Snack Solutions
The combining of fruit and vegetables with nuts, cheese and other snack bites continues to gain traction. One grower that excels at leveraging this trend is California’s Naturipe, which displayed several of its popular snacking concepts at the summit.
Naturipe reports growing distribution for its snack line, which includes 5-ounce ready-to-eat fruit cups, complete with handy plastic fork; snack boxes with several combinations of fruit, cheese and nuts; and fruit bites featuring blueberries solo and with grapes.
With a network that now includes four Fair Trade Certified farms, Naturipe is touting its Fair Trade blueberries and is working on more sustainable packaging.
I was excited by the squeeze pouches from Wana Bana, filled with delicious, snackable purees made of fruit and nothing else. The brand’s Catherine Vieira told me the fruit – hand-pollinated and grown using natural pesticides – is processed very close to where it’s harvested in Ecuador.
Officially launching at Fresh Summit, Wana Bana has been in the U.S. since July, at stores in the Miami and Los Angeles areas. With flavors like Banana & Strawberry, Mango and Banana & Passion Fruit, it also has a great brand story; the company provides employment to women and single mothers in its growing region.
Continuing to grow by leaps and bounds as a snacking solution is SunGold yellow kiwifruit from New Zealand’s Zespri. Enjoying year-over-year sales growth topping 30 percent, the brand works closely with grocery retailers to create strategic displays to drive incremental growth in the produce section.
Zespri stresses the health benefits and convenience of the spoonable fruit, as well as its sweetness and readiness to eat upon harvest compared to green kiwis.
The Wonderful Co. unveiled a new retail merchandiser as a produce department destination for its popular Halos mandarins as part of a new $30 million marketing campaign that’s rolling out through May.
“Retailers see the advantage and are doubling down on Halos,” Los Angeles-based Wonderful’s Adam Cooper told me. “Mandarins are driving all the growth in citrus.”
Wonderful also displayed its pistachios, including a new line of raw pistachios as well as it no-shells range, with new flavors coming in 2019.
Also a tasty change of pace with a satisfying crunch were new snack mixes from North Carolina-based Truly Good Foods: Key Lime Crunch and Buffalo Stampede, each with a unique blend of seasoned nuts, seeds and dried fruits.