Dairy competes with confectionery, biscuits, savoury snacks and fruit as options for those moments we need a boost between meals.
Snacking has been in growth for a number of years now and 125 million more snacks were consumed in the last year alone. With consumers’ heightened awareness around sugar affecting products like children’s yoghurts, cheese brands have stood to benefit as a sugar-free and protein-rich alternative.
Cheestrings rebranded this year to Strings & Things and expanded its range. The brand, in position 23 of the Brand Footprint ranking, had had an increase in CRPs of 13%. New additions this year included cheeshapes featuring emojis and manufacturer Kerry Foods brought Yollies - individually-packaged yoghurt lollies positioned for lunchboxes or snacks - into the Strings & Things brand.
Mini Babybel, in position 17 of this year’s Brand Footprint, has the second highest growth in the ranking at 20%. This is driven both by more people buying it resulting in a penetration rise of 5% and people buying it more often, with frequency up 13%.
The brand is very well positioned to benefit from the growth of cheese as a whole and specifically mini portions which grew 16% over the last 12 months to be worth £136 million.
Mini Babybel’s key innovation this year was Mini Rolls, a new format devised to appeal to older children. It has been highly successful, the sixth best-selling NPD in cheese, delivering £700,000 sales in its first year, of which 8% was incremental to the lunchbox category. Mini Babybel Original remains the biggest part of the portfolio, but Mini Babybel Lighter is driving growth this year, playing into consumers’ ongoing focus on health.
In terms of distribution, being listed in the discounters has been key to the brand’s growth, which is also very successful at Tesco and had significant growth in Asda this year. Not captured in this ranking, which covers take-home grocery sales, Babybel has also now become available in the Boots meal deal in the smaller three-net format, in both light and original, a move which has proven popular. Babybel Original became the third best-selling branded chilled snack in Boots in the first 12 weeks after launch, demonstrating that the listing enabled the brand to better target adults.
Ice cream is the classic dairy snack product and although overall sales paled in comparison to an extremely good summer in 2018, many brands are still gaining share. Wall’s Magnum, in position 14, continued to perform well this year with growth of 2%. The brand successfully launched a vegan version to broaden its market appeal. It is however the mass appeal of Magnum tubs as well as the white chocolate and cookie flavour range which has driven growth this year.
Nuii was new to the market this year and launched as a handheld luxury ice cream with a unique focus on natural and worldwide flavours. Launched in February 2019, the brand has already reached a penetration of 6% and is fifth place in Kantar’s 2019 FMCG Innovation ranking.
