That's Eatertainment

Prepared Foods, May, 2000

Food processors continually look to their foodservice brethren to spot new cuisine trends and consumer eating shifts.

Like other foodservice firsts, eatertainment--the mixing of entertainment and food (bread & circus) at restaurant chains like Hard Rock Caf[acute{e}], Ed Debevic's, Dave & Buster's and Rainforest Caf[acute{e}]--has migrated to the packaged foods arena.

Nowhere is the trend more apparent than in foods and beverages designed for kids. (See "Kids Rule" article on p. 21.) These products often include games and prizes. Kids want "cool" products that they can interact with. Taste often becomes secondary.

Nabisco's new Oreo Magic Dunkers, which turn milk blue, appeal to adventurous kids. In fact, the new cookies received the highest concept scores ever for the brand, with eight out of 10 children giving it rave reviews.

Nabisco's food technologists spent more than a year perfecting the blue coloring, which does not change the flavor of the cookies or the milk.

In addition to cool, imaginative kids like to create things. (Remember when you played with your food and made a face in your mashed potatoes with peas.)

This month, Hershey Foods is rolling out Hershey's Candy Bar Factory. Each package contains a milk chocolate bar with four, ready-to-fill wells and four individual containers of filing--Reese's peanut butter, colored sprinkles, chocolate cookie bits and white frosting. Kids can combine these toppings to create their own personal candy bars.

Market research for the candy kit revealed that most children (ages 6-12) thought the new product was "for me" and liked the control they had over the final product. The launch will be supported with a website, www.candybarfactory.com, that will include games, mazes, screen savers, trivia and candy-making ideas.

In the same creative vein, Kraft's Post cereal division introduced Post Kids Create A Crunch cereal mixing kit last summer. The kit includes four cereals--Frosted Alpha-Bits, Cocoa Pebbles, Fruity Pebbles and Honeycomb--that kids can mix to create their own personalized cereals.

Speaking of Kraft, the food giant recently debuted Health Quenchers--a line of powdered drink mixes. Varieties include Energy, with carbohydrates and ginseng; Wellness, with antioxidant vitamins A, E and C; and Calcium, with 300mg of calcium.

With its dry beverage mix products (i.e., Crystal Light) in a sales slump, Kraft is hoping that its hip, health-oriented drinks resonate with young consumers, particularly women.

South Beach Beverage Company, a leader in healthy refreshment, has been sold to J.W. Childs Associates, a private equity investment firm based in Boston. SoBe's case volume leaped 175% last year and sales jumped to $166 million--up from $67 million in '98.

Perhaps the antithesis to entertainment is the Stigler Diet, which was devised by economist George Stigler during World War II to feed army troops. Stigler sought to provide an average adult with sufficient calories and nutrition based on the least cost. His "optimal" diet cost a little more than 10 cents a day back then.

Utilizing Stigler's 77 foods with today's prices and nutritional analyses, Saul Gass, a business professor at the University of Maryland, has updated the Stigler Diet. Today, the cheap--but not very appealing--diet costs $1.47 a day for a woman and $1.78 for a man.

For less than a buck and half a day, a woman would consume wheat flour rolled oats, milk, peanut butter, lard, beef liver, bananas, orange, cabbage, carrot, potato and pork and beans.

Remember, economists deal only in theory. Just try to get someone to eat this stuff!

Bob Swientek