Focus on crisps, nuts and snacks: 2 May

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supermarket crisps focus on

Publishing: 2 May

Advertising deadline: 16 April

Submissions deadline: 10 April

Contact Paul Davies (paul.artist@gmail.com)

The Story

The chips are down for the humble potato crisp. Brits have spent less on multipacks of crisps in the past year, and for the first time sales of savoury snacks have surpassed those of potato crisps. Nevertheless, premium potato and vegetable crisps are still in strong growth. What’s driving these differing performances? To what extent is the growing health consciousness of consumers impacting the market? Which brands are performing best and worst? And what’s does the coming year hold?

Key themes

Health: This will be a key focus. The feature will explore how health concerns are driving the development of ‘healthier’ snack products such as baked and air popped crisps, baked snacks and vegetable crisps. Are traditional potato crisps suffering because they are seen as unhealthy, compared to the new products available?

Flavours and textures: This feature will explore in detail how the flavour of British snacks is evolving through new product development. What will be the hot new flavour trends of 2015 and how are brands looking to cash in? Another point of discussion will be the conflicting performances ridged crisps brands? What other textures, such as lattice and so on, are doing well?

Price: As with many sectors in the deflationary grocery market, value is growing more slowly than volume. This feature will explore the reasons for this. To what extent are crisps, nuts and snacks brands being used by retailers as weapons in the price war? Are they being promoted more?

Vegetable crisps: This feature will explore in detail how the development of non potato crisps – made of everything from parsnips to sweet potatoes – is impacting the market. Who’s driving this trend and who will be jumping on the bandwagon next?

Nuts: We’re going nuts over nuts at the moment, with the sub category enjoying strong value and volume. Which brands and types of nuts are driving this growth and what does the coming year have in store? How is this growth affecting the wider market?

Meat snacks: Analysis suggests the market for meat snacks is in strong growth. Why? Which brands are driving this growth and how are they looking to sustain it?

Innovation: This will be key to this feature. We will be investigating how new product development has shaped the category over the past year and what is in store for shoppers in 2014. We will be profiling four of the most interesting launches in a separate innovation panel.

Promotions: This feature will explore how the promotional strategies of retailers and brands have changed over the past year. Attention will be paid to the promotional strategies of retailers and how this has affected average prices over the past year.

Advertising and marketing: This feature will also investigate how the marketing and advertising strategies of the category’s biggest brands have evolved over the past year and how they will develop in the coming year to sustain growth or return brands to growth.

Box-outs

Please note: we will also be producing short box outs looking at the performances of the snacks, nuts, crisps and meat snacks brands based on IRI market data. We will also be doing a short box out on changes in ad spend by the market’s major players.

4 x innovations crisps: Four new products or product ranges that have ideally not appeared in The Grocer before, including launch date and RSP.
4 x innovations snacks: Four new products or product ranges that have ideally not appeared in The Grocer before, including launch date and RSP.
4 x innovations nuts: Four new products or product ranges that have ideally not appeared in The Grocer before, including launch date and RSP.
Sharing formats: How has the market for sharing formats performed over the past year and which brands have enjoyed the most growth and why? How have they used factors such as promotions, NPD, marketing and advertising?

Key questions the feature is likely to address