Obviously private label is bigger with bigger retailers. You ve got to have a lot of stores to be able to do private label successfully. As these chains get bigger, private label could become a bigger part of it. Private label or branded, mid-sized regional or national giant, many companies across the pretzel playing field agree that a continued influx of new product introductions is the only way to get consumers to take a fresh look at a category with a fairly conservative image. New products revitalize the category, observes Thomas.
Pretzels are a mature category, so new products are even more important to it.
Unfortunately, pretzels have been a category that s been difficult to incorporate some of the new product changes found in tortilla chips or potato chips. You can certainly spray oil with the flavoring on it afterwards like the flavored pretzel pieces, but if you re trying not to add the oil and keep it a low fat snack, it s very hard to get the flavors to adhere after the baking process. Herr s has responded to the flavor challenge by using recent developments in cheese ingredient technology to launch its new cheese-flavored pretzel rod. Utz s Dempsey believes, however, that the growth from new products will likely be incremental, filling niches rather than boosting the category by any great measure. I think some of the growth in the pretzel market can come from making a healthy snack even healthier with oat bran pretzels or sesame-topped pretzels rather than using salt, but I think those are going to be niche markets, not necessarily category accelerators, he says.