Pitching Cookies
By John J. Pierce

Harris Teeter lures shoppers with Carrot Oatmeal breakfast cookies.

In-store cookie lines supplement outsourced favorites, while premium lines offer new twists in crackers as well as cookies.

Cookies for breakfast? At Harris Teeter, Charlotte, NC, you can get them in apple-oatmeal and carrot-oatmeal varieties under the Fresh Foods Market brand. It’s a concept that has gone from home recipes to a national brand to private label in just three years.

News archives before 2005 refer to home-made breakfast cookies. Quaker introduced its Breakfast Cookies that year, promoting its Oatmeal Raisin and Apple Cinnamon varieties as “a nutritious solution for mid-morning cravings.” But a critic for the San Antonio Express-News had doubts about that. “Depending on the flavor, the cookies have 170-180 calories, 4.5 grams fat,” he noted.

Fresh Foods Market carrot oatmeal cookies, which have 200 calories and nine grams of fat each, come in six-count packages at $3.69 each, with computer-generated nutrition statements. If nothing else, they offer early or mid-morning energy lift – and Harris Teeter recently featured them in a promotion that involved donating 10 cents for every package sold to Victory Junction, a special camp for terminally or chronically ill children.

Harry the Happy Dragon is the official mascot of Harris Teeter, represented by a mechanical ride outside some of its stores and by a guy in a dragon suit handing out free cookies to children. Inside the stores, there may be free-standing displays of Harry the Happy Dragon cookies in clamshell packages with smiling images of the same dragon to get the kids to get their parents to buy them – 24-count sugar cookies go for $2.99.

Are in-store cookies tracked by agencies like Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), Chicago, IL. Unlike random weight cheese, they shouldn’t have a bar code problem, and the 26% store brand share reported by IRI suggests they are indeed counted, because national brands often seem to dominate the cookie section shelves. But store brands and national brands alike are in the doldrums: private label sales were off 0.2% to $479.4 million for the 52 weeks ended 1/27/2007, and overall sales 1.1% to $1.842 billion.

Of course, a lot of the cookie volume may have been siphoned off by Wal-Mart, Bentonville, AR, which has been revamping it’s Sam’s Choice line lately. One of the earliest premium private label cookie lines, it dates back to 1991, but it has gone through a package redesign in the past year, with the introduction of a new variety of chocolate chip cookies. Every premium cookie line has started with chocolate chip, but these are made with dark Belgian chocolate and slow baked.

Variations on the chocolate chip formula are many and varied. Topco Associates, Skokie, IL, offers Cranberry White Chocolate, along with White Chocolate and Key Lime, White Chocolate and Macadamia Nut, Extra Chocolate Chip, and Chocolate Chip with Pecans. Ahold USA, Boston, MA, includes Chocolate Mint in its Simply Enjoy line, along with Chocolate Chip, and goes beyond chocolate with Pina Colada.

Premium oatmeal raisin cookies are probably next in popularity to chocolate chip and, as such, one of the targets for organic lines like Nature’s Place at Hannaford, Scarborough, ME, a brand now being introduced gradually to other divisions of Delhaize America, Salisbury, NC. But one recent variation on store brand cookies and cookie packaging has come from 7-Eleven, Dallas, TX, which has launched a Big Eats Bakery line of oversize cookies in 99-cent three-packs. Varieties include Oatmeal Raisin, Chocolate Chunk, White Chocolate Macadamia, Peanut Butter and M&M. Made in local bakeries, they are delivered fresh each day.

Nobody does crackers that way, but there are plenty of other ways to do them. And they’re all doing better in store brands than national brands, including basics like saltines – up a modest 1.1% to $79.8 million and a 23% share at a time when the overall market has slipped 2.2% to $347.3 million, Grahams in private label are up only a fraction to $43 million, but the total category is down 4.9%. Filled crackers in private label are up 8.6% to $15.5 million – lots of room for growth with a 4.7% share, but overall volume is off 3.9%. Then there are breadsticks, up 6.7% to $4.9 million; overall sales are down 2.5%.
Miscellaneous crackers are up 4.8% in store brands to $104.3 million. That’s a mere 3.8% share, and what IRI calls “all other crackers” covers a lot of territory, including some segments usually shunned by retailers. But Meijer, Grand Rapids, MI, has made a go of Starfish and Pals, cheddar crackers that do an end swim around Pepperidge Farms’ Goldfish. “Made with real cheddar cheese,” they’re “delicious, crunchy fun” – but without being loaded down with fat and sodium.

Dollar General, Goodletsville, TN, markets a raft of snack crackers under its Clover Valley and American Value brands – it isn’t clear why, since American Value is supposed to be a secondary brand but is priced the same. Anyway. Clover Valley covers chicken flavored wheat crackers and cheddar cheese crackers; American Value ranch, garden vegetable and bacon-flavored snack crackers.
Some store brands are really cutting-edge. Ahold’s Simply Enjoy line offers European-style wafer rolls, similar to Pirouettes, in vanilla, chocolate and tiramisu varieties. At Price Chopper, shoppers can find sesame rice crackers under the Central Market Classics brand. Price Chopper also does aggressive cross-merchandising, as with vegetable, wheat and cracked pepper crackers (“Try these other delicious varieties.”).

“Top your crackers with any of these delicious Central Market Classics spreads!” reads a side panel cross-promotion on mini stone-ground wheat crackers. Inset photos show jars of Country Dijon mustard, tomato bruschetta and green and black olive tapenades.

Recommended Suppliers

• Bloomfield Bakers, Los Alamitos, CA, 562 594-4411
• Inter-American Foods, Cincinnati, OH, 800 645-2233
• Vista Bakery, Inc., Burlington, IA, 800 553-2343

Products described or shown in this article are not necessarily available from these suppliers. For more suppliers see current Private Label Directory & Buyer’s Guide.