Hybrid Synergies Pave the Whey

I steadfastly keep the kid inside of me alive and kicking—with no small measure of help from my sweetly crazed young sons—and my personal candy store is the supermarket. Any supermarket. If given the opportunity, I saunteringly wander the aisles, plucking eye-catching products here and there from the shelves, sometimes dropping them into the cart for a test taste.

And although I relish the finds in any given store—from coast to coast, urban to suburban to rural, gourmet to generic—one of my personal favorites (and I have several) is Whole Foods. My mother-in-law, herself a Whole Foodsie, is hip to this fact and gave me a gift card for the store last Christmas. How it lasted this long, I have no idea, but I finally remembered to take it along with me yesterday on a trip to my local Whole Foods and used the opportunity to indulge in some specialized purchases (they typically have a great produce selection, always interesting meats, incredible cheeses … I could go on, but I won’t…). Some items of note from yesterday’s jaunt: a pound of “direct trade” La Tortuga Honduran coffee (from Intelligentsia), Buffalo bleu cheese chicken sausage (store made; the Buffalo in the name is courtesy of hot sauce, not bison…), apple-maple chicken breakfast sausage (also store made), a 750-ml bottle of Maudite ale on lees (I couldn’t resist … it’s one of the best beers on this planet or any other) and a single-serving bottle of fortified hazelnut latté, which has 19 grams of whey protein (and vitamins C (150% DV), D (20%), B₆ (150%) and B₁₂ (150%), as well as calcium (45%), zinc (20%), magnesium (20%) and 18 amino acids; Bolthouse Farms is the manufacturer).

Although each of these purchased items is interesting from a product-development perspective (well, maybe not the beer, but it really is out of this world, and a few sips just might inspire wonders…), it’s the latté that really hit me as an interesting hybrid of forces currently driving retail and foodservice markets. Not only is the drink delicious—courtesy of the nice synergy of the roasted hazelnuts and the coffee (that somehow eludes that sometimes-negative flavored instant coffee artificial note)—but it adds healthy appeal to the trendy bottled coffee-drink market. With a lower calorie count and less sugar (apple juice is used as a sweetener, but I think they could tone it down a bit), the highlighted use of whey protein could lead the drink into diet territory—perhaps without even mentioning the word “diet” on the packaging (“low-calorie” and “low-sugar” might suffice without chasing away some potential customers…).

The market for functional beverages is poised to skyrocket. And targeted products that astutely pull the best aspects of different market drivers—a little indulgence here, a little heath there, etc.—are already paving the road to the future.