Salty Meets Sweet
By John J. Pierce

Belmont dipping chocolate, which has to be heated up, is a new store brand concept from Aldi.

Sweet snacks, salty snacks and the in-betweens are all part of the growing store brand ranges at food, drug and mass merchandise outlets.

From chocolate candy to salty snacks, the store brand market for indulgent treats is on a roll. Moreover, retailers are showing greater and greater creativity in sweet, salty and spicy snacks—and novel combinations thereof.

There isn’t much you can do with a potato chip that national brands and private label alike haven’t been doing for decades, so it isn’t surprising that store brand potato chips were up a mere 0.7% to $125.6 million for the 52 weeks ended 2/19/2006, according to Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), Chicago, IL.
On the other hand, the possibilities are seemingly endless for chocolate candy, in which private label sales surged 37.4% to $75 million during the same period. Choxie, an incredibly innovative line at Target, Minneapolis, MN, may have had the most to do with that, and yet Target is far from alone in the category.

Chocolate candy bars, boxes and bags over 3.5 ounces account for most of the store brand market ($53 million), and there is a trend towards large candy bars like Regal Dynasty at Walgreens, Deerfield, IL, and Choceur and Moser-Roth at Aldi, Batavia, IL—and Aldi even has a private label dipping chocolate for strawberries and the like. But Target leaves them far behind with the variety of its products and gift assortments.

Just a few of the Choxie selections are seven-ounce dark chocolate peppermint sticks, 5.4 oz milk chocolate truffles, 10 oz dark chocolate truffle meltaways and 5.7 oz. spiced toffee squares. Where Big Y, Springfield, MA, offers 2.5 oz milk chocolate almond bars, the same size bars at Target include Espresso Truffle and Peanut Butter Pretzel—and there are Choxie 6.75 oz and 13.5 oz Connoisseurs Collection assortments.

Fruit to Nuts

Health concerns, meanwhile, may be fueling a resurgence in dried fruit snacks. Sales of private label raisins were up 18.6% to $54.5 million, according to IRI, and the percentages are higher (26.5% in cranberries, 36.9% in plums, well ahead of national brands) for other items although the actual volumes don’t yet amount to much.

Leading supermarket chains like Safeway, Pleasanton, CA, have expanded their dried fruit lines. But so has leading drug store chain Walgreens, with its Deerfield Farms brand. Deerfield Farms includes 4.25 oz boxes of raisins, prunes, cranberries, tropical mix and fruit bites at $1, and resealable pouches in various weights of blueberries, raisins, apricots, cranberries and a Mediterranean mix—most retailing at $1.99.

Kroger, Cincinnati, OH, blends fruits and nuts—raisins, walnuts, figs, apricots, almonds, pistachios, cherries, blueberries and hazelnuts—in its own Mediterranean Style fruit and nut mix. Kroger also offers 32 oz organic raisins under its Naturally Preferred brand at $4.99, and Rescue Heroes-themed fruit snacks “a low-fat food” at $1.

Meanwhile, at Harris Teeter, Matthews, NC, you can find what may be a unique item in the H.T.

Traders brand—sesame glazed walnuts. The H.T. Traders brand also offers more familiar but very pricey items like 20 oz hand-cooked Virginia peanuts ($7.49), 14 oz Mammoth Pecans ($11.99), 34 oz cashews ($11.49) and 16 oz Colossal Cashews ($11.99).

Snack nuts, at $461 million, are by far the largest category in store brand snacks, and hold the largest category share as well. Not only supermarkets, but drug and discount stores usually have huge displays, with canned and bottled nuts as well as pegboard displays getting plenty of space.

Walgreens has several programs going for nut-nuts. Under the plain Walgreens brand, there are the usual suspects—canned peanuts, cashews, mixed nuts. But there is also a Walgreens Select line of nine-ounce nuts like smoked almonds, honey-roasted almonds and even chipotle almonds at two for $7, not to mention 10.5 oz jumbo cashews and fancy cashews and 10 oz super jumbo chocolate-covered peanuts at $5.99. Plus a line of bagged and pouched nuts under the Deerfield Farms brand.

