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SNACKING NEWS 4 SNACKING NEWS June 2018 WWW.SNACKINGNEWS.COM PUBLISHER Kimberly Oser SENIOR ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Jules Denton-Card jules_d@oser.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Lorrie Baumann EDITOR Robin Mather ASSOCIATE EDITORS Jeanie Catron Greg Gonzales JoEllen Lowry Karrie Welborn ART DIRECTOR Yasmine Brown GRAPHIC DESIGNER Jonathan Schieffer CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGERS Caitlyn McGrath Susan Stein DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS Tara Neal tara_n@oser.com CIRCULATION MANAGER Jamie Green subscriptions@oser.com PUBLISHING OFFICE 1877 N. Kolb Road Tucson, AZ 85715 520.721.1300 Fax 520.721.6300 SUBSCRIBER SERVICES Snacking News P.O. Box 30520 Tucson, AZ 85751 520.721.1300 OSER COMMUNICATIONS GROUP FOUNDER Lee M. Oser Periodicals postage paid at Tucson, AZ, and additional mailing office. Snacking News is published bi-monthly by Oser Communications Group, 1877 North Kolb Road, Tucson, AZ 85715; 520.721.1300. Publisher as- sumes no responsibility for unsolicited material or prices quoted in newspaper. 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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Snacking News, 1877 North Kolb Road, Tucson, AZ 85715. As you read this, I will have just returned from the National Restaurant Show and the Sweets and Snacks Expo in Chicago. Because this issue went to print be- fore those shows, I'll have to wait to share what I saw there until the July issue of Snacking News. Show season — from May through Octo- ber — is a busy, exhausting time for us as journalists. It's also incredibly exciting. For one thing, it's a season when I get to meet the makers of new products and revisit makers who are freshening their product lines. This is by far my favorite part of this job. For another, it's tremendously fun to see and sample those products. Some I will fall in love instantly, while others will leave me feeling so-so. Still, I recognize that your cus- tomers don't necessarily share my palate, and over my years of writing about food, I've learned how to discard my own prefer- ences when I'm assessing a product. That's probably good, because I'm unlikely to ever buy a snack made of insects — but I can see how other people might. Makers are already hinting at what they're bringing to shows this year, through press re- leases and invitations to meet with them to discuss new products. That's how I know that a lot of the trends for 2018 that we iden- tified back in December and January were right on target. Functional candy, for example, is look- ing to be hot this summer. These candies offer ingredients that promise some kind of benefit for the consumer: Energon's Qube Power Up Performance Gummies offer performance boosts for work-outs, while Alert Caffeine Gum from Mars Wrigley says it gives an energy lift. Lots of products involve sensory innova- tion. Mondelez has added Stride Sugar-Free Gum with Crunch Reactors in a couple of new flavors to its portfolio, which may be the first crunchy gum, while Trolli Sour Brite Blasts offer a gel filling in its its Exploding Cubes gummies. Dark chocolate, which consumers seem to perceive as more healthful, continues to ex- pand its market share. Mars' Twix Dark Chocolate Cookie Bar falls squarely into this trend. Cold brew coffee is so trendy that it's even showing up in candy — I saw a cold brew chocolate bar at Trader Joe's recently, and Wild Ophelia has introduced its American Crafted Chocolate Cold Brew Coffee Bites. You'll be hearing a lot about probiotics this year, with both start-ups and longstand- ing players adding the beneficials to lots of different products. Plant-based proteins, in- cluding pea protein, are showing up in chips, puffs and pops, crackers and other snacks to cater to consumers' wish for protein-en- hanced snacks. Ingredients are not the only area of con- sumer-driven change, though. Study after study shows that consumers, especially the much-courted Millennials, want trans- parency in ingredients, labeling, packaging and manufacturing. They are plugging into concerns about food waste, and have added it to their list of sustainability must-haves. They're learning more about the blockchain, which manufacturers use to provide con- sumers with unparalleled information about where their food comes from. We'll be seeing and reporting on all this and more over the coming months as we at- tend various shows. If you see me, be sure to say hello — I'll be the starry-eyed woman in the hat. n FROM THE EDITOR

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