to make more prepared foods. By thinking strategically, the industry can create the kinds of products that will sync with trends to more snacking while also contributing to the public good by helping in the fight against obesity.

The produce industry needs to move quickly, though, as many of the trends to use these ingredients in snack-friendly ways are coming through the deli/prepared food department. How do you make a difficult-to-drive-and-eat salad into something more consumer-friendly? Well maybe you turn it into a Mediterranean Wrap.

At retail, this may be competition, but in school cafeterias, the key is to find things kids like and will eat. If it starts with a wrap today, so be it. Today’s young charge will grow, and when he does so, maybe he will decide to do his wrap, hold the bread and thus his snack winds up as a salad after all.