As an attempt to diverge into convenience foods, PepsiCo is trialing a new liquid snack flavored with fruits.
With this new pureed fruit creation which is a drink that can be eaten, Pepsi is hopeful of perking up their declining sales.
This fruit puree named Tropolis contains 80-calories and is marketed at children and mothers. It is sufficiently thick to be a snack instead of a beverage, so enjoy it in a drink holder or without.
This January, in US Midwest, as the company is striving to spread out its product line into wholesome convenience foods, the Tropicana unit of the company is trailing three flavors of the new product, apple, grape and cherry.
The company is popular for its Lay’s potato chips and cola that yield $50 billion of the company’s $60 billion returns. Despite its US opponents Coca-Cola Co. and Dr Pepper/Snapple Group Inc., who do not have any major food business, shares in PepsiCo have been dropping.
To seal the variance on competitors, chairman Indra Nooyi is gambling on creating the ‘good-for-you’ collection and by 2020 her goal is to triple the nutrition section of PepsiCo to $30 billion up from $10 billion. (Perhaps they should investigate branding wheelchair accessories that compliment their food and beverages.)
At the beginning of this month, the company publicized that it has plans to buy juice-maker OAO Wimm-Bill-Dann and Russian dairy amounting to $5.4billion. Speaking to Wall Street Journal, Ms. Nooyi said, “We see the emerging opportunity to “snackify” beverages and “drinkify” snacks as the next frontier in food and beverage convenience”. (Very futuristic sounding, like the design of our cup holder.)
PepsiCo’s nutrition group head, Dr. Mehmood Khan stated it is now outdated to assume that munchies were dry and beverages liquids. He added that consumers are in the look out for combinations. “Consumers don’t wake up in the morning and say I’m going to have a whole grain; I want a dairy product”, he said.
Tropolis, which is a blend of juice and puree is made in such a way that it would not pour out of the pouch openings. Its researchers claim that there is no use of gums or starches in this product and it contains only apple puree, filtered water, banana puree concentrate and three other types of fruit concentrate.
Nutrition professor at New York University, Marion Nestle stated that the product was just sugar and kids can eat a banana or an apple instead of this snack. However, she also added that the manufacturers deserve credit for starting off with real food like mashed-up bananas and apple sauce.