Target goes even further with 10 oz Archer Farms chili lime and jalapeño pistachios at $3.49 and eight-ounce jalapeno and wasabi peanuts at $3.99. As if that weren’t enough, there are items like 10 oz wasabi peas at $2.99 and 34 oz jumbo Virginia peanuts at $9.99 (Wegmans, Rochester, NY, recently launched chocolate-covered jumbo Virginia peanuts, about a year after the regular kind.).

Sweet Meets Salty

Sweet and salty snacks are traditionally different realms, but the distinction is now being blurred by store brand trail mixes that blend sweet, salty and spicy ingredients-nuts, dried fruits and the like. People must like the idea; trail mix sales in private label have soared by 60% in the past year.

Under its Sam’s Choice premium brand, Wal-Mart, Benton-ville, AR, offers Cajun, Mountain and Tropical trail mixes in 32 oz resealable pouches at $4.98. Cajun is billed as a “sweet and spicy blend of peanuts, butter toffee peanuts, Cajun sesame sticks, toasted corn, honey sesame sticks and almonds.”

“Sparks fly when sweet meets heat in this Southern-style recipe,” Target says of its Sweet & Spicy indulgent snack mix under the Archer Farms label. It includes oven-roasted peanuts, sesame sticks and assorted crunchy treats, retailing at $1.99 a seven-ounce resealable pouch. Other varieties include Original and Chocolate Drizzle; two-ounce trial sizes are carried on an in-and-out basis, and sometimes featured at checkout lines.

At Walgreens, meanwhile, there’s a Sweet & Salty trail mix of peanuts, raisins, chocolate covered candy (M&M type), almonds and cashews, and a Healthy Trail Mix of cranberries, raisins, apricots, cherries, blueberries, almonds, soy nuts and walnuts. What these trail mixes have in common with Target’s snack mixes is that they don’t have anything in common but are exclusive to their store brands.

Among unique snacks, Kroger has come out with a novelty called “hulless Corn Puff Poppers,” supposedly developed by a cartoon alligator who broke a tooth on an unpopped kernel from popcorn at a movie theater. “No hulls, no kernels! These tender and crunchy, yummy puffs are packed with the real popcorn taste the Crunchinator loves so much.”

Soy crisps have come out before under organic brands, but Ahold USA, Boston, MA, now offers a Zesty Barbecue variation under its Nature’s Promise brand. Under its Stop & Shop and Giant brands are fat-free corn cakes, a variation on the rice cakes that became a fad a decade ago. But Ahold is in the fray there, too, with barbecue crunchy rice chips.

Oat & Honey pretzels (with stone-ground whole wheat and whole oats) are a new variation on an old standard at Weis, Sunbury, PA. Kettle Corn, a “sweet ‘n spicy popcorn,” has popped up under the Richfood brand at retail outlets supplied by Supervalu, Eden Prairie, MN. The same item is carried at Big Y—which also has organic microwave popcorn, too, under the Full Circle brand from Topco Associates, Skokie, IL.

Kippered beef steak strips under the Great Value brand at Wal-Mart go beyond the standard beef jerky strips available in national brands. Billed as 96% fat-free, they come in eight-ounce resealable packs at $5.74-the same as original, teriyaki and peppered beef jerky. Jack Links, the national brand, is $7.67 at Wal-Mart-but doesn’t have the kippered steak item.

Price Chopper, Schenectady, NY, has a long-standing line of bagged candy called Candy Shoppe, but it has lately been offering more upscale candies as part of its Central Market Classics line. Packaged in tubs rather than bags, these include jordan almonds, dark chocolate espresso beans, Finnish licorice, yogurt raisins and what may be the first with Jelly Belly fancy jelly beans (plain and sour).