Future Forward: Top Consumer Trends Set to Impact the Chocolate Aisle
05 Apr 2017 | Almond Board of California
In this webinar, Lu Ann Williams of Innova Market Insights highlights the top trends that will most impact how consumers purchase chocolate products. And, based on his more than 20 years of experience crafting unique chocolate creations, Richard Cusick of Evolution Artisan Confections shares recipe inspiration that align with consumer trends.
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Hello and thank you for joining us today.
I'm Hobinman, the associate director for trade, marketing and stewardship at the Almond Border California, and we are pleased to host today's webinar, Future Food Top Consumer Trends Set to Impact the Chocolate aisle.
In today's presentation, Luanne Williams, director of innovation at Innova Market Insights, will explore the latest trends and new developments in chocolate products around the world and how manufacturers are responding to these industry trends.
Then Richard Cusick, founder of Evolution Artisan Confections, will then take us through 4 confectionery recipe concepts that he developed for the almond board, discussing why he chose certain ingredients and formats and the techniques he used to bring them together in a way that is both pleasing to the eye and the palate.
Please feel free to submit questions through the system at any point during the presentation and after the presentation.
We'll address as many of them as we can.
If you submit a question that we're unable to answer live today, we will follow up with you via email after the webinar.
Finally, your feedback is important to us.
At the end of the session, please take a moment to fill out and submit the brief survey on your screen.
And so now, without further ado, I'll hand things over to Luanne Williams to begin.
Thank you.
Thanks, Harbinger.
OK, waiting on my first slide to load up there.
So, nice to, to be here today to talk about, what's happening, in, in chocolate.
So it's been a very, exciting category.
And I have 3 things I want to talk about today.
So every year we do our top 10 trends.
You can see plain sophistication, encapsulating moments, and sweeter balance.
So those are 3.
I'm going to just look at how these 3 trends relate to chocolate and how they're impacting trends in those in this category.
OK, so the first one is plain sophistication and I think it's really interesting.
I grew up with parents who were raised on farms and we always had fresh everything, huge vegetable garden, and God, we used to complain, you know, if you had to go out there and harvest things.
And I think what you never appreciate as kids is that now, that is what's considered the best way to eat and it's, it's quite an expensive way to eat.
And if we look at what's happening in terms of new product launches, in the retail market, premiumization continues to grow, in chocolate.
And if we look at, we track claims on, on new product launches and in 2016, more than 10% of products had a premium claim on it.
We call it indulgent and premium, but it was making some kind of call it on the package that this is premium.
The product on the right is a nice example of that.
You can see it's in a very premium package, but also if you look at the, the description of the product, it's really talking about.
What's in the product talking about the ingredients premium California almonds, pure vanilla, fresh local butter, a signature blend of cocoa beans, and that all this comes together to create a very premium taste sensation.
So that really does highlight what we're seeing in premiumization that quality ingredients.
Is equal to premium, and in addition to that, we see a few other ways that this is being, promoted, in the sector and so like I just mentioned, the ingredients, but also the origin of the flavor.
So of course we've seen a lot of that with coffee also with, with chocolate with tea talking about where it comes from.
So this is the beans come from Venezuela, for the product on the left and then this is stone ground in the urn in Ireland and I actually bought this product.
It was.
Tiny little place in the middle of nowhere.
They were doing their, they were grinding everything, which is, you know, the whole bean to bar thing, and they were telling me, oh, we're the only, the only one of two places in all of Ireland that can do this.
But again, really linking this to the whole, you know, sophistication of the product, which, you know, 20 years ago, anything that was homemade might have been seen, you know, seen kind of downmarket, but this is definitely part of this whole sophistication strategy.
Part of it is through Original recipes and traditional recipes, so the product in the middle from Mexico made the traditional Mexican way, and then on the right-hand side looking at really sophisticated and refined flavor blends and you can see there are white chocolate truffles, with champagne, strawberry flavor filling, creamy white chocolate.
So again, doing this through.
Very sophisticated flavors, so this is a huge trend.
We also know that in the US market, the premium segment of the market is the one that is growing the fastest, so we're seeing a huge amount of innovation.
So just looking again exploring this whole idea of flavors a little bit more.
We see a lot of nuts being used in chocolate, so almond and hazelnuts are the most used nuts in chocolate, and they're both growing and continuing to grow quite steadily over the past 5 years.
