|
|
|
You can get e-magazine links on WhatsApp. Click here
|
|
|
|
|
|
People experimenting with healthier baked items for breakfast globally
|
|
Friday, 19 December, 2014, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
|
|
Julian Mellentin
|
|
fiogf49gjkf0d The nature of breakfast is changing rapidly – particularly among the young and in major urban centres, where the demanding lifestyles of busy professional workers leave people with inadequate time for a traditional breakfast at home.
These very people have shocked market researchers by showing themselves to be willing to try totally new and untraditional foods at breakfast – provided they are super-convenient, taste good and have a healthy halo. Bakery products are in the forefront of this new consumer dynamic.
Traditionally, bakery products have been an important part of breakfasts around the world. The French have their famous baguettes with different fruit spreads for breakfast, while in the Netherlands, bread is eaten topped with chocolate sprinkles (hagelslag).
The Danish eat rye bread, the Bolivians marraquetas bread, the Portuguese and Brazilians ham and cheese with bread or in a croissant and the Spanish spread tomato on top of sliced bread. In some countries, pastries like croissants (Italy) or börek (Turkey) are more commonly associated with breakfast.
Open to experimentation
But the traditional, urban consumers are showing themselves as willing to be experimental. Sale of products such as pita bread (a typical Middle-Eastern flat bread) and tortilla wraps (a Mexican flatbread which is used to wrap up vegetables) are good examples. In America, sales of flatbreads – similar to naan-style breads – have been growing at a steady 25% per annum while sales of traditional American bread have begun to fall by 2% a year.
Away from home
Worldwide, “away from home” breakfast is increasingly the normal way that many urban people take breakfast. They might live in different continents, but they have increasingly similar lifestyles and in a global market are faced with increasingly similar professional pressures.
It is a global trend that is as common – or even more common – in Asia. For example:
A New Nutrition Business survey of professional workers in five south Asian countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam) found that 66% ate breakfast away from home three or more times in a two-week period. And 20% of those surveyed consumed breakfast away from home every single day.
A study in China by respected international consumer research group Health Focus International found that breakfast was the meal people were most likely to take away from home.
A study by Nielsen found that in every part of the world – from Asia to South America to Europe – around 40% of consumers chose a snack-type product to eat “on-the-go” several times each week.
In addition, of the three main meal occasions – breakfast, lunch and dinner – it is breakfast which people are most likely to miss. In some countries around a third of consumers skip breakfast completely with the habit most common among people aged 18-30, males, and living in urban areas. The main reasons consumers give for skipping breakfast are: lack of time due to children; lack of time due to work; prioritise a lie-in; just don’t think about it; don’t like eating that early; and lack of convenient on-the-go breakfast choices.
Opportunity battleground
Thanks to these changes, breakfast has become one of the most intensely fought-over battlegrounds in the business of food and health as companies battle to seize the opportunity of a changing breakfast market.
Bakery products are showing themselves to be well-adapted to people’s needs for products that are convenient, easy-to-eat on-the-go, healthy and taste good.
Breakfast biscuits
The biggest and most successful disruptive innovation at breakfast has come from bakery. The Belvita breakfast biscuits brand, owned by Mondelez, has shown how people are willing to change their habits and are experimental with new types of breakfast foods.
Breakfast biscuits are a traditional and long-established type of food in France and Italy. But the idea was unknown to Americans. Consequently, whenever senior executives at American companies looked at whether they should be baking breakfast biscuits they dismissed the idea as “too different” or “too European.”
What happened next underscores why no one should ever dismiss as new idea as being “too unfamiliar” or “too foreign” for your home consumers. Belvita entered the US market in 2012. Its simple message of “sustained energy,” good taste and convenience is transforming a market that has been dominated by a “traditional” breakfast of cereals in bowl, with milk poured over them and then eaten with a spoon.
In the year to October 2014, sales of breakfast cereals in the US fell by 5% – worth over $300 million. This money did not disappear. Over $70 million of that $300 million switched to just one brand – Belvita Breakfast Biscuits, which as a result finishes 2014 with sales up 70% on the previous year. With total sales in the US market of $196 million within three years of launch, it is a phenomenon. A similar story is being repeated in other global markets – 20 countries in fact, from Brazil to the UK to Poland. Belvita has upset the apple-cart of long-held beliefs. Worldwide Belvita may have sales of over $500 million.
