The Food Scout

The 100-calorie, portion-controlled snack bag was a little experiment from Nabisco launched a couple of years ago (note that Nabisco had the first widely popular fat-free cookie in the mid-nineties), and it appears to have given permission to CPG manufacturers and restaurant chains alike to shrink portions back down to normal sizes. Already, Kraft claims to have sold $160 million worth of 100-calorie packs in 2006.

Now it’s not just enough to live in the “real” world. It appears there is a real business opportunity in setting up shop in virtual worlds as well. Plenty of individuals have hung out a sign in Second Life in order to make “real” money, or even interviewed for a “real” job within Second Life’s virtual environment, but I was intrigued and confused when Kraft invested in a virtual store presence by offering products at Phil’s Supermarket. Would people pay real money for “fake” groceries? Could a virtual person get obese from over-consumption of snack foods, or would they be able to gorge virtually without adding any pixels to their figures?

On April 16, 2007 (see archives) I published the first installment of the Star(ving) Wars, dubbed “The Clone Wars,” where I printed a prediction from more than a year ago that ...due to lack of funding and lack of consumer adoption, most meal assembly stores will probably be gone in 5 years. But their legacy will continue. As with Boston Market, retailers, manufacturers and restaurants will better understand the void in consumers’ lives that paved the way for all these start-up companies to step in and carve out a place in dinner planners’ hearts.”

We’re a solid 15 or 20 years into the BFY product “trend,” and it appears manufacturers have a short memory when it comes to the roadblocks, failed attempts, casualties and other frustrations that have dogged the industry over that time.

Welcome to the New Age of snack fortification. Ten or fifteen years ago, the FDA would have undoubted slapped the wrists of any major cookie, candy, carbonated beverage and salty-snack CPG companies that tried to fortify their products with vitamins or other healthful properties without significantly improving salt, fat, or sugar content. The concern would have been that people might be “fooled” into thinking these were healthful products and thus consume more of them.