Snack and Bakery Top Stories

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Today’s market for better-for-you extruded snacks is skyrocketing, with products like veggie straws and other puffed/expanded products finding appeal among shoppers seeking alternatives to traditional offerings.

If you’ve ever had dim sum at a Chinese restaurant, you may have noticed a few different types of buns available for purchase, either steamed or baked.

The Private Label Manufacturers Association’s (PLMA’s) newest report, How America’s Eating Habits are Changing, focuses on millennials and their eating habits, and it found that although they purchase from many different sources, they frequently shop at supermarkets.

PLMA’s annual Private Label Trade Show will take place Nov. 13–15 in Rosemont, IL at the Rosemont Convention Center, conveniently located near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. The convention center is within walking distance and short shuttle bus rides from major hotels.

Thermal management is crucial to processing, storing and delivering several types of snacks and baked goods. The latest systems cover a wide range of functions, including chilling dough, cooling product after exiting the oven, and refrigerating or freezing finished product. Specialized cold storage facilities also are part of the mix.

For snack food and select baked goods producers today, flexibility is the most sought-after feature of form/fill/seal (FFS) packaging equipment. Manufacturers also seek modular designs that provide scalable solutions and flexible layout configurations.

New and updated equipment makes short work of slicing, cutting and portioning dough, as well as other snack and bakery essentials.

According to data from IRI, Chicago, sales of frozen pizza were up about 1.15 percent in the 52 weeks ending August 7, 2016, representing about $4.5 billion. Unit sales, though, were down about 2.14 percent. Why?

Private label has come a long way from its “generic” years. Today, focuses are on premium, national-brand-better (NBB) offerings and clean eating—snack and bakery products that are part of the better-for-you category, including those that are gluten-free.

AIB International’s catalog of Baking Process Kill Step Calculators now includes a profile for yeast-raised doughnuts.