Hershey Splits Market Into Pieces

The company discovered that different people ate for different reasons. Hershey grouped the consumers into six segments, ranging from frequent snackers dubbed "loyal indulgers" to infrequent candy snackers known as "detached occasionalists." Those groups are coupled with consumer "need states," which refer to needs that drive consumers to buy certain products. The company hopes the new segmentation strategy will help it fight back against Wrigley and Mars, which are merging.

Brand Week

Baby boomers eat their way to health and beauty

The generation aged between 44 and 62 are seeking health and youth-enhancing effects from nutrient-rich foods, according to the report.

FoodNavigatorUSA.com

NPD Finds Fewer Americans Dieting But More Eating "Better for You" Foods

Eating “better for you” foods rather than dieting appears to be the weapon of choice against the battle of the bulge, according to The NPD Group, a leading market research firm. NPD reports that the percentage of adults on a diet has decreased by 10 percentage points since 1990, while the percentage of Americans eating healthier has increased.

The NPD Group

Hershey ad spending to rise

Advertising will rise by 20 percent in 2008 and 2009 as it invests in brands to counter competition from the pending merger of its two biggest rivals, the Hershey, Pa.-based company said Tuesday.

Hershey, which also makes Kit Kat bars and Twizzlers, is overhauling its supply chain and marketing as it faces rising costs for cocoa, energy and milk, and loses sales to Mars.

Chicago Tribune

Filtering Through the Coffee Studies

Coffee drinking -- even more than six cups a day over the course of almost 20 years -- won't kill you, and may even help you live longer, says a new study.

ABC News

How America's Children Packed On the Pounds

It's hardly a secret how American children have come to this sickly pass. In the era of the 64-oz. soda, the 1,200-calorie burger and the 700-calorie Frappuccino, food companies now produce enough each day for every American to consume a belt-popping 3,800 calories per day, never mind that even an adult needs only 2,350 to survive. Not only are adults and kids alike consuming far more calories than they can possibly use, but they're also doing less and less with them. The transformation of American homes into high-def, Web-enabled, TiVo-equipped entertainment centers means that children who come home after a largely sedentary day at a school desk spend an average of three more sedentary hours in front of some kind of screen. Schools have contributed, with shrinking budgets causing more and more of them to slash physical-education programs. In 1991, only 42% of high school students participated in daily phys ed—already a troublingly low figure. Today that number is 25% or less.

Time Magazine

Cookies' place is crumbling to fruit as top kids' snack

Parents seem to be serving healthier products, which may partly explain why the number of overweight children is holding steady, Balzer says.

Recent government statistics show that 32% of children and teens ages 2 to 19 — about 23 million — were overweight or obese in 2003-2006 compared with 29% in 1999. The increase is not considered statistically significant.

USA Today

Nestle, Kellogg et al sign junk ad pledge

Major global food companies have this week signed a pledge to stop advertising 'junk' food to children under 12, in an effort to self-regulate and avoid a ban being imposed by the European Commission.

foodnavigator-usa.com

Smucker Adds Coffee to Its Breakfast Lineup -- And Does It Tax Free

What I like best about this transaction is that although Smucker affects a Midwestern naivete -- its corporate symbol is a big red strawberry, its headquarters are at 1 Strawberry Lane in Orrville, Ohio -- it can play tax games with the big boys.

Washington Post

Kraft Foods reports $10.4B in 1Q revenues

Company officials say the results reflect continued momentum as Kraft enters the second year of its three-year turnaround plan.

“We expect our results to continue to strengthen as the year progresses,” said Chairwoman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld, in a news release.

Springfield Business Journal

Coca-Cola Buys Honest Tea

Coke's decision to invest in Honest Tea, although unforeseen is unsurprising, given the company's strong growth rate and increasing popularity in recent years on the one hand, and a rising demand for beverages outside the traditional soft drinks/soda industry on the other.

Fast Company

Gut Check: What You Should Know About Digestive Health

Just what are prebiotics and probiotics? If you're not sure, you're not alone. The Kraft LiveActive survey revealed that 71 percent of Americans are not at all familiar with prebiotics, and 63 percent report they are not at all familiar with probiotics.

The Sun Chronicle

Pringles Can Inventor Buried in a—wait for it—Pringles Can

Like any proud inventor, Baur requested that his ashes be buried with his 38-year-old creation when he died. Correction: He requested they be placed inside the invention. When Baur passed on May 4, his family obliged, putting some of the ashes in a Pringles can, and the rest in a traditional urn.

Gizmodo
Cincinnati Enquirer

Water Proof

If you’ve come across any of the many media accounts of a consumer uprising against bottled water, you might well assume that makers and sellers of the stuff are on their knees. You might further assume that Fiji Water, which comes from an aquifer in the South Pacific, would be in particularly bad shape: it is a regular target of scorn in those accounts, cited to underscore eco-conscious consumers’ discomfort (or disgust) with something shipped halfway around the planet that also happens to come out of your kitchen tap. Maybe this would explain the brand’s decision to convert pretty much its entire marketing message to: We are an eco-friendly “green” company.