Hazelnuts grew 18% in chocolate and almonds by 13%, and 7% of all chocolates have almonds or hazelnuts.
It's quite a lot, but we're also seeing other ingredients being used.
So you can see an example here of ancient grains.
Sugar specificity, we're seeing a lot of increase in brown sugars and, alternative sugars, things like honey and agave being promoted as, you know, some kind of alternative dish to just white crystal sugar that most people are familiar with, superfoods, different blends of nuts as to give a different taste and texture.
Sensation to the product.
Sweet and salty, still very much on trend.
Look at everything that has going on sweet and sweet sea salt and almonds, stone ground, you know, that really is communicating a lot of things.
It's 80% dark and then the product on the right also tea infused.
So again, a huge amount of flavor innovation going on.
And then again, I mentioned texture, but also we're seeing a lot more communication about texture and a lot of creativity around texture.
So about 20% of the chocolate launches that we tracked in 2016 had a texture claim.
Some of them also, I'm sure we could have found more if we had looked at the picture on the product.
You see a lot of products like being broken, you know, with little pieces of nuts flying off or, but again, just a few examples here.
You can see, you know, crunchy with pretzels.
Crunchy, spicy plantain chips in the in the chocolate, almonds, of course, it's something that's, you know, very crunchy, and then the crunchiness of black sesame seeds and spirulina.
So again, there's no one way to do this.
There are thousands of ways to do it, but again, Something that we're definitely seeing to increase not only taste, texture, but also premiumization and this whole idea of sophistication.
Indulgent flavors.
So these are three quite mainstream brands, but you can see, mint chocolate chip dessert truffles.
The sublime mint, the lint in the middle, and again that really does look like a plated dessert with the ice cream there.
And then on the right hand side this whole idea of layers creating a different type of taste sensation and a very attractive visual picture there on the front of the packet, front of the package.
So again, layers is another big trend that we see.
And premium chocolate.
What we also see, which I think is not a surprise to anybody, is that smaller players are also setting the agenda.
This is the case in a lot of categories, but also in chocolate.
So, I know there's a lot of numbers on that, on the chart on the left.
But basically this is the blue ones are the share of launches by big companies and the green bar is the share of launches by small companies and you can see that in 2012 and again this is looking at chocolate launches just by big versus small company and 41% to 42% of all the launches that we tracked in 2012 were from big companies and that had shrunk to 36% and this is not necessarily reflecting volume, but it's reflecting of basic competition on the shelf.
That these small companies are innovating, innovating, innovating.
There's very, the barrier to entry is much lower because, you know, a lot of people can sell online or in small shops or whatever.
But again, that does tell you that there's a lot of innovation on all these types of products that I'm showing you and like the one there on the right, you can see the raw health, raw fusion, artisan organic raw rose petal white almond chocolate bar.
It's a mouthful, but again, a lot going on there and you see the big Really beautiful ingredients there in the window on the package.
But small players can do a lot of these things.
So if you're a big player, you need to look and see, you know, what kind of inspiration you can get.
And if you're small, my gosh, you can do anything.
The sky is the limit.
And then if we look at again this whole idea of you know plain sophistication via artisanal and crafted.
So we looked at just the words crafted and artisanal and different words that relate to that in chocolate launches and again you can see this whole idea small companies are the green bar, blue is the big one, but you can see a lot more big companies doing more in this space and making some kind of claim about being artisan.
Or that it's, that it's crafted, it's not, you know, mass produced.
This is a small number of launches, but it's growing very fast.
I know when I go to my supermarket, I live in the Netherlands, and I'm amazed at how many small players are now in these big mainstream grocery stores, especially in the cookie aisle.
The chocolate aisle.
So a lot of challengers to some of the big players.
Of course if you are a big player, it's really difficult to know who your competitor is because instead of just being, you know, one other big company or two or three other big companies, you're now competing against 1000 small ones, which makes it a lot more challenging.
So you need to look at what they're doing and And try to figure out how you compete against that.
But again, you can see the nice example there is the right that crafted is being presented as something that's added value.
So almond butter and sea salt and Belgian dark chocolate crafted from African cocoa beans.
Again, that makes it very different to, you know, produced or, or made.
