Brands Seek New Occasions, Audiences With Bite-Sized Snacks

As snack brands seek to grow their product offerings and reach new audiences, many are turning to bite-sized formats.

Bite-sized and miniature products — from sweet treats to savory snacks — have been a core subcategory of the snack set, but the product type recently gained popularity as a form factor because of the “permissibility” surrounding a smaller portion size, according to IRI’s The Snacking Frenzy in 2021 and Beyond report published earlier this year.

Jeff Grogg, president of snack manufacturer Snackwerks and managing director of JPG Resources, echoed this sentiment, noting that bites offer consumers a convenient form factor that allows them to eat the serving they want, while also allowing brands to innovate with different textures and functionalities.

“Americans love finger food [and] poppables,” he said. “We like the idea that we can have ‘just what we want,’ even though likely in most cases people eat more when in bulk than when in a defined serving unit,” Grogg said. “Bites can be sort of the best of both worlds, providing a multi-faceted sensory experience that extruded snacks cannot match, while still maintaining crispy, low density texture and high volume per calorie.”

While Grogg said he foresees more innovation coming in this area, he noted that bites are typically more expensive to produce than bars, so brands should only eye innovation in the format when “portion control offers a very clear utility or reason for a premium.”

CORE Foods Moves Beyond Bars With Oat Snacks Launch

CORE Foods is expanding beyond the refrigerated aisle into shelf-stable snacking with its new Oat Snacks debuting this week. With a multiserve bag and some savory flavors, the line brings the brand into new use occasions, CEO Brett Hartmann noted, while continuing its mission to produce plant-based functional snacks.

The Oat Snacks — offered in Vegan Ranch, Peanut Butter and Sea Salt & Olive Oil flavors — were developed in partnership with Whole Foods, according to Hartmann, and debuted at the natural retailer this week. The products promise a “happy gut” through five grams of prebiotic fiber per 4 oz., sold for $4.99.

The snacks build on the brand’s refrigerated bar offerings, first launched in 2019, as well as it newer Keto Bar line, which is sold in over 2,000 stores including Target and Albertsons.

While the savory Oat Snacks are a departure from its sweet-skewing bars, Hartmann said the products are an extension of the brand’s newfound focus on gut health, which began with the launch of its Keto Bar line, which also contains probiotics, in April. He said the brand saw a whitespace in gut health positioned shelf-stable snacks, with that health attribute typically tied more to the dairy aisle.

Moving beyond bars was “always part of the plan,” Hartmann said, so softening sales for bars and other on-the-go snacking categories during the peak of the pandemic didn’t necessarily influence the brand’s expansion timeline. Still, the current snacking environment that is leaning more towards multiserve, bite-sized snacks could “potentially be helpful” for the brand as it launches into new categories, he noted.

“Consumers know us as a functional plant-based snack, and [Oat Snacks] now gives them another opportunity and another occasion,” CORE Foods VP of marketing Whitney Spielfogel said. “It being a shareable item and a bite size item and an item that can be tasked with different pairings, it’s another occasion to connect with our consumer, not only in a different aisle but at a different stage and time of the day.”

As CORE’s first non-refrigerated product, the Oat Snacks will also open up opportunities for ecommerce sales when they launch online in the coming months, Hartmann said, an area that has been a logistical challenge for the brand given that all of its previous product lines have required refrigerated shipping.

“What we’re trying to do with this product is to give our consumers another opportunity to interact with the brand,” Hartmann said. “We’re first foremost a refrigerated snacking brand and that’s where we started and that is where we plan to continue to have a large presence. We’re going to continue to grow and innovate and expand within that space.”

Tosi Debuts Bite-Sized SuperPops

Organic bar maker Tosi is embracing the snackable bites format — along with savory flavors — with the debut of SuperPops, its first ever multi-serve format launch. Made with ancient grains and seeds, the snacks are available in Everything, Salty Sweet, Smoky BBQ and Cinnamon Apple flavors, and are sold on the brand’s website in 4-packs of 3 oz. bags for $24.

According to co-founder Cheslea Hults, the launch represents Tosi “breaking further into the snacking space.” In addition to offering its bars in a more snackable format, SuperPops’ allergy-friendly ingredient list also allows the brand to reach a new group of consumers. While the brand’s SuperBites are made with almonds, cashews, flax seeds, white sesame seeds and chia seeds, its bites are free of the top eight allergens.

“As one of the millions of Americans with food allergies, the SuperPops line is near and dear to my heart because it will allow me to help others like myself who could benefit from our simple, organic, real food ingredients,” said Hults. “We are so thankful for our community of loyal fans who love our nut-based SuperBites bars and are excited to expand on that success with a product that speaks to consumers with additional dietary needs who also want to make healthy snack choices.

Daily Harvest Grows Bites Line

Direct-to-consumer frozen food maker Daily Harvest grew its superfood bites line with three new flavors last month: Raspberry + Fig, Banana + Cacao, and Matcha + Murasaki. The bites join flavors like Espresso Bean + Tahini and Coconut + Lemon, which are all sold in cups of seven for $7.99.

The brand first debuted bites as its first move into snacks in 2019 as a convenient snack option that could be consumed either defrosted or frozen, providing a simpler solution to the company’s heat-and-eat meal options. Daily Harvest founder and CEO Rachel Drori told NOSH at the time that the company saw whitespace in the snacking market, aiming to address the afternoon slump of “three o’clock cravings” with anti-inflammatory and energy boosting ingredients.

The launch expands the company’s offerings to over 100 items and continues its mission to offer more fruit-forward and “clean” snack options, according to the company. In addition to a variety of fruit, all new flavors are made with transitional organic almonds, part of Daily Harvest’s efforts to partner with farmers in the three year process of transitioning their farms from conventional to organic, the company said.