RECENT years have seen consumers watch their pennies and at the same time we’ve witnessed the rise of the ‘big night in’. One result has been the appearance of a new impulse-purchase superstar – bagged confectionery.
And that’s not just the word from manufacturers, it’s also the view of many Scottish convenience retailers. During Scottish Grocer Awards judging trips this year every finalist on the shortlist for the 2014 Confectionery Retailer of the Year Award mentioned how quickly bagged confectionery was flying off their shelves.
It’s a confectionery sub-category that now offers a wide variety of products, in packs of different styles and sizes, covering both chocolate lines and sugar confectionery.
And while the growing popularity of the big night in has certainly had a significant effect there are other areas where bagged confectionery is growing and where it has seen interesting new product development – children’s confectionery for example, traditional sweets, and value-for-money bagged confectionery at round-pound prices such as the One-Pounders range from Golden Casket.
Certainly the big confectionery players have been keen on launches and range extensions.
Cadbury, Halls and Maynards brands owner Mondelez International says the big night in remains very popular and it expects sharing bags and tablet-sized chocolate bars to be as important to the success of the chocolate category in 2014 as they were in 2013. But size isn’t the only issue, it reckons. Product innovation, including the development of new bagged confectionery lines, also encourages consumer trial and builds sales.
Confectionery bags available to retailers from Mondelez include: Cadbury Dairy Milk Buttons; Cadbury Twirl Bites; Cadbury Bitsa Wispa; Cadbury Crunchums; Cadbury Pebbles; and the sugar confectionery product Maynards Sour Patch Kids.
And the Maynards brand sees a new line added this spring, Maynards Discovery Patch Animals.
Discovery Patch Animals include fruit flavour jelly and foam sweets in animal shapes, featuring, says the firm, amazing definition, bright colours, fruity flavours and jelly and foamy textures to ‘delight the senses’. Packs feature an interactive world map with facts designed to provide family fun and spark children’s imagination.
Maynards Discovery Animals will be available in 125g packs, available in promotional £1 (RRP) price-marked packs.
Confectionery manufacturer Nestlé says IRI data shows that sharing bags are worth £322m and growing at 4.2% in the wholesale and convenience channel with its own sharing bags growing by 3.5%, with its sugar bags up 2.1% and its chocolate bags up 5.4%.
Nestlé launched a Rowntree’s Randoms Tandems sharing bag in March. The addition to its sugar confectionery range was backed by a digital media campaign through Facebook.
The big night in might still be big news but sugar confectionery manufacturer Swizzels Matlow stresses that children’s bagged confectionery and seasonal bagged confectionery are becoming increasingly popular.
It says Nielsen research shows in recent times children’s sugar confectionery has out-performed overall confectionery, growing 8.3% to reach a value of £455m.
And there’s a recognisable trend towards variety packs, now said to be worth over £27m and growing at 40% year on year. Swizzels Matlow also sees bagged gums and jellies as big sellers. Its Squashies range includes soft gum versions of stalwarts in the Swizzles portfolio such as Love Hearts, Double Lollies, Drumstick Lollies and New Refreshers. Over 50m bags of Squashies have been sold since the range was launched.
It also sees Easter, Halloween and Christmas as occasions that brands and retailers can use to highlight and increase sales of bagged sugar confectionery.