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Cookies and cream biscuits - Food-on-the-go and future roadmap
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Saturday, 07 December, 2019, 15 : 00 PM [IST]
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Dr R Mahendran, Karthikai Monisha K P
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“Food-on-the-go” is the most recent trend, with awareness of individuals craving for tasty, healthy and hygienic packaged food products.
Consumers, especially teenagers, often seek products with a unique appearance and exciting tastes. Confectioneries, particularly biscuit and cookie industries, could satiate people's preferences. Innovations come about every day and the biscuits market paves the way for them.
The media sector has also made a significant impact in stimulating the public to buy new products. In earlier times, there was great demand for crackers and plain biscuits such as whole wheat milk biscuits and glucose biscuits. But, by the end of 2013, the sudden need for the cookie and cream biscuits aroused, as illustrated in Fig 1. Instead of sweets and chocolates, people started to gift or share cookies and biscuits, which are considered as a rich and attractive snack during festivals and occasions.
Biscuits vs cookies
Biscuit is a baked, light and thin cake with a base of butter, flour, sugar and sometimes salt. Whereas cookie is a small, flat baked food, also known as shortbread with dense ingredient-based batter and is filled with nuts, chocolate chips, resins or all of them. However, when compared to biscuits, the baking time for cookie is more due to the presence of denser ingredients. Additionally, the moist and chewy texture of cookies also differentiates it from normal crusty biscuits. Due to their fresh flavour, rich taste, and gleamy look, young people are munching more cookies, even though biscuits are sold at a cheaper rate.
According to the global biscuits market scenario, cookies market share has been increased by 8%, accounting for two-third sales in the confectionery industry, costing more than Rs 100 per kilo, while the rest of the biscuits sales which are lesser than Rs 100 per kilo fell 9%.
Cream biscuits
Cream biscuit is a confectionery product provided with cream stenciled on a biscuit or sandwiched in between two biscuits. The cream used to fill maybe of different flavours as per the consumer preference. The cream biscuits, also known as sandwich biscuits, are driving people to buy them for their sweet taste and attractive look, which mainly enchants children.
Cream biscuits segment occupies around 7% of the total biscuit market in India, yet does not meet the media investments demanding a 30% shareError: Reference source not found.
Biscuits
These cookies and cream biscuits come under the category of premium product sector. Biscuit markets have witnessed a great demand for these products. So the biscuit companies started to launch separate segments for cream and cookies. Darker chocolates, double and triple chocolate, stuffed cookies, richer cream fillings and frostings are the blooming sectors, tempting the cookie markets.
Biscuit market in India
India is the third-largest producer of biscuits, after the United States and China. A few years ago, organised companies accounted for 70% share in the biscuit market by splitting up evenly between low priced and premium biscuits, and by spreading the distribution network both in rural and urban areas. By 2017, the ratio is 60:40, with 60% of the premium and 40% of low-price biscuit markets. Some of the popular biscuit brands focus on manufacturing premium cookies in recent times.
Adding to the existing premium products like Hide and Seek and Fab, Parle launched the Milano cookies in 2006. In 2013, ITC’s Sunfeast launched a product named Dark Fantasy with a share of 25% in the biscuits market, whereas Cadbury’s Oreo had a share of 5-6% in the global market. Later many companies like the GSK and Unibic started to produce these premium products which competed in the Indian markets. In 2017, Britannia relaunched the Treat and Bourbon as the competition got intensified.
On the other side, people started to prepare cookies at home or buy fresh cookies from specialty and in-store bakeries (bakeries in supermarkets), which posted the possibility of constraining the sale growth of packaged cookies. To meet this crisis, bar cookies are sold, which are referred to as freshly baked cookies. However, there were concerns about spending money on premium products as these were considered as luxury foods in rural areas.
To increase the sales and product value in rural areas, companies have initiated to launch these premium biscuits in small packets with a minimal cost of Rs 5. With new lifestyles, consumers are more conscious about healthy diets, and hence there is a great demand for nutri-rich products. Cookies market also works on innovative research and manufacturing, such as gluten-free, fibre-rich, and transfat-free cookies. This may fascinate the buyers, especially the parents of children, for buying an energy snack.
Thus, the overall cookies and cream biscuits market which satiates the consumers by giving a colourful, nutri-rich and appetising snack is likely to dominate the food industry with an expectation that the packaged cream and cookies market will exceed with a CAGR of more than 11% by 2023.
(Dr Mahendran is associate professor & head at Department of Food Packaging and System Development and Monisha is a research student at Indian Institute of Food Processing Technology, Thanjavur. They can be contacted at mahendran@iifpt.edu.in)
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