Slideshow: Businesspeople revolutionising the snack market
A wide range of snacks, including bars, jelly items, and crunchy formats, are being created by companies. For instance, New York-based Oddball wants to take on the 126-year-old Jell-O brand. The plant-based jelly snacks of the Oddball brand are made without gelatin, sugar, or preservatives and with a whole serving of fruit. Mango coconut, berry, and grapefruit are among the flavours.
The items, called Oddball by its inventor and CEO Sophia Cheng, “a superfruit jiggly snack,” were developed in collaboration with a Michelin-starred chef and have been making their way into specialty grocers in New York this year. Born in Singapore and raised in Hong Kong, Ms. Cheng recognised a chance to grow the $5 billion jelly business in China.
“I found it quite peculiar that Jell-O was the only jelly brand and category here when I moved to the US for college,” she remarked in an interview with Food Entrepreneur. “Jellolies are a more enjoyable way to eat fruit, and they are a major industry in Asia where fruit is so prevalent in our culture.”
Through creativity Start-ups can incorporate useful ingredients into their snacking formulas under popular snacking categories.
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During Food Business News’ “What’s next in snack innovation?” webinar, managing editor of Food Business News and Food Entrepreneur Monica Watrous stated, “Emerging brands are expanding the bounds of traditional snacking categories, and challenging mainstream companies with innovative new offerings.”
With its collection of gut-friendly cookies, Toto is introducing functional treats to the market. Sydney Webb, the company’s founder and CEO, developed the brand as a result of his battle with colon cancer and Crohn’s disease. The components in the cookies include coconut sugar and adaptogens like reishi and turkey tail that support intestinal health and immunity.
“My goal was to create a tasty and nutritious cookie,” Ms. Webb stated. “I wanted to figure out how to create things that are beneficial to taste fantastic but in a way that is genuinely healthy for the body.