Brett Stern didn’t wake up one morning and decide to make a beer-flavored potato chip. But in winter 2005, while enjoying what he called a “sort of Walden Pond existence” in upstate New York after a 20-year career consulting corporate clients, Stern clicked on an episode of the Food Network’s Unwrapped and found a new problem to solve.
To Stern, that’s the name of the game. “I don’t necessarily design a product,” he says. “I’m solving a problem.” The problem of the day—and the topic of the program—was potato chips. “The guy on the show said, ‘Well, we have 12 different flavors,’” Stern recalls. “And I said to myself, ‘I bet I can think of a flavor.’” Luckily, he had a can of beer handy to help his brainstorm. “So I said to my brain, ‘Okay, Brain, think—but first, let’s take a sip of beer,’ Then Brain looked at the bottle of beer, and said,
‘Beer-flavored chips. We’ll call them Beer Chips.’” And the rest is history.
More than three years later, Stern, now based in Portland, OR, has parlayed that serendipity into a line that includes the flagship Beer Chips, as well as spicy bloody Mary Hot Potatoes chips and margarita-with-salt Chip Shots. A little sweet, a little salty and slightly spicy, the trio brings to life several grown-up trends shaping the snack scene today. “Look at snack foods that are out there,” Stern says. “Most of the packaging and flavors in a lot of snacks are definitely geared toward kids, but adults eat as much, or probably more, of them.”
The International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association, Madison, WI, notes that on any given day more Americans snack than eat breakfast. As we do, the snack industry will need more creative brains like Stern’s to keep the idea pipeline flowing.
Snaxplosion!
We’re experiencing a fundamental shift in the way we eat. Just as the ubiquitous iPod has allowed us to consume music in bits and bites, the snack has effectively obliterated the edible equivalent of the LP, the meal.
With snacks assuming a greater share of our sustenance burden, we’ve begun to expect them to deliver a greater degree of sensory stimulation—as much, in fact, as we used to get from full-fledged meals. Not surprisingly, then, the trends influencing the dining scene at large also sway the snackscape. What’s new about today’s snacks, though, is their sheer dynamism. They’re embracing flavors and seasonings with an ambition and boldness that would’ve caused the snacking public to blanch just a few years ago.
“What we’ve found is that more companies are looking to ideate around culinary inspirations and the main themes in snacking of healthful indulgence, good-for-me/good-for-the-planet, an artisan-type feel, or adventure,” says Mia Arcieri, marketing manager, FONA International Inc., Geneva, IL.
That’s sent companies to a wide range of sources for inspiration. “We research what’s going on in the market for global new-product launches,” Arcieri points out. “We research what’s on the menu—whether it’s a beverage item, an appetizer, entrée, salad or something that’s used in a vinaigrette or dessert—and we take inspiration from combinations that are out there that might be applicable to a food category we’re working on.”
Appetizers to go
That’s an MO that Danny Bruns, CRC, CCA, senior corporate chef, Kerry Ingredients & Flavors, Beloit, WI, would recognize. His advice is simple: Read the appetizer menu. “You could just paste every midscale restaurant’s appetizer menu on your test-kitchen wall, and on any given day the phone’s going to ring and the client is going to want one of those profiles from one of those restaurants in a chip or a bar or a pretzel,” he says.
Bruns considers the appetizer menu the snack designer’s farm team for ideas. “Those profiles really cross categories,” he says. “They’re the USA Today version of flavors—everybody sees them, and everybody gets them.” If you can base your concepts on these profiles, you’ve got a built-in fan club. “They play into indulgence,” he says. “They play into global exploration.”
They’re also endlessly adaptable. Buffalo wings, quesadillas and spinach-artichoke dip need only a tweak to fit the snack medium, but they can also stretch their profiles to capture adventuresome snackers’ attention. So, instead of going with a straight Buffalo-wing flavor, use the concept as a springboard for a habanero-Buffalo chip paired with a buttermilk-feta dipping sauce. “When you build off of these profiles,” Bruns says, “people recognize it. They can understand it in a snack chip.”
21st century fusion
If this mash-up between appetizers and snacks smacks of flavor “fusion,” so be it. But, as Bruns says, today’s savvier approach to snack-flavor fusion “is more rational. You’ve got to ask yourself first if the flavor will taste good with a snack, and then you’ve got to test it. You need a reason for why you put that pair together in the first place.” Not all couplings live happily ever after. “Why would you put a s’mores profile on beef jerky? It works great on cashews,” he notes, “but let’s make sure it doesn’t clash somewhere else.”
