The 2019 Summer Fancy Food Show held at the Javits Center in NYC featured plenty new, innovative and fun sweets as well as the timeless classics.

We published our 2019 Top 9 Summer Fancy Food Show Trends report covering beverage, culinary, and sweet trends and now we are diving deeper into the sweet trends we encountered at the show.

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Spiced Cream

For starters we saw, as usual, a copious amount of ice cream, but this year it delved into a new realm; spiced flavors and diet driven recipes.

We saw an array of products showcasing exotic spices including Art Cream’s Saffron Honey Lemon, Adirondack Creamery’s Kulfi Pistachio Cardamom, and Malai’s Rose with Cinnamon Roasted Almonds. We have seen these spices used in adjacent categories such as baking with cookies and pastries and are fascinated by the increased used in ice cream. However, it’s no surprise as it is in line with the Symrise TrendScope Emotional Discovery Trend which highlights how the globalization of taste & flavor is becoming more mainstream due to taste explorers like Generation Z and Millennial consumers.

We saw many of these same trends come to life in the food service space during our recent ice cream trek in New York City. We searched across food service menus and found out that cinnamon is the most popular ice cream spice, occurring in 29% of all ice creams dubbed “spiced” while ginger shows up in 9% of all “spiced” ice creams. We also looked at spices in ice creams as a whole and noted that cinnamon, saffron, ginger and cardamom were among the most popular starting at 3% usage down to a 1% usage rate for cardamom across the ice cream category show us that the latter three are definitely still in the introductory stage of the flavor life cycle curve. 

Diet Name Dropping

Diet Name Dropping was another trend we spotted weaving through the sweet product offering at SFFS. What is Diet Name Dropping? It’s the trend name we gave to products calling out specific diets and dietary needs like keto, gluten free and beyond.. We saw 3PM bites from our Functional Balls and Bites trend taking on the diet space with call outs of vegan, gluten and soy free, and non GMO claims. We even saw brands like Safely Delicious that offered consumers allergy friendly (gluten, dairy, nut, soy, egg free) crunchy sweet snack bites with organic peppermint, white chocolate and minty profiles.

PART 1: Top 9 Summer Fancy Food Show Trends You Need To Know

We had the opportunity to chat with Keto Pint founder and CEO Chris Spencer to explore Diet Name Dropping in a category not entirely associated with diets, ice cream. We asked Chris his thought on all of the diet call outs at the Summer Fancy Food Show and he associated the rise in Diet Name Dropping to consumer influence. Chris mentioned how consumers are following specific dietary trends that fit their lifestyle. In regards to Keto he mentioned “consumers may not fully understand putting your body into ketosis but they understand that keto equals low sugar, so the call out of the keto diet grabs attention”. We ended our discussion on flavors within the sweet Keto world; Chris gave us the insight that many flavors in his portfolio are basic, neutral flavors that generally steer clear of fruity or other flavors associated with high sugar.

In addition, Chris mentioned that consumers are asking for layered flavors, with various inclusions or swirls that give the product a unique personality. For the future Chris believe he may expand into international flavors, is keeping the option of botanicals open and ultimately expand upon his current brown notes flavors.

Coconut as a Base

Coconut is a flavor we have covered previously. However we could not ignore it this year as we saw coconut as a base across all categories. Within sweets we saw coconut utilized as a base for Dang bars which also hold a keto claim, Hemp Raisin flavored cookies that boast a minor increase in protein from The Real Coconut. Baked Coconut Bites came in both sweet and savory flavors while in Beyond Bars; coconut was featured as a base in baked bites, including salted caramel coconut brownie bites. Additionally we saw coconut showcased in snacks like organic clusters with cranberries, cashews & almonds and chia seeds from Creative Snacks Co. Our key takeaway is that coconut is now as mainstream as other bases, has a claim to plant based protein and most importantly is in the growing stage of the flavor life cycle for bases.

We enjoyed our time at the Summer Fancy Food Show in NYC. Please feel free to reach out to us about any of our 2019 Fancy Food Show trends or our sweet specific trends to see how Symrise can help create new concept and flavor ideas inspired by our Fancy Food Show Trends within multiple categories in the sweet world.

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