Like watching hemlines rise and fall on the fashion runway, the annual International Supermarket Industry Convention is usually the place to spot trends.
If that’s the case, hemlines are going to have to be a little longer this year to cover plump ankles, because “full-fat” and “full-flavor” foods were on the lips of many industry watchers at the 1998 show last week at McCormick Place.
More than 1,500 companies were represented at the four-day show, which attracted about 35,000 supermarket industry analysts, buyers, executives and media. And after a decade in which fat was reduced in products from lunch meats and frozen dinners to cookies and cupcakes, the introduction of new low-fat foods was down 30 percent last year from 1996.
“We all want to work out and be healthy, but we also want to indulge a little,” says Sherrie Rosenblatt, manager of media relations for the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), which sponsors the convention.
Some standouts in the yum-yum categories are Sara Lee’s new bite-size, chocolate-covered cheesecake squares; Cape Cod Potato Chips’ new flavors, Firecracker Barbecue and Yukon gold; Newman’s Own ice creams; chocolate chunk cookies from Pepperidge Farms; Pegi brand waffles-on-a-stick; and fresh biscuits from Pillsbury, designed to be baked and sold hot at the grocery.
Better-for-you marketing ideas are “still alive, for sure, but perhaps not as important or as aggressive as we’ve seen in previous (years),” said Lyn Dornblaser of the trade journal New Product News.
But though many food categories were back to livin’ large, several companies also introduced natural and organic products.
Although indulgence is in, “Consumers want cleaner food,” Rosenblatt says. “That’s why there were more natural products than ever before.”
The growth of soy foods was one sign. Spectators could sample soy yogurts from White Wave Vegetarian Cuisine; vanilla and chocolate soy shake mixes from Genisoy Products; soy-based frozen desserts from Sweet Mountain Magic; chorizo-style soy sausage meat from Frieda’s and Melissa’s; and soy veggie hot dogs from Vita Soy, among others.
Not that all the innovations were imitation meat and dairy. Ocean Spray unveiled a superb line of juices from its Wellfleet Farms division. Three 100 percent juice flavors–Cranberry & Granny Smith Apple, Cranberry & Key Lime, and Cranberry & Georgia Peach–are refreshing without the addition of preservatives or sugar.
Still, if breakfast is the most important meal of the day, the FMI show was not necessarily the place to look for healthful wakeup foods. The UnHoley Bagel from SJR foods comes already thickly stuffed with cream cheese. And Post cereals unveiled what is sure to make children beg and parents blanch: Oreo O’s. Yep, chocolate and cream cereal rings with “that incredible Oreo taste in a fun-to-crunch cereal!”
Meat products were everywhere. The displays targeted basic tastes, from McFarland’s chicken bacon and Hormel’s rotisserie pork and turkey to more exotic fare, such as ostrich meat from Zion View Ranch and emu meat from Xanadu International. We give our vote in the “don’t-know-if-the-public-is-ready-for-this” category to Oscar Mayer, which introduced a shelf-stable, pre-cooked bacon, ready to eat out of the package.
Many, but not all, of these products will appear in local supermarkets in upcoming months. Much of what takes up shelf space each year at the show is not new. Companies fill big cases with old faithfuls, such as best-selling cake mixes, pizzas and refrigerated pasta.
Benefiting from the abundant displays was Second Harvest, a national hunger-relief organization with 186 regional food banks. More than 170,000 pounds of fresh, canned and boxed food was donated to the charity from FMI this year, all of it going to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
