David Cullen, Strategic Insights & Planning, Bord Bia – Irish Food Board
Bord Bia’s Consumer Lifestyle Trends (see www.bordbiaconsumerlifestyletrends.ie) identified the influence of “Fuller Lives” on food and drink consumers. Moreover, we have seen in recent years the rise of functional foods; foods that resolve a problem or enhance our performance. It should probably not be a surprise in this context that the “shot” format has taken off in the world of performance and functional nutrition. This format is something that we expect to see percolating through to the mainstream market over time, as many trends in the performance nutrition sector have in the past.
“Shots” are quite clearly an alluring proposition; an instant fix to your needs delivered in jig-time; “elevated convenience” in the words of Mintel’s Patty Johnson. The problems that shots have been recruited to resolve are diverse, ranging from energy boosting, muscle building, detoxing and anti-oxidation. Emergent nutritional movements such as positive ageing, protein power and gut health all offer good growth prospects in terms of functional-focus in the future. As these more mainstream applications for shot format solutions emerge, we will no doubt see their proliferation across the market. Further “mainstreaming” of shots will be driven by improved distribution, visibility and format-acceptance.
In line with many other food and drink categories, increasingly the focus of these “super shots” are on natural and ever-more exotic ingredients, such a Vive’s organic antioxidant detox shot; nature’s strongest reparative antioxidant with pomegranate, grapeseed and 65 berries! While NPD continues to be strongest in this area of mystical elixirs, magical ingredients and superfoods, other more accessible ingredient subcategories also show good levels of purchase intent including coffee shots and protein shots. Despite their more mainstream and modest ingredient bases, they can offer credible functional benefits too for mass-market consumers.
So what’s holding them back? Mintel’s work in the US in the area of nutritional shots highlights the key challenge as taste when compared to other formats, so “manufacturers entering this space need to work overtime to get the taste right to drive product uptake”.
Is there something in this format for your business? Are there opportunities to exploit new functional benefits, ingredient benefits or to tap into time pressurised day-parts such as breakfast or “on the run” snacking? Why not contact your team at Bord Bia to explore potential opportunities or to find out more.
For media inquiries please contact press@bordbia.ie
References
Bord Bia. (2018). Consumer Lifestyle Trends: Fuller Lives. Available from: https://www.bordbiaconsumerlifestyletrends.ie/trends/fuller-lives/
Johnson, P. (2019) Shots elevate convenience in performance nutrition. Mintel. Accessed at https://clients.mintel.com/insight/shots-elevate-convenience-in-performance-nutrition?highlight=shots