Key to success
So what is the key to the success? Faced with the huge challenge of selling a sweet biscuit as a healthy breakfast option Mondelez created a clever message. Belvita’s aim is to enable people who would like to eat healthily – or at least believe that they do – to make Belvita their breakfast choice without any guilt.
There are two steps to the Belvita message:
- The first is messaging on the pack and in advertising which tells people that biscuits can be part of a healthy breakfast
- The second part emphasises the product’s slow-energy-release carbohydrates (supported by an approved health claim), reassuring people that they can eat sweet biscuits for breakfast and they will get the energy they need to keep going all morning – and they can still feel virtuous.
All about energy
The idea of energy is a credible one from a grain-based products – and consumer research has shown, from Asia to America, that what people want from breakfast is energy that will enable them to keep going – ideally without feeling the need to snack – until lunch.
Consumers have consistently identified “energy” as a claim that they love, with the need state of “more energy” consistently ranking among the top-5 health concerns in global studies by respected consumer research group Health Focus International.
Belvita has educated consumers about sustained energy and at the same time seems to have tapped a huge unmet need. This intense demand for energy is one that products based on grains with low glycemic index (oats, specifically) have begun to adopt more and more, communicating this “all natural” intrinsic benefit.
Belvita Breakfast biscuits were described in advertising as “delicious, crunchy biscuits specially designed for breakfast,” touted as “a tasty, convenient and portion-controlled alternative to current breakfast options – whether at home, on-the-go, or at work.”
Two variants
Initially available in two variants, Fruit & Fibre and Milk & Cereals, the 12.5g biscuits are thin and light and the signature ingredients used – fruit, milk, cereals – all have a “naturally healthy” aura. The range has been extended with new flavours and texture variants, including honey, cinnamon, yoghurt and many kinds of grains.
The brand is described as free-from artificial flavours and colours. The recommended serving of four biscuits delivers 216 calories, 12.4g of sugars and 8g of total fat, of which 2g is saturated. Each serving also delivers 16% of the RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowances) of vitamin B1 and 8g of wholegrain per 50g serving.
This combination of factors – along with a good tasting product – meant that Belvita quickly succeeded even in countries where people had no habit of eating a biscuit at breakfast.
Another good example of creating a new bakery success at breakfast comes from the Italian multinational group Ferrero.
The Bready alternative
Most people – in any culture - would not dream of having a square of chocolate for breakfast, but Ferrero’s Nutella Bready – a breakfast biscuit with a hazelnut-chocolate core – offers a convenient and dose-controlled format that gives people “permission to indulge.”
Launched in 2012, Bready is billed as “A new way of having Nutella in your breakfast.” Bready’s wafer bread sticks look like baguettes – French bread sticks – but are filled with Nutella. They retail in supermarkets and convenience stores in Italy and France – where they are heavily promoted – for €2 ($2.55) for a pack of eight.
Overt healthiness is not the point of this product, rather the fact that this product tries to project a halo of health to deliver “permission to indulge.” The fact that it allows easy portion control – each stick offers just under 100 calories – increases its attractiveness for consumers concerned about weight management or who are giving the product to their children.
It’s also highly convenient, its main target group being busy people who want a tasty breakfast that’s also quick and possible to have on-the-go.
Children are another important target group, with advertising focussing on what a fast and easy breakfast Bready is for busy parents – and how happy it will make their children.
Marketing also highlights an element of fun that will appeal to kids – the choice between eating Bready “crunchy or soft” by dipping it in milk.
Conclusion
Consumers are increasingly presented with breakfast product formats and ingredients that would have been unimaginable even as recently as five years ago.
Given the convergence of innovation in processing technologies and ingredients with consumer need, any company with an ambition in bakery should not rule out NPD (New Product Development) ideas because they are unfamiliar or “too innovative.”
The changes driven by Belvita and others in breakfast are an example of how much categories can change. No one in our industry can ever assume either that:
Category drivers are known and stable and the category will stay similar to what it is today, and A “wacky” or new idea has no chance of succeeding
Consumers have shown themselves in every category to be willing to embrace the new. People also want more variety across all of their diet and they have shown themselves – across many different cultures – willing to experiment with new product types of bakery products breakfast.
(The writer is an international specialist in the business of food, nutrition and health. He is director of New Nutrition Business which provides case studies and analysis in global nutrition business)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|