So you're going to see later some of the creations that, that have been crafted for the almond board.
OK, so encapsulating moments, so, so there's also a lot of innovation around occasions and looking at how you can position products for different day parts, different time of the week as.
So, snacking is all the rage now.
I saw a statistic last week.
I think 50% of all eating occasions in the US are now snacking.
But chocolate chocolate is also playing a bigger role in this whole snacking space.
So one thing that we can do to try to measure this is we look at words that are being used on packages.
So again you can see there on the left hand graph that we looked for the phrase on the go, and we also looked at snack or snacking in the chocolate category, and you can see in terms of an index that these are definitely Phrases that are being used more.
So that just has changed the positioning of chocolate and the, the product on the right is a nice example.
It's called snacking chocolate.
It's a new format.
So this whole idea of thins or barks, also it's a way to create a snack.
It's also, you know, kind of portion controlled and, and the format is very conducive to a, to a snack.
So.
Look out for a lot more positioning.
In terms of that.
So here is the results of a consumer survey that we did, and we have 3 countries here, and we asked consumers, when do you typically consume chocolate?
And I think it's not a big surprise that, that the majority of consumers, You eat it as an afternoon snack or an evening snack.
And again you can see the product on the right again just showing that this is called Evening Dream.
It's dark colors and it really does communicate, you know, this is something that's super indulgent and a really big treat at the end of your day.
So there's lots of different ways to to position products around new occasions, and these are kind of niche examples, but still there were ones that we found that really do.
Specify on the product.
The one on the left, it says the nutty timeout for the office, and it's an interesting choice.
It's easy to eat at your desk.
It's not messy.
You can eat it with your fingers directly out of the bag, portion control, so it does make a nice office snack.
I keep them in my drawer.
So a nice example.
And on the right hand side, this one talks about a nice, you know, something for your sweet tooth between meals, for example, in the office or on a long train ride.
So again, formats is also going to be part of the The considerations that you have to make for how do you reposition a product.
A few other examples here, a workout chocolate, high protein.
There is high protein everything now, and so you can see this is positioned as a snack, but if you're going to snack, why not, you know, include some protein to get in all your protein for the day.
The one in the middle.
This is, you know, positioned as being enjoyed for a relaxing moment on your own, and the one on the right, enjoy with your favorite program, and we know that there are a lot of people that do, you know, still have the candy bowl or, you know, put something out for sharing as.
So again, just a few ideas of, of different ways companies are positioning products around occasions.
And then again I mentioned formats.
I mentioned the thins and the bark, but we are seeing more formats, and you see the packaging will reflect some of these new formats.
But here's minis, bytes, barks, and clusters.
I know that Snickers also has a new bite.
I see it on a billboard every day when I drive home.
But again, this really does.
Kind of create new, new occasions as , and I think that really the barks and the fins are the ones that really stand out because they're newer, and you're seeing a lot of quite a lot of new products and a lot of innovation in that space as.
And then I mentioned that the packaging also changes, so we're seeing a lot of resealable packets, and again you see different countries, you see the Japanese writing there, but again, this is true everywhere as.
And what's interesting is Russell Stover, this is quite a new format for them as.
So again, looking through this whole space, that consumers are looking for, you know, permissible indulgence, something a bit healthier, and certainly this is part of portion control, as , and also, something that's easy to share in a very convenient format.
OK, so moving on to the next one.
Looking at sweeter balance.
So we're talking about an indulgent category.
So it's not something that should be so health-driven, but at the same time, consumers are looking for something that's, you know, this whole idea of permissible indulgence is really important.
So we asked, consumers, why do you eat chocolate?
So I buy chocolate because I'm looking for indulgent.
That's the majority.
But I am, they are the most influenced by sugar claims when buying chocolate, so about 10% in the US and 14% in the UK.
So even though it's not Indulgence is most important.
The sugar is an issue, you know.
So again, there's lots of different ways to address that as.
So we call this an indulgent alibi that you're looking for that, that reason that you can't eat it.
So the one on the right you can see makes a really straight claim 30% less sugar but still 100% indulgence, and also making a comparison to to another product.
But another way to do that, it might be more nuts, more fruit, more fruit and nuts.
So there are many different strategies to look at that, and I mentioned earlier that we're seeing an increase in alternative sugar.
So here's a nice chart that illustrates that.
