Italian PL Snacks and Sweets
By Sabine Geissler

Carrefour offers a twist on traditional tortilla chips with its chili flavored tortilla chips.

While the Italian PL sweet market has a solid presence, the snack market is still young and has room to blossom.

The snacks and sweets market in Italy is a market with strong growth potential for private label products, which cover only a part of the product categories of this industry: in Italy, Sweets & Snacks are a dynamic area due to the changing eating habits of Italians.

The traditional eating habits of Italians are as follows: a light breakfast, an afternoon meal, which is often the main meal of the day, and a late, light dinner. The custom of desserts is so unusual that in traditional trattorie, which cater exclusively to locals, the only sweet of the house consists of grapes or, in winter, oranges.

In the last couple of years, it appears that Italians are changing their everyday eating habits, due to the modern society’s longer work hours, busier schedules, having to eat on the run, or quickly, and the availability of pre-prepared foods, take-out foods, and fast food restaurants. Therefore, snacking is on the rise because it is a fast and easy way to satisfy hunger.

Sweet Snacks

According to the data issued by the Italian sweet manufacturers association AIDI (Associazione Industrie Dolciarie Italiane), the largest segment of the Italian sweets market in terms of consumption is represented by bakery products including cookies, biscuits, soft cakes, crackers and other bakery snacks, with a yearly consumption per head of 14.17kg.

It is followed by chocolate, with consumption per head of 4.26kg. per year and the candies and sugar confectionery items with a consumption per head of 2.29kg. per year.

Italians like sweet foods, of which are traditionally eaten in the morning at breakfast: a typical Italian breakfast is an espresso, “cappuccino” or caffe latte together with some cookies or other sweet bakery items.

The A-brands in the segment of sweet snacks are Ferrero (with the brands Kinder and Ferrero), Mulino Bianco/Barilla, Bahlsen, Pavesi and Nestlé.

Most retailers carry a line of store brand sweets, which usually focuses on cookies and biscuits, small soft cakes (“merendine”), wafers and croissants. The segment of chocolates and candies is less developed in the private label business.

The following private label lines are extensive and well defined, with an attractive placement in the stores.

Conad

At Conad’s shoppers can find the Conad’s brand “Frollini” (traditional Italian cookies), which come in a bag of 350g and cost 0.79 euros and the Conad branded milk chocolate bar of 100g (0.65 Euros).

Gruppo PAM

This retailer offers Tesori dell’Arca branded wafers with milk-cream filling in flow-pack of 175g (0.79 euros) and the Tesori dell’Arca branded “Merendine” (small soft cakes) with chocolate cream filling in flow-pack of 400g, which are sold for 1.72.

Carrefour

Carrefour has included in its basic sweets line “Mini-Croissants filled with apricot jam” packed in a mini-bag of 75g at a price of 0.59 euros. Also available is “Fagotello,” a glazed square-shaped brioche packed in single portions and inserted in a tray which is sealed in a flow-pack of 252 g (42 x 6g), at a price of 1.45 euros.

Coop Italia

Coop Italia, in its basic range offers, for example, “Frollini”–traditional Italian cookies–filled with sweet cream packed in a bag of 250g, and sold for 1.38 euros.

Also in Coop’s organic range Coop “bio-logici,” which include sweet snack items that offer an option for the health conscious consumer. Rounding out the selection is the regional specialty range “Fior fiore,” which includes cakes and cookies from various Italian regions.

Private Label Specialty Sweets

The “basic” sweet market, in which the A-brands invest huge budgets on R&D, periodically launching new products, allows retail chains to offer just “me too items”.

There is an alternative to regular sweet lines, premium traditional sweet products from the Italian regions, mainly focused on baked sweet items, which are prestigious and help to enhance the premium private labels.

The leading Italian retailers have created regional specialty product ranges such as Coop with “Fior Fiore,” Conad with “Sapori & Dintorni,” and Carrefour with “Terre d’Italia.”

All these ranges offer a wide range of sweet regional specialties, and are described below:

Carrefour–“Terre d’Italia”

In the extensive Terre d’Italia range, there are “Fior di Mandorla,” typical soft biscuits from Sicily made with almonds cultivated around Avola, in the South of Siracusa, Sicily. Fior di Mandorla biscuits are wrapped one by one in single transparent flow-packs, which are placed in a golden tray in a box of 200g, which is sealed in transparent cellophane and they are sold for 4.49 euros.

On the packaging of all of products of the “Terre d’Italia” range, is a description of the history of the product, along with extensive serving suggestions.

Conad–“Sapori & Dintorni”

Conad, in the range “Sapori & Dintorni” offers regional biscuit specialties, too, in a attractive packaging–a dark blue background, with the brand name enhanced in golden letters. On the Sapori & Dintorni packaging, there is an extensive story describing the origin of the product, as well as some practical advice to the consumer.

