What will the potato chip of the future look and taste like? PepsiCo aims to find out. The food and beverage giant announced this week that it is opening a new long-term research laboratory next to the Yale campus in New Haven, Conn.
The facility will employ eight to 10 scientists with backgrounds ranging from sensory to biochemistry. Their goal: To create healthier foods and beverages.
Going under the name Vio, Coca-Cola has begun test-marketing the carbonated drink at natural food stores and delis in New York It sells for about £1.50 a bottle, no chilling required. One of Coke’s copywriters claims it tastes “like a birthday party for a polar bear”.
It comes in four “natural” flavours — peach mango, berry, citrus and tropical colada — and could even be marketed as a healthy nutritional drink. But it has 26g of sugar a bottle, on a par with other non-diet Coca-Cola products, and 1.5g of fat.
The device, naturally, is the brainchild of a Harvard professor, presumably inspired by looking at a candy bar and thinking how awesome it would be to smoke it. (He was right.) That might explain why, as with inhaling certain other pleasurable intoxicants, consuming Le Whif is all about the ritual—there are even detailed instructions and a site devoted to people looking good while using it.
Smart Balance helps people stay lean with "heart healthy" merchandise, including low-cholesterol spreads, peanut butter, popcorn, cooking oil and milk. The company itself is lean as well, with just 67 employees and scant fixed assets. Its "virtual" business model outsources almost everything else, including manufacturing, product distribution and sales. The unusual approach is attracting attention, especially as recession-battered businesses slow new-product introductions.
Joan Chow: It’s definitely “fewer, bigger and better.” We call it sticky innovation, meaning that when you launch it, it sticks around. It’s not just a flash in a pan and then it’s gone. Steaming is one of our major platforms. You see it with the Healthy Choice Asian Inspired Café Steamers; the technology has been expanded to Healthy Choice Fresh Mixers and now with Marie Callender’s Pasta Al Dente, which uses that same platform.BrandWeek
While acknowledging that "this might seem a rather strange time to innovate," Skyy Vodka Senior Brand Manager Jason Daniel says that the brand's "rather dramatic" step of replacing its existing flavored vodka line with Infusions is proving to be very much on the money precisely because of consumers' proclivity to indulge in relatively inexpensive "mini-vacations" in lieu of the real thing.MediaPost
Whereas previous years were marked by ambitious launches and re-branded lines, this meeting was mainly about line extensions or re-branding. Campbell emphasized it is reducing the sodium content across its soup portfolio, with 50% of its soups expected to have less salt than the original versions by fiscal 2010. General Mills is building on its success in the cereal category by offering new versions of its most popular brands, such as Banana Nut Cheerios. Kellogg Co. is launching savory cracker products tied to its Special K brand (a line extension), and a number of new Eggo waffles with flax and blueberries (also a line extension).Ad Age
Starbucks will begin testing the soluble coffee -- a term that conjures up images of instant brands such as Folgers, Sanka and Brim -- by selling it in Starbucks cafes as early as next month. It's unclear as yet whether the company will also extend the product to supermarkets, where it already has a presence with ground Starbucks-branded coffee.AdAge
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