So using 2012 as our base, looking at, and again these are alternative ingredients like.
Like honey or like agave or some type of alternative to just white sugar, and you can see on the right hand side honey is the most used alternative sugar, and you can see the example there listed the description organic raw white honey blended with dark chocolate, and it's no added sugar, so , this is definitely a trend that seems here to stay as is that consumers do have this feeling that some of these alternative sugars are a more natural alternative than just, you know, regular white sugar.
And then also trying to, to also, balance taste and health.
So again, a few more specific examples here.
You can see the one at the right, has palm and coconut sugar, also palus as a, as a super fruit ingredient.
It also has.
Lucuma, the one in the middle is sweetened with agave syrup, and the one on the right, apple juice concentrate, which of course these are all, you know, they are sugar, but again it gives a more natural appeal to the product and responds to, you know, consumer pressure looking for something that is a bit more balanced and a bit more natural.
Look at some of these other hero ingredients.
So hero ingredients we say are things like nuts and seeds and ancient grains and superfoods.
These ingredients are typically very wholesome and perceived as healthier.
So again, we look at the number of chocolate launches that are tracked and again an index with nuts and seeds.
So you can see it's gone up by 56% since 2012.
And again looking at the right hand example that almonds give you an opportunity for guilt-free chocolates.
So you can see the big long description there that says it's healthy and delicious.
Almonds are a tasty and nutritious snack high in antioxidants and packed with vitamins.
So again, also highlighting the benefits, the health benefits of almonds as the ingredient and also positioning it as a superfood.
So that's another way to do, you know, to create a product that has a more balanced appeal.
For consumers.
And then we mentioned superfoods a few times.
So again, you can see just a few that are still growing.
So Baobab is one that's kind of been bouncing around for a while, but now we're finally starting to see a bit more growth and pick up, in Baobab, and we've seen a 90% increase in and the use of baobab in chocolate products and you can see making the claim there it also contains flavonoids.
Goji again been around for a long time, but there we're also seeing increase in that and also turmeric.
That's definitely one of these new superspices.
And now this is a nice example of it also being included.
Again, that you can imagine that it gives you, it ticks the box for plain sophistication, but also superfood and something that's a bit more balanced in terms of, of health.
OK, so I'm flying along here just trying to make sure I stay within my time.
So just to highlight some of the key takeaways.
That I've gone through today.
So, premium positioning is definitely on the increase in the chocolate category.
It's also where the growth is in the US and keeping that in mind, plain sophistication is definitely going to be on the, on the increase as.
So again, the continuing of the origin of the, you know, the specification of the chocolate, but also the ingredients that are in the chocolate, but also original recipes, the very refined flavor blends.
Layers, textures, inclusions, I would probably also add to that format, that also, you know, create new eating occasions.
So this whole idea of snacking, with a focus on indulgence, but also the very convenient formats and a bit of health as , and then we're all going to be hearing a lot more about sugar in the coming period.
So chocolate is going to have a few challenges when it comes to sugar, but again, dark chocolate has been also one of the.
You know, one of the ways that that companies have addressed this as , but also looking at sweeteners.
And I mentioned a few times today the natural alternative sugars, but also balancing the sugar indulgence with the use of more like wholesome and as we call them hero ingredients.
So I know I went through that really quickly, but , I think you have a pretty good idea of where we see innovation happening in the market.
And with that, I'm gonna turn this over so you can hear more about these amazing concepts that Richard has created for the almond board.
So over to you, Richard.
Thanks, Luanne.
This is Richard Cusick.
I'm gonna go over these concepts.
The first one is, milk chocolate bark with bee pollen.
Toasted slivered almonds, dried blueberries, and black lava sea salt.
And when I started working with, this concept and all the concepts, I started to do research and when I, when I come up with ideas and concepts, I always look at each individual ingredient.
So this one, I started researching almonds and the, the one thing you find out about almonds.
Is this amazing event that happens every year.
It's the largest managed, global pollination event, and, thousands and thousands of bees are shipped and used, in California, to pollinate the almond trees.
Locally, in my shop, I, I found out through a farmer.
That he, ships all of his, bees to different, farms.
One of them is a potato farm, one's a cucumber farm, but he sends them out to, California, and I thought that was very interesting, and then he was telling me about, bee pollen.