An example is “Ricciarelli di Siena” delicate, oval shaped biscuits from Siena, Tuscany, made with a soft almond paste and covered with icing.

Coop–“Fior Fiore”

Coop’s range “Fior Fiore,” offers the famous “Cantuccini” from Tuscany packed in a box of 300g. The box has a “window” which allows the shopper to see the product, through in a transparent flow-pack.

DeSpar –“Ca’Dolce”

The group DeSpar has created the private label Ca’ Dolce specifically for “festive sweets. There are, “Panettone” (traditional Italian Christmas cake), “Colomba” (traditional Italian Easter cake).

The packaging of the Ca’ Dolce range was inspired by the pictures of Maestro Segantini from Trento, North East of Italy (January 15, 1858 – September 28, 1899), who was a notable painter. The use of these pictures were permitted to DeSpar by Mrs. Gioconda Leykauf Segantini. The design of Ca’ Dolce was inspired by twelve pictures of Maestro Segantini, creating a combination between the art of the late nineteenth century and the traditional Italian confectionery art.

Salted Snacks

In Italy, salted snacks are traditionally consumed at parties or as an aperitif. There has been a clear growth of salted snack consumption in Italy after 1999–the year of the introduction of Pringles in the Italian. In the first six months of the product launch in 1999, Procter & Gamble invested about 13 billion Italian Lire (6,715,000 euros, or more than 8 million USD) to enter the Italian market.

The amount of this investment, at that time, was equivalent to the whole of sales of the salted snacks segment in Italy.

Today, the market share of Pringles in the Italian salted snack market is less than 10%.

The market leader in the segment of salted snacks in Italy is the group Unichips with a large range of varieties and about 62% market share with the two brands “San Carlo”–49% and “Pai” –13%, followed by the manufacturer Amicachips (about 12.8% market share, mainly produces private label) and Icafoods (about 10.6% marked share with the two brands “Crik Crok” and “Puff,” which has a strong presence in the ho.re.ca channel.

An important part of the salted snack marked is baked items such as crackers, breadsticks and bruschetta, which are a substantial part of typical Italian meal.

All retailers have an extended range of own label breadsticks, crackers and their variations.

Also in this area, the leading retailers have created a “basic range” and the private label salted snacks include potato chips, baked snacks items such as breadsticks, crackers and bruschetta, but also tortilla chips, and popcorn.

Here are some examples:

Gruppo PAM–“Tesori dell’Arca”

This range includes a cheese flavored popcorn in 100g bag for 0.98 euros, as well as potato chips (“patatine”) in a bag of 200g for 0.90 euros. There are also crackers in single portions housed in a carton and sealed in a flow pack of 500g, i.e. 25 x 20g for 1.15 euros and artisan breadsticks “grissini rustici” inserted in a bag of 300g costing 1.08 euros.

Carrefour

In the basic Carrefour salted snack range shoppers can find Tortillas–Chili in a bag of 300g selling for 1.19 euros, and thin breadsticks “Grissini Torinesi” in a bag of 300g (6 x 50g) which are sold to the consumer at a price of 1.15.

In the salted snack range, Carrefour has introduced innovative products. They are innovative not only in terms of shape and the relative “fun” aspect, but also in terms of being described as healthy. Due to rising awareness of harmful ingredients such as trans fats, healthy products have a growing potential for private labels.

New Trends

In a still “sleeping” market like the Italian snack market (when compared to the Northern European Markets), there seems to be a heavy effort on advertising meant to “awake” the snack market.

The main target consumer for snacks are kids and young adults. The advertising of sweet and salted snacks is directed to this target group or to the target group’s parents. In fact, also in Italy–as in the main markets in North Europe and in the USA–there is a heightened awareness the rising obesity rates.

Retailers use two different advertising campaigns–one geared toward parents, and the other towards children. Advertising created to appeal to adults strive to suggest that the snacks are made with “natural” and “healthy” ingredients and that they can help control children’s eating habits.

Advertising targeted towards kids and young adults suggests that the snacks are “fun” and “cool.”
While sweet snacks consumed by adults have a large variety of products available, there is relatively low availability of salted snacks for adults. However, the products that are popping up on shelves are made with adult consumers in mind. For instance, PL salted snacks enriched with Omega-3, a polyunsaturated fatty acid which helps to maintain the heart healthy or organic low fat / low sodium potato chips, which are already on the market.

In the sweet snack market, particularly in chocolate area, there is a trend toward selling products with ingredients that have been produced using methods such as fairtrade. As witness, Coop Italia has created a fairtrade range called “Solidal” which offers an extensive assortment of chocolate items.

As more consumers become aware of these new trends, it is safe to say that retailers should take notice and create more premium, healthy or fairtrade products which add appeal to the sweet and salty snack market. Thus, if the consumer already has confidence in the store brands, these innovations can help make shoppers even more confident in their buying choice.