Better-for-you sweets resonate with kids, adults
The cookie category is changing rapidly and, if concerns about children and nutrition are helping to drive change in the market, so are issues regarding the changing tastes of aging adults.
Three years ago, to help consumers improve the quality of their children’s food, Sesame Workshop launched an initiative dubbed Healthy Habits for Life, and as part of it partnered with Earth’s Best to develop Organic Letter of the Day Cookies. The product, noted Melissa Kreinces, an Earth’s Best spokeswoman, improved on the standard cookie with the addition of iron, zinc, calcium and B vitamins.
“Letter of the Day cookies have been such a huge success we’ve introduced them in a 5.2-ounce box in two varieties, and we’ve had requests from parents so we’ve introduced a multi-pack, easy storage case for six 1-ounce bags. Earth’s Best also has introduced a sleeve display that is shipped to retailers that can be placed on a counter as an impulse purchase option,” she said.
While some consumers want an incrementally better cookie, others face more extreme wellness challenges they want addressed. Cookies mean a lot to kids, noted Jill Robbins, a clinical psychologist and mother who witnessed how her son, who has allergies to nuts, eggs and dairy, couldn’t fully participate in social events because of his dietary restrictions. The experience encouraged her to found Gak’s Snacks, which is built around a cookie line that addresses substantive food issues while still satisfying the psychological need for a tasty treat. Gak’s Snacks cookies, including chocolate chip, brownie chip and oatmeal, are peanut and tree nut free, don’t use eggs or dairy and eschew genetically modified organisms and trans fats. They earned the Whole Grain Seal by offering 12 grams of whole grains per serving, and are both organic and Kosher.
“Our goal was not just to have a product for people with allergies but to make something that tasted so normal and good that everybody would be happy to eat together,” Robbins said. “You’ve got to have treats. They’re fun, feel-good food. Especially if you can get decent nutritional value from them, there’s no need to eliminate them from a diet. A cookie doesn’t have to be junk.”
The retail $4.99 price for a 6.3-ounce box is premium, she conceded, but it covers both high-end ingredients and allergen testing. The cookies suit a core audience in the food allergy community and others with specific issues in mind who provide word-of-mouth support that gets Gak’s Snacks a hearing in wider audiences. Indeed, Robbins noted that Kosher food retailers have become a new constituency for the product.
Major cookie brands are creating variations on their core products, leveraging familiar names that appeal not only to kids but also to adults who may be inclined to somewhat more novel or sophisticated formulations.
Along those lines, Kraft has introduced Oreo Cakesters. “They are really more of a cake than a cookie,” Lisa Gibbons, a Kraft spokeswoman, pointed out. They utilize the Oreo name and cream to make a new product familiar enough to consumers to make them worth a try.