So I got some bee pollen and I started doing research on that and, it's considered nature's most, most perfect food.
It has a lot of, benefits.
It has an awesome flavor.
So the first concept I developed was, mixing almonds, bee pollen, milk chocolate, a very premium milk chocolate, some dried fruits and black lava sea salt.
The idea with this is to put all these ingredients on top of chocolate, so they're very visual, and you get lots of layers of flavors.
They all really work together.
The toasted slivered almonds that I used, on this one give a really great crunch.
The black lava sea salt here kind of brings everything together.
The dried blueberries give a great texture, a great flavor, a great mouthfeel.
And this is kind of a, an idea that people would think is a, a, a better for you indulgent snack.
The, the chocolate's very thin, kind of feminine, and, you can eat as much as you want.
You can eat a small portion, or a whole bunch because I think it's really a great flavor.
One of the reasons that I, I, I chose the milk chocolate here too, is, you know, consumers are eating more chocolate.
I think milk chocolate is probably a preferred flavor for a lot of, people.
And I think it really made sense with the, with the, the bee pollen and the almonds.
The bee pollen almost gives like a multi-flavor, to the product, and, definite health appeal to the product.
The next one is a dark chocolate almond bark with organic puffed quinoa, dried cherries, and vintage Merlot sea salt.
If you saw Luanne's slide with, they use the word thin, which I really like as , but a bark should be to me eaten all throughout the year, just not during the holidays.
So it's a, it's a great term to use that consumers are familiar with it.
It has a kind of warm feeling to them.
With this one, I wanted to use, a texture in the chocolate, versus all of the ingredients on the last one on top of the chocolate.
So I chose this, organic puffed quinoa.
I think people are very familiar now with quinoa, , an interesting ancient grain.
In this case, the, the quinoa is puffed.
And then mixed with the chocolate's kind of the next level of, of puffed rice, you know, people associate quinoa with a, with a, with a health kind of, quotation.
In this one it's a, it's a very interesting, use of the almonds.
I chose the sliced almonds in this one, unblanched version, so that, it gives a real light texture.
We're getting a lot of texture from the quinoa, so to use the, the sliced almonds very thin, very kind of delicate, format versus another type of format, was the reason I chose that.
And again, almonds are, you know, like the number one ingredient that consumers, are expecting in chocolate to, to bring a nice flavor, , kind of a health connotation to the product.
Actually, at the end of the day, I think it brings, the product to a more healthy level, with, with chocolate as.
And then, and obviously the nutritionals on the back of a label too would, would be a lot better with the almonds versus without the almonds, for example.
And this one, we use, some dried, cherries in there from Traverse City, Michigan.
They give a nice tart, flavor, works really with the chocolate.
I use a very premium dark chocolate that kind of has like a cherry, flavor to it as.
And then, to kind of bring it all together, we use a real, interesting salt.
This one is a vintage Merlot sea salt.
We're taking, Merlot wine, putting it on the salt, letting the salt dry in the sun.
This is done in Portland, Oregon.
It's a really awesome salt.
The next one is yuzu almond caramel milk chocolate bonbon.
So I wanted to make a bonbon, in my shop, , I sell bonbons and, always working on different interesting bonbons.
So the first thing I thought about was a praline.
It's a really Great flavor to toast the almonds and sugar.
In this case, they were ground up into a powder, to make the praline or almond flavor, you know, it's bringing out the flavor of the almonds and the praline, it does a really great job of, of heightening the flavor of the almonds, and cutting through the sugar.
I wanted to use a, a yuzu in this one.
Yuzu is a very interesting flavor.
It's Japan's most prized lemon.
It's kind of next level lemon with people.
I've been using Meyer lemons and just regular California lemons are, are awesome.
So this one is, very visual as.
If you look on the outside of the bonbon, I tried to, you know, cue in the flavor that was going to be inside with the yellow.
It's got some gold flavor on there, which reminds me of the toasted almonds, and then bringing it all together with, milk chocolate is, is a great flavor.
The yuzu cuts through that flavor.
The almonds bring a nice toasted flavor to this product, and very visually appealing.
The next one is a brittle, so it's toasted almond brittle with caramelized white chocolate.
I wanted to use white chocolate in something, but it, it tends to be overly sweet.
