Consumer trends are evolving day by day, and recently there have been sweeping changes in people’s habits.
Food is no exception to these changes: nowadays, we have less time to cook and we’ve lost a lot of the culinary skills our parents and grandparents had. This has impacted greatly on what food we consume and how we prepare it.
What’s more, today’s increased nutritional awareness has led to people eating more mini-meals evenly-spaced throughout the day, instead of the classic ‘three square meals a day’. Our ‘to go’ lifestyle is leading us to the 21st century concept of ‘snackification’.
What’s caused the boom in snacking or ‘snackification’?
The idea of snacks fits perfectly into this new lifestyle. The greater the need for snacks, the more products are produced for ‘to go’ consumption. This snacks must fulfil three key characteristics: speed, comfort and health.
Those who buy snacks are usually active, urban people, looking for nutritious, natural, healthy foods to consume for themselves or with the family, at any place and time of day – and who want their snacks to be tasty. This last requirement is even more important when it comes to kids, the most demanding consumers of all!
To be classified as healthy, snacks need to deliver both the essential nutrients as well as a low caloric intake.
In addition, it’s getting more and more vital to make snacks look good on the eye, preferably packaged in individual portions to be consumed in one go.
Innovation in snacks
‘Snackification’ is here to stay and this has inevitably given rise to new food products in recent years, and the corresponding changes in packaging, portions, flavours, etc. This is the main reason why the aperitifs and snacks sector is the most innovative in the whole food market.
Aceitunas Torrent, always been keen to innovate, has monitored these new trends in consumer habits closely and has got aboard the ‘snackification’ train with its new ‘Oliva Clan’ product range. Specially created for the youngest members of the family, these safe, easy to handle individual portions of pitted olives are a delicious, healthy snack for kids.