If you’ve spent anytime in the supermarket lately, you’ve likely encountered the 100-calorie-package phenomenon. It started in July of ’04 when Nabisco introduced a small line of snack foods meted out in 100 calorie packs.
The idea was to offer consumers a way to manage their portions while simultaneously boosting profit margins.
It’s brilliant from a marketing perspective: offer the consumer less product at a higher price. But it’s also a fantastic tool for the consumer: portioning out 100-calorie servings allows people to reacquaint themselves with realistic portion sizes (not to mention the fact that people’s hunger cues have been shown to respond to the size of the serving container — bigger packages cause you to naturally eat more).
It comes as no surprise, then, that these things are selling like 100-calorie hotcakes. Information Resources (IRI) data show that sales grew 82.3% to $115 million in the past year.
Given this success, more companies are jumping into the game. From the introduction of the original 4 products 2 years ago, there are now 44 100-calorie choices — including cans of Coca-Cola.
While it’s best to eat whole, unprocessed food exclusively, if you are going to indulge in processed snack foods, this is the way to do it.
[tags]business, health, nutrition, diet, marketing, food, snacks [/tags]