So there, there's a great technique, to do something to kind of help with that, and that is to caramelize the white chocolate.
The way to do that is very simple.
It's just put it into a stainless steel pan, in a low temperature oven.
Lots of stirring, over a course of like 30 or 40 minutes.
The natural, sugars that are in there and, and the milk powder start to caramelize.
It changes the color of the white chocolate to a light brown.
Then the chocolate is tempered and applied to the brittle.
The brittle, this is a great thing to do with a skin on almond.
Is actually toasting the almonds in the sugar while you're making the brittle.
It makes the entire brittle have a great almond flavor to it.
And the reason I chose the whole ones here is to give a really great, layers of flavor while you're eating the brittle.
There'll be moments where it's all almonds in your mouth and you get that great caramelized, almond kind of toasted flavor.
And then at times you would get the brittle, which has a great almond flavor, a great crunch to it, and then to bring the whole thing together is, instead of using dark chocolate or milk chocolate, is to use this caramelized white chocolate.
When I'm coming up with ideas, I try to have a lot of check boxes to to check off on, and I think this is a great one where it has a lot of texture to it.
A lot of flavor, a lot of, layers of flavor, some interesting verbiage like caramelized, white chocolate, so it piques people's interest on, you know, what is that?
I may not have had that before.
So very interesting concept, very visual too.
When it's broken apart, you can see the, the, the slice, slices of big pieces of almonds on the inside.
So that's great, and there's a lot of, I was, there's a lot of other formats of almonds that are, are, I wanted to use.
We, we ended up with these four, but you know, something like almond butter is being used in a lot of different concepts that I see people working on.
It's something that, maybe we'll do next time.
So I hope you liked all the concepts and thanks a lot.
Thank you, Richard.
I can almost smell and taste those concepts.
And thank you, Luanne.
This is definitely a category where we're seeing lots of, lots of innovation.
And so with that, I'd like to open it up to questions from the audience.
And at the end of the webinar in a few moments, you'll see a survey come up on your screen.
If you have a moment, it would be great if you could, give us some of your feedback.
Over to the questions.
Thank you.
OK, so now we're going to answer some questions.
We have a few that have come in.
And Richard, let's start with talking about, like white chocolate versus dark chocolate versus milk chocolate.
Like I think we saw a lot of dark chocolate examples today, but like what about the work that you're doing?
What kind of demand are you seeing for the different, the different chocolates?
Consumers are very interested in the cacao percentage of the chocolate, even if it's a milk chocolate, understanding that the higher the cacao percentage, the less sugar that's in the chocolate.
Consumers are also interested in where the chocolate is coming from, where the bean source is, or where the chocolate might be manufactured.
OK, so the less sugar, OK, of course, like that's what we see in our own work as , that there's huge interest in innovation in dark chocolate.
So what about like, OK, so we also just saw some examples here of the different sugars like palm and agave and honey and so on.
Do you have to use more or less of any of those?
Like, are there any other considerations when you look at the different types of sugars that you use?
I think, you know, as far as the chocolate goes, the sugar is already there, so it's, it's what else is with the product.
There's a lot of interest in, other types of sugars that, that's not white sugar.
I think consumers understand that, you know, white sugar is, is highly processed and are looking for a more natural type of sugar, and different sources for sweetness.
OK, and one other question that came through about looking at your recipes which I have to say I thought looked amazing, and I would never thought about bee pollen, but that's really, really interesting.
How scalable are those recipes?
I, I, I think, you know, for small batch manufacturers, they're very scalable.
For large manufacturers, those products are available to people, or manufacturers to use.
So I think as consumers get more aware of them, it's something that a large manufacturers should be looking at.
OK, so I guess like bee pollen would not be scalable because, you know, if we want to have a new candy bar from one of the world's big companies, you would never have enough bee pollen, but are there other things that you could do to substitute that with other ingredients maybe?
Again, I think it's the, the sourcing of those ingredients that consumers are looking for, where do they come from?
How is it produced, and to try to point that out to the consumer, if there's anything special about the ingredients that you're using, you know, for sure to point them out on the packaging, or highlight them in the product itself.
OK.
Here's an interesting question about, in our opinion, our spreadable chocolate creams losing relevance.
I think, I know that I gave a presentation last Thursday actually, and we were looking at sweet spreads in general.
