New Sips and Snacks Target Kids

Finding healthful, convenient snacks that their kids will crave remains a priority for busy parents who eye nutritional claims and ingredient decks as they shop the supermarket aisles. “Nearly three-quarters of parents use health as a primary decision-making factor when it comes to feeding the family, with vitamins and minerals, low sugar, and natural ingredients leading sought-after product features,” notes Mintel in Feeding the Family—U.S., 2022.

Globally, children’s snacks and drinks accounted for nearly one-third (31%) of all new product launches from 2020 to 2022, reports Innova Market Insights in a special category analysis prepared for Food Technology. Bean-based snacks are exhibiting the highest growth rate in kids’ snacks internationally, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53% in the past three years, followed by corn-based snacks, with a three-year CAGR of 43% (from a low base).

However, most of the innovation, according to Innova, is occurring in the subcategory of drinkable yogurt products/fermented beverages targeted to kids, which constituted a 40% share of global new product launches in children’s “snacks and sips” in 2020–2022, followed by juices and nectars with a 17% share, and finger food/hors d’oeuvres with a 16% share. “With the plant-based trend continuing to flourish, we see that dairy alternative drinks are up-and-coming,” Innova points out.

One such product is Once Upon a Farm’s Organic Dairy-Free Smoothie brand, a refrigerated line of squeezable pouch products in five flavors: Berry Berry, Go-Go Greens, Coco for Mangoes, Strawberry Banana Swirl, and Tropical Twirl.

“Our Dairy-Free Smoothies contain pumpkin seeds for protein,” notes Cassandra Curtis, the company’s cofounder and chief innovation officer, who emphasizes the need for on-the-go, healthful snacks for growing children. “Like all our blends, they also contain no added sugar and no preservatives or artificial ingredients.”

Healthful and Flavorful

“As in other food and beverage categories, I’m seeing better-for-you and better-for-the-planet products in the kids’ snacking arena,” observes Amy Marks-McGee, founder of Trendincite. “Parents universally struggle to get their children to eat enough fruits and vegetables. Brands are creating a variety of snack applications that focus on incorporating fruits and vegetables into their formulas.”

For example, Beech-Nut Nutrition Co. this year added Dino Biscuits with Hidden Veggies to its toddler snack portfolio. This product comes in two flavors: Pumpkin & Cinnamon (made with pumpkin, carrots, cinnamon, and wheat flour) and Butternut Bliss (made with butternut squash, carrots, raisins, and wheat flour). The biscuits feature 9 grams of whole grains per serving and contain no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives. (The line also includes Dino Biscuits with Prebiotics.)

Founded by Seth Goldman and celebrity chef Spike Mendelsohn, Eat the Change launched Organic Cosmic Carrot Chews in 2022. Intended as a more healthful alternative to typical fruit snacks, the product aims to make carrots cool with colorful packaging graphics featuring a carrot rocket ship and three child-friendly flavors: Orange Mango Moonbeam, Sour Cherry Berry Blast Off, and Apple Cinnamon Asteroid. Each pouch features one serving of carrots, delivering 1,000 micrograms of vitamin A. Varying combinations of organic apple juice and other fruit juice concentrates and natural flavors differentiate the three SKUs, while organic citric acid preserves the product’s freshness.

“Getting the right texture, figuring out how to make it, and then trying to figure out flavors that would be acceptable and fun for kids” required significant research and experimentation, says Goldman. He emphasizes that the carrot chews are environmentally sustainable because not only are all the ingredients organic, but whole carrots, including misshapen ones, are used in the chews’ production, helping to reduce food waste.

Sweet Nothings is another firm that integrates nutrient-dense vegetables into its sweet-tasting offerings. The frozen Sweet Nothings Kids Squeezable Smoothies line features four flavors: Strawberry Beet, Mango Carrot, Pineapple Spinach, and Blueberry Kale. The Pineapple Spinach SKU, for example, includes the following organic ingredients: pineapple, bananas, dates, spinach, ground chia seeds, and lemon juice.

“We use whole organic versions of those fruits and veggies, not juices or concentrates,” points out Jake Kneller, Sweet Nothing’s cofounder and CEO. The product is merchandised next to frozen fruit in the freezer case. “That way,” explains Kneller, “where customers go in the store to buy frozen blueberries or frozen strawberries to make their own smoothies, right next to those products will be our Squeezable Smoothies.”

Kneller is quick to note that the Sweet Nothings Kids brand is not trying to hide its veggies content. “We want to be proud and say kids can learn to love carrots,” he says. “When kids ask their parents for our Blueberry Kale Squeezable Smoothie, that’s progress in proving that vegetables have an exciting flavor profile and are naturally delicious when prepared the right way.”

Among other vegetable-containing snack launches worldwide, the Innova report for Food Technology spotlighted Crispy Salad Healthy Chips—clean label snack chips for young kids that debuted in Indonesia in January 2023. The product SKUs include sweet potato, edamame, okra, and potato varieties.

