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Tortilla chips and tortillas are as American as they come, even though they are, of course, of Mexican origin. Manufacturers are putting their own spin on new products to entice consumers to buy more, and also to keep the category fresh.

Companies who make dough handling equipment like dividers, depositors and rounders say their customers want equipment that provides safety and sanitation, automation and the resulting labor savings, gentler handling of dough, and the flexibility to run a mix of high-throughput, and smaller, niche lines, depending on the job.

The air around your product should be maintained just like all equipment and product itself. The air intake system should be part of your sanitary design program, evaluating the design to ensure inspection and cleaning hatches are installed at various points for proper maintenance.

While many snack categories find themselves reassessing and reformulating amidst healthy eating trends, the snack and nut mix category benefits from being seen as an intrinsically healthy choice.

So you plan on implementing lean manufacturing at your plant, and you wonder what impact it will have on your culture. It will have a huge impact. If it doesn't, you did not successfully roll out lean.

Fats, oils, starches, fiber, dough conditioners and texturizers all serve critical functional roles in snacks and baked goods, particularly maintaining the quality of the product throughout the desired shelf life. As consumers demand cleaner labels, more health-and-wellness benefits and better sustainability, product developers face a wide range of functional ingredient challenges.

Consumers are weary of words like "chlorinated," "bleached" and "aluminum" on ingredient labels. While every baker is saying "But we've used these for ages!" this reason doesn't sit well with consumer groups and buyers like Whole Foods.

During SNAXPO18, Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery sponsored the Flavor Pavilion, where flavor suppliers from across the snack industry profiled cutting-edge flavors in popular snack formats.

Hosted by the National Confectioners Association, the Sweets & Snacks Expo will take place from May 22–24 at McCormick Place in Chicago. The event welcomes more than 18,000 attendees from 90 countries and include more than 850 exhibitors.

The Essential Baking Co. also now reaches a national audience with its Take & Bake line of artisan sourdough batards and baguettes, which get a notable 190-day ambient shelf life thanks to modified-atmosphere packaging (MAP).