There's a lot of innovation and activity in, we'll just say the sweet spreads category overall.
We're seeing a lot of, OK, so of course Nutella is the market leader, but now we see dark chocolate versions, you know, dark chocolate and white chocolate swirled versions.
Speculas, like some of these other, that's a Belgian cookie, like that's another flavor that's become popular as.
So huge innovation.
I do think there's a lot of debate around maybe the sugar and the fat content of some of them, but consumers absolutely love them.
And to me, if I were marketing a product like that, I would talk about, it's a great way to get portion control, you know, a really thin spread of that across a piece of bread or something, you get a lot of eating pleasure, I guess, for not a lot of products, so.
I do think there are, there are.
Positive ways to market those.
I, I think people are very aware of, like, for example, Nutella.
So, you know, when you take a product like that, how can you upgrade it, make it different, special, add different flavors, that's very interesting.
Consumers once they're aware of a product, is to, you know, try to do a line extension somehow.
Yeah, here's another interesting question about innovation in tablets versus like chocolate bite sizes.
I think there's a lot of innovation in that.
And so we saw a couple of examples of even, you know, tablets that have different layers in them, but other things that I have seen are like big chunky thick tablets that they're made in circles.
So when you open it up and you break off a piece, it's actually a circle of chocolate instead of a square of chocolate.
There's also a brand which is, I think it's #3 in the Netherlands now.
That all the pieces are an unequal size, and they say that also symbolize, you know, the inequality in some parts of the industry.
But again, when you break it off, every piece is different, so there's definitely some innovation on that side as.
What about you?
You had, I think, some really interesting formats, and what are you seeing in your work in terms of formats?
That, that in the shop we sell the, the barks and it's a, it's a very thin, almost feminine type of, of chocolate format.
We, we sell it kind of in a clear tube and, it's, you know, for that desk diver, at work or someone at home where they can just take a small piece out, you know, instead of opening a, a wrapper and, and, and feeling they have to consume the whole.
Whole portion, they can just take, you know, a small portion, very thin, lots of layers of flavor.
I think that's very important.
And very kind of craveable snack for an occasion.
So I think those kind of, for me it's very relevant to consumers right now to have, you know, just a smaller indulgent treat.
So I think that's a very interesting format is this, and you saw in your presentation where you use the word thins, you know, it's still indulgent, but kind of a better for you type of snack with lots of layered inclusions on top, so you get a lot of different flavor, textures.
Don't you kind of feel like, I, I, if you think about what's happened to the music industry and the TV industry, that everything's exploded into 1000 little niches and there's something for everybody.
I think chocolate is definitely a category that's like that.
There's, there is one of everything.
So there's a question here that says, what are the main trends in different countries?
I think chocolate is one of those categories where the trends are maybe overall quite similar.
There's a move, and Richard, we were talking about, there's definitely a move to premiumization.
A lot of that is being, driven by dark chocolate and interest in dark chocolate.
And that's also maybe touches on the whole sugar thing, the, you know, portion control and so on, the health as.
So I do think that's a global thing as.
But then there's this also move to premiumization, huge interest in things that are like super, super, super premium, and we see that kind of in other parts of our lives as.
So to me maybe that's a challenge for some of the big manufacturers is that.
It's a category that's available everywhere, every airport, every gas station, every tiny little shop, you know, even Macy's sells chocolate on the counter.
So there is this huge move towards just every kind of innovation in chocolate.
So really the sky's the limit.
I think what's happening with me in, in, in the small town that I live in, I'm exposing consumers to very high quality chocolate, high quality innovations with chocolate, formats, flavors.
I think what people, you know, with the internet, with exposure, get more educated on different types of products, different types of, chocolates.
And I think it's driving the, the small, you know, artisan crafts person manufacturer, driving the large manufacturers to think, you know, how can I incorporate that in, in my lineup of products, that's where the innovation is, and, I think, you know, it's, it's always good for the manufacturers to, to take a look at that and see, you know, what's relevant for their, for their products.
Yeah, I definitely agree.
There's just tons of innovation.
So that kind of, that wraps up all the questions.
I hope everyone who watched today also got tons of, of inspiration from what we showed you.
It's definitely the tip of the iceberg, and what's happening in, in it.
So thanks very much for everyone's time and, and I hope you learned something.