Good-for-You Snacks

Snack foods with functional ingredients have emerged as a growing trend in the children’s food and beverage market. ChildLife Essentials, which is primarily a dietary supplement company, forayed into kids’ snacks with the rollout of the Super Child Vita-Cookies line in 2021. “The cookies are designed to be delicious and fun for kids to eat, while also being packed with nutraceutical ingredients, staying true to company origins,” says Katherine Cole, R&D manager for ChildLife Essentials.

Available in three flavors—Mini Chocolate Chunk, Blueberry Vanilla, and Cinnamon—the heart-shaped cookies include elderberry, olive powder, and acerola fruit, superfood ingredients that are well-known in the dietary supplement space, according to Cole. “Elderberry is an easily recognizable ingredient that is common in the dietary supplement industry and provides a slight herbal essence,” she says. “Acerola fruit is a superfruit that is naturally high in vitamin C. Lastly, we chose a carefully selected olive powder that is grown in Tuscany and renowned for high polyphenol content. The olive powder behaves similarly to flax in its taste and texture.”

Another company expanding the assortment of functional snacks is Brainiac Foods, which in 2020 introduced its Brain Squeezers squeezable applesauce line in three flavors: Mega Apple, Apple Strawberry, and Apple Cinnamon. Brainiac aims to bridge the nutrient gap in children’s foods once infants are weaned off breast milk or formula, explains Tina White, the company’s vice president of marketing. Although brain nutrients are a focus of infant formula brands, they traditionally have not been front and center in the development of food products for growing children, she says.

Each Brain Squeezers applesauce pouch includes 160 milligrams of omega-3 fatty acids sourced from fatty fish and tilapia, 120 mg of choline, and 25 mg of vitamin C. “People are really starting to learn about nutrition for the brain,” White says. “And I do think it’s going to be one of the next big mega-nutrition trends—feeding your whole body, including your mind.”

Texture, as well as flavor and nutrients, commands center stage in new product launches. “I’m seeing an emphasis on ‘crunch,’ in snacks,” observes trendologist Marks-McGee. In March, for instance, Dole Packaged Foods debuted Dole Good Crunch, a line of sustainably produced dehydrated pineapple and banana bites. The snacks are formulated with all-natural, non-GMO fruit and are free of artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, added sugar, and oil.

In addition, notes Marks-McGee, Calbee America’s Harvest Snaps brand added White Cheddar Baked Green Pea Snacks to its gluten-free, plant-based lineup. “Baked to crunchy perfection (this is a no fry zone!),” as the company’s news release states, the snack is made with 40% less fat than potato chips and has 5 grams of plant protein per serving.

Disrupting Brands and Categories

Since purchasing it in 1998, J.M. Smucker Co. has continued to expand the Uncrustables brand of frozen handheld snacks. Net sales exceeded $500 million for fiscal year 2022, which represented an increase of 19% from fiscal 2021, according to Mark T. Smucker, the company’s president and CEO. “We actually made over one billion sandwiches in the fiscal year, which was, of course, a record,” Smucker stated in a conference call.

Dillon Ceglio, cofounder and CEO of Chubby Snacks, acknowledges that he probably won’t make much of a dent in sales of Uncrustables—a guilty pleasure that he bought and consumed at school, having grown up with a personal trainer mom who banned snacks that she considered unhealthy. Now Ceglio is trying to make cleaner label, better-for-you frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Besides Peanut Butter & Grape Jam and Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam, the cloud-shaped snacks include SKUs featuring almond butter or sunflower seed butter and jam.

“Where I saw the most opportunity [for product differentiation] was to create a fruit-forward jam using real fruit, grapes or strawberries,” Ceglio says, noting that Medjool dates are the product’s primary sweetener. “We don’t put any preservatives in our product,” he adds. “It has a natural frozen shelf life, which is about six months.”

In the dairy case, could cottage cheese take on yogurt as a kids’ snack? Kemps, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dairy Farmers of America, is banking on it. In February 2023, the company launched Kemps Smooth Cottage Cheese for kids—single-serving four-packs in three flavors with tie-ins to Hasbro characters: Transformers Mixed Berry, PJ Masks Strawberry, and Peppa Pig Strawberry Banana.

“At Kemps, we are always looking for ways to meet consumer needs and know parents are seeking nutritious options that are kid approved,” said Nathaniel Renteria, senior brand manager for Kemps, in a statement. “This new cottage cheese has a smooth and creamy texture, with no curds, and is blended with real fruit flavors,” he added, noting that the product has almost twice as much protein per ounce as most yogurts.

One standout new product, according to Marks-McGee, is StickyLickits—edible stickers children can place on whole or sliced fruits and vegetables to make them more kid-friendly and fun. The food-based stickers, which dissolve instantly in kids’ mouths, are colored with red beet concentrate, turmeric, spirulina, red cabbage extract, and vegetable juice extract.

StickyLickits—a product sold in packs of 30 stickers—has had several character tie-ins since its launch in October 2019. In 2022, the company partnered with YouTube “kidfluencer” Ryan Kaji of Ryan’s World, creating stickers that feature the now-11-year-old boy’s animated alter ego, Superhero Red Titan, and other characters that appear on the family-owned YouTube channel.

Experts predict that unconventional mashups and quirky creations will continue to influence innovation in kids’ snacks and sips in the years ahead.