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Produce Show Daily Friday, October 19, 2018 4 0 Puff Sales Popping as Consumers Discover Better-for-You Versions By Robin Mather New better-for-you puffs, many made with plant proteins or from vegetables, are showing up everywhere. Consumer research company SPINS says sales of puffed snacks grew nearly 10 percent in 2017, far outpacing the snacks category as a whole, which grew 1.4 percent in the same period. Puffs account for seven to 10 percent of the overall snack category, SPINS says. As Whole Foods noted in its 2018 trends forecast late last year, new extru- sion and popping technologies make almost anything puff-able and poppable. Exhibitors at the Sweets and Snacks Expo in May in Chicago, Illinois, demon- strated exactly that, with dozens of puffed vegetable- and nut-based snacks. Among them: HIPPEAS showed its organic chickpea puffs; Crunch-a-Mame offered its organic edamame puffs in barbecue, cheddar and ranch; Peeled Snacks offers baked organic pea puffs; Cosmos Creations added its Welch's Multigrain Fruit Puffs; Shrewd Food showed its sweet and savory puffs; and Ready Nutrition showcased its pea-protein puffs. What's driving consumers' love for crunchy, crispy puffs? Some manufactur- ers think it's the Millennial love for com- fort, combined with a desire to improve nutrition as they snack almost constantly throughout the day, sometimes combin- ing snacks to make mini-meals. Christine Webster, of Portage, Michigan, says her two sons, ages 12 and 15, are "at prime snacking age because they can now reach the cupboards." She doesn't indulge them often in puffed snacks, but adds, "They always seem like such a treat – like they must be bad for you." But, she says, "I'm glad there are healthier versions today, because my kids love the taste and tex- ture of cheese puffs." Puffed snacks signal fun. Why is that? "Puffs are more fun than chips, because they come in a variety of sizes and shapes," says Jack Kuo, Founder of Fuller Foods near Portland, Oregon, which makes Seriously Cheesy Puffs, finger-length puffs available in Asiago Black Pepper, Blue Cheese Jalapeno and Sriracha Cheddar flavors. A more food-oriented culture means Millennials are making room in an aging segment for new innovators, he says. "In the past 15 or 20 years, we, as a country, have gotten more 'foodie' – we appreciate food more, we're more food- centered," Kuo says. "In terms of snacks, we're looking for fat, sugar and salt. But we want those snacks to be good for us. Puffs are an old category, dominated by old standbys," – like Cheetos, he means – "so in the past five years, there are more upstarts like us, focused on dietary needs." Puffs also signal stress reduction to many consumers. "Puffs are sort of a comfort food to begin with," says Rob Ehrlich, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vegan Rob's in Seacliff, New York, and the Founder of Robert's American Gourmet Foods, the maker of Pirate's Booty, the puffed corn, rice and cheese snack. "Most people see puffed snacks as child or youth snacks, with a very orange color." The Millennial love of snacking – many industry surveys say Millennials snack four or more times a day – makes better-for-you puffs attractive, Ehrlich says. "There's a non-stop attitude about snacks these days – they're meals. Around-the-clock snacking is what's happening." Vegan Rob's has created puffs made with Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, beets and other vegetables. These puffs, he says, are sorghum-based – a cereal grain unfamiliar to most of us. Sorghum, long used in the South as animal feed and to make sorghum molasses, has gained in popularity because, when ground into flour, it can stand in for wheat flour. That makes it attractive to manufacturers who want to cater to the gluten-free market. "We use sorghum, a drought-resis- tant crop that grows without water," he says. "You can make these puffs into snacks without having the constraints of typical snack ingredients – corn in tortilla chips, or rice. You can do a lot more in extrusion these days." The Demand for Clean Label Snacks Seriously Cheesy Puffs are made of corn- meal sourced from Bob's Red Mill, which is just down the road from Kuo's development lab. Corn is the most com- mon substrate for puffs, he says, and he boasts that Fuller Foods is the only com- pany in the country using corn from Bob's. Although the corn is not certified, it's non-GMO and organic, he says. Kuo was trained as a food scientist, he says, and that's partly what prompted him to found Fuller Foods. "In snack products, it's very com- mon to include ingredients like mal- todextrose and yeast," he says. "After a while, the flavor profile becomes kind of boring. Even 'natural flavor' is a huge bucket of things that you wouldn't recog- nize as ingredients – yeast added to impart umami flavor after the loss of fla- vor in processing. We wanted to use ingredients that you could find in your home kitchen." Part of Kuo's mission is to provide the backstory, the story behind the prod- uct, he says. Millennials and the up-and- coming Gen Z – now 11 to 23 years old, according to consumer insight research firm Mintel – especially want that trans- parency about how their food is pro- duced. "We ultimately want to tell our story in the same way that specialty coffee roasters do," he says. "Our cheese comes from Oregon, Washington and Idaho; our corn comes from California." For Ehrlich, the timing of this new interest in puffed snacks couldn't be bet- ter. "We just happened to be positioned incredibly well," he says of Vegan Rob's line, which he describes as "adaptogenic and ayurvedic snacks." But he notes that there's more to success than simply mak- ing a new product: "You have to take it further and make [the snacks] delicious," he says. Consumers "won't buy a second bag if it doesn't taste good. They have to hit on all four cylinders. There's a psy- chological part as well – most people buy snacks to reduce stress, not just because they're hungry. We emphasize all those parts in our products." Traina Home Grown Launches New Barbecue Sauce Line Traina Foods is launching a pair of new barbecue sauces, Sun Dried Plum and Sun Dried Apricot BBQ Sauces under its new Traina Home Grown brand. The sauces build on Traina's position as the largest purveyor of sun-dried fruit in the U.S., and they incorporate the sun-dried fruits into the sauces to crate a nuanced balance of sweet and savory flavors. The sauces are available in 16-ounce squeeze bottles that will retail for $3.99 to $4.99. Originally crated and served at The Fruit Yard, the Traina family restaurant in Modesto, California, these sauces also work as marinades and dips. Both flavors are complementary to a variety of meat, poultry and seafood dishes, and since they're also great with vegetables, they'll make a creative additive addition to dish- es that put plants at the center of the plate. They're also kosher, gluten free and vegan. They contain no corn syrup and are made in the U.S. at the Traina Ranch's environmentally sustainable facilities in California.