Not Just For Dessert Anymore

Dairy Field, Feb 2004 by Cook, Julie

According to Gutierrez, low-income consumers tend to be more brand loyal and that consumers with a higher income are far more likely to purchase private label products. "The higher your education and income, the more rapidly you will go for the better value," he explains. "Why that is, I have no idea."

Greg Steinhauser, president and founder of Carousel Foods, says that sales of his company's private label puddings have exceeded the expectations of its private label customers. He believes the growth is a direct result of consumers being more value conscious and recognizing that they can get the same quality as a branded product from private label, but at a much lower price.

Aiming for Adults

While pudding has often been considered a favorite childhood treat, a growing number of manufacturers are openly targeting the adult market, rolling out more mature flavors and even making a conscious effort to sell their products in adult-sized portions. Echo Farm, for example, targets adults with its line of all-natural premium puddings. Using milk from its on-site herd, the company produces a line of flavorful concoctions designed specifically with grown-ups in mind.

Each Echo Farm pudding flavor bears the name of one of its cows - Miracle's Chocolate, Candle's Coffee, Ticket's Tapioca and Lolly's Butterscotch, for example. What's more, the farm is certified humane, indicating an independent auditor has ensured all operations are being run with the best interests of the herd in mind.

Whereas Kraft and ConAgra typically sell their single-serve puddings in 3.5- to 4-ounce cups, Echo Farm uses a 6-ounce cup. Hodge says that's because the smaller cups act merely as a "teaser" for an adult, while an 8-ounce cup simply would be too much indulgence. What's more, the 6-ounce size allows for more of a direct comparison with pudding's cousin, yogurt. "There is very little difference between yogurt and pudding if you are comparing on a whole milk to whole milk basis," says Hodge. "They have the same protein content, the same calories and the same calcium content. Really the only difference is that yogurt has the active cultures."

That's not to suggest that everyone is aware of those attributes and considers pudding to be on par with yogurt as far as healthfulness is concerned. On the contrary, pudding typically is viewed as an indulgent snack or dessert, while yogurt is practically deemed a health food. Of course, it didn't help that pudding was conspicuously absent from the list of dairy foods promoted in the National Milk Board's new 3-A-Day program, which specifically promotes milk, yogurt and cheese as means of increasing one's dairy intake.

Hodge was not pleased. "I wrote to them and said, 'That's great if you want to target these as healthy items, but you ought to be allocating some funds to promote these dessert items too,'" she says. "Their response was, 'We'll look into it,' but that was a year-and-a-half ago and I still don't see any work being done to promote puddings."