WHO DO AMERICA'S FOOD GIANTS
FROM BURGER KING AND MCDONALD'S TO KRAFT AND PILLSBURY, CALL WHEN
THEY'RE PICKING OUT NEW ITEMS TO PUT ON MENUS AND SUPERMARKET SHELVES?
THE TREND TRACKERS. THEY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE EATING.
Every evening, Katie Wagner sits down at the dining table and
writes in her diary. But instead of reporting her thoughts about the
events of the day, the people she's met, the places she's been, she
meticulously records what she and each member of her family--her husband
Gary and their two boys, Kyle and Kaleb--have eaten at breakfast, lunch
and dinner as well as in-between snacks. "I've done it for the last four
or five years," says Wagner, a part-time social worker and waitress from
Enumclaw, Washington. "It helps me set up for the next day because I know
what we've had."
Serving her family a varied diet isn't the purpose of her writing
exercise, however. Rather, Wagner is part of a more ambitious enterprise.
Hers is just one of 13,000 families participating in two annual surveys
aimed at tracking the tastes--literally--of American consumers: NET (what
we eat at home) and CREST (what we order in restaurants). Conducted by
The NPD Group, a New York-based market research firm, the surveys provide
a banquet of data that subscribing clients, including companies from
McDonald's and Burger King to Kraft, Heinz and Nestle use to direct the
creation and marketing of food products.
Over the past decade, NPD's annual reports have had a direct impact
on what we get in grocery stores and fast food restaurants---as well as
what we don't. Vlasic, the pickle producer, jumped when the firm observed
that among Americans, the most popular way to eat pickles is in a
sandwich. Vlasic's Stackers, pickles that are sliced as thinly as
sandwich meat, soon made their appearance on supermarket shelves.
NPD's finding that Americans were struggling to find ways to get
more veggies into their diet spurred Pillsbury to introduce
"Create-A-Meal," a frozen combo of vegetables, pasta or potatoes and
sauce to which consumers need add only meat or chicken. "Create-A-Meal"
now adds $150 million a year to Pillsbury's coffers.
Prompted by NPD data on Americans' increasing fondness for grilled
food, Kraft generated new versions of its market-leading Bull's Eye
Bar-b-que Sauce, including Bull's Eye teriyaki and Cajun grilling sauces
aimed at consumers on the West: Coast where the popularity of barbecuing
was growing fastest.
And when the surveys indicated families were eating more poultry,
Burger King brought out the BK Broiler, a chicken sandwich. The chain
also nixed following Wendy's lead in introducing pita bread when NPD
discovered that pita patrons cut back on orders of French fries, a
high-profit item. And Burger King backed away from offering a lean burger
similar to McDonald's McLean (since withdrawn) when tracking showed that
families were less concerned about fat and sodium than they had been.
"Thanks in part to NPD, we didn't go down that road," crows Barry
Schwartz, director of consumer research for the chain.
It's just such information and insights that have food giants
paying NPD hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. "We get at real
behavior," says NPD Vice President Harry Balzer, who has been involved in
the surveys and their analyses since he joined the company two decades
ago. NPD started tracking restaurant orders in 1973, and in 1980 began
tracking general eating trends. "We specialize in finding out what people
are doing rather than what they say they are doing," he declares. "Often
those two things are quite different."
THE CURRENT EDITION of Eating Patterns in America, a 293-page tome
of tables and commentary put together by Balzer and based on data
collected in 1997 and 1998, documents that discrepancy. Among the
unflattering findings, drawn from more than a million bits of information
on 450,000 meals, everything from the way people prepare their eggs to
the kind of packaging each ingredient they buy comes in:
o Despite our loud concern about healthier diets, eight of the 10
most popular lunch and dinner items are the same as in 1987: pizza, ham
sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hot dogs, macaroni and
cheese, steak, baked chicken and hamburgers. (On the plus side, turkey
sandwiches and frozen entrees have replaced sandwiches made of cheese or
bologna in the top 10.)
o The number of individuals consuming low- or no-cholesterol,
low-sodium and sugar-free items continues to drop from peak levels in
1990.
o We're eating fewer vegetable side dishes, but our devotion to
desserts remains unchecked.
o Chicken nuggets fried in fat are the most popular dish at
restaurants and soda is the fastest-growing drink,
o Pop tarts are more popular than ever, appearing in 3% of all
breakfasts eaten in the U.S., up from 1% in 1990.
BALZER ISN'T SURPRISED. He finds that though a few individuals may
be quick to change their habits, as a nation we move very, slowly. "If
you bet on what is true today being true in the future, 80% of the time
you'll be right," he observes. Clients get the message. "When we work on
new product development," acknowledges Pillsbury's Linda Cullen, vice
president of consumer knowledge, "we remember not to make anything too
strange, that it's important to keep food familiar."
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