New York Times Magazine

The Old Family Tea Business Gets a New-Media Spin

I’ve always called consumers personally if they had a problem. So using the new media is an extension of a philosophy we already knew — take care of your customers, talk to them. I create videos for YouTube and young people respond with their own. I watch a few every week and laugh. It’s so great to see a 23-year-old from the middle of the country holding up her box of Bigelow Tea. How great is it to be able to see all kinds of people, with their own styles, wanting to talk about Bigelow Tea on the Internet?

New York Times

Kool-Aid Retooled for Healthier Times

Kraft Foods Inc. has reformulated several of its Kool-Aid drinks and launched a new Kool-Aid water beverage to revitalize the brand and bring it more in line with Kraft's nutritional guidelines.

AOL Money

NEW Starbucks Chocolate

Hydrox Cookies Back for a Limited Time

Kellogg is resurrecting the 100-year-old Hydrox cookie in response to a consumer campaign that involved more than 1,300 phone calls, 1,000 petition signatures and "countless online message board postings."

Ad Age

Chip + Caffeine = Engobi

engobi.com

Pepperidge Farm Milano Cookie Ad

Beyond Madison Avenue

Cookbook Publishers Try to Think Small

“It’s not like the books didn’t exist five years ago, but they were very introductory, very dessert driven, or very one-size-fits-all,” said Melanie Rhodes, a children’s book buyer for Borders, where sales of children’s cookbooks have jumped by a third in the past year. “What we’re seeing now are publishers who are a little more tuned into the real food audience.”

New York Times

Kraft, Kellogg Beat Analyst Expectations

In the face of rising commodity costs and cautious consumers, most brand-name food manufacturers are continuing to increase marketing investment. Kraft and Kellogg, which both reported earnings this morning, credited advertising and marketing with the strength of the companies' respective brand portfolios. Both marketers saw profits drop and simultaneously beat analyst expectations.

Ad Age

Mars Reportedly Near Deal to Acquire Wrigley

Mars, the makers of M&M’s, was near a deal last night to acquire the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, the chewing gum concern, for more than $22 billion, people involved in the talks said. The transaction would create a confectionery behemoth and could pressure rivals into a cascade of other mergers.

New York Times

Gourmet Groceries — for More!

No food, it seems, is safe these days from being repackaged in a shiny platinum case as an upscale product--there's even a $40 bottle of water designed by a Hollywood producer and sold in a frosted-glass container affixed with Swarovski crystals. I don't know if economists use bottled water as a measure of financial well-being, but there must be a growing split between the rich and the poor. Because even as some people worry about being able to put any kind of food on the table, the sales of specialty foods are up 17% over the past two years (compared with 4% for overall food sales).

Time Magazine

Deal could be Wonder for Sara Lee

Since Ms. Barnes said last month she is ready to do deals, industry analysts have zeroed in on potential targets: Oscar Mayer meats, Folgers coffee and Interstate's bread and snack-cake brands. Interstate, which is trying to reorganize in Bankruptcy Court, appears the most plausible near-term option because of its availability and strategic fit with Sara Lee. The company is seeking a buyer for all or parts of its business.

Chicago Business

chip detox

The reality of the snack food business is taste is always king, Matta says. People also want to enjoy snack foods because they’re a break from their daily routine, he adds. “The nirvana consumers seek is they want to eat their cake and have it, too,” he says. “They want to have healthier snacks and do the right things for their diet. At the same time, they don’t want to give up taste.”

brandchannel.com

Kraft, Sara Lee face rising beef and pork prices

"Kraft and Sara Lee are in trouble because, at the end of the day, they are going to have to pay more for meat," says Ann Gilpin, a Morningstar Inc. analyst in Chicago who follows meat processors. "The ability to pass on the higher cost is limited in a very competitive industry, as consumers are increasingly sensitive to the price of food."

Chicago Business

Meals on Wheels

Asia has always had great street food, and you can get perfect crepes in Paris and amazing tacos in Mexico City. Now American food snobs are separating themselves from regular snobs by lining up outside food trucks. And they're willing to wait longer--and pay more--than at local fast-food restaurants.

Time Magazine

The story of the Oreo is the story of how junk food became a centerpiece of the American diet, worked its way deep into the national psyche and continues to defy efforts to reform what we eat.

A Tribune special report in three parts:

Part 1: Craving the cookie
Part 2: Selling the cookie
Part 3: For every fad, another cookie

Starbucks' Sweet Surprise

Starbucks chocolate will be available in grocery stores, mass retailers, drugstores, and club stores, at price points starting at $2.99. (The chocolates will not be making a debut in Starbucks stores themselves at this time.) They're made by Artisan Confections Co., which is a Hershey unit that also makes Joseph Schmidt, Scharffen Berger, and Dagoba organic chocolates.

Motley Fool