Food of the ‘90s: Fast, Fun and Environment Friendly

American grocery shoppers increasingly want low prices, but what they’re getting from supermarkets and manufacturers instead is more fancy new products--designer cookies, posh pastas and pizza snacks for puppies.

“Good, low prices” are more important to shoppers than they have been for the past three years, and a lack of value is one of the top reasons that shoppers switch markets, according to a 1990 consumer survey released Monday at the Food Marketing Institute’s supermarket convention.

But industry experts also said Monday that the number of gourmet products is on the rise, while discount items are hard to find in the ranks of new products launched in 1989 and predicted for the 1990s.

“Price seems to be making a comeback in importance for selecting a supermarket,” Patrick W. Collins, president and chief executive of Ralphs Grocery Co., told retailers and manufacturers gathered in Chicago. “We see a renewed emphasis on price playing throughout several aspects of this data, and we think it’s worth your attention.”

The study also found that more shoppers than ever are looking to their newspapers for grocery specials and using coupons for savings.

In addition, for the first time since 1988, low prices tied for third place (along with a quality meat selection) when consumers listed the most important factors in choosing a market. Quality produce was first, and good variety was second.

In 1987, 93% of the consumers surveyed said low prices were important; in 1990, that figure rose to 96%. Collins acknowledged that the difference is not dramatic, but he noted that price concerns showed up repeatedly in the results.

With the average family grocery bill up 35% in the last decade--from $55 a week in 1981 to $74 a week in 1990--value is important.

“All of this could be an early signal for the industry,” he said. “It may reflect concerns about the economy, or it could simply be because of more low-cost formats available in the marketplace. But it is definitely something for us to watch.”

A look at the 12,055 new products launched in the United States in 1989--coupled with predictions for this decade--shows that food processors and grocers would do well to heed Collins’ advice.

“I haven’t noticed a lot of products being promoted for being low priced,” said Lynn Dornblaser, publisher of Gorman’s New Product News.

In a briefing on products and predictions for the 1990s, Dornblaser told convention-goers that new product trends could be capsulized in a list of 11 “f-words”--all relevant and none profane.

So what will your food be like in the 1990s? If Dornblaser’s crystal ball is correct, it will be variously fancy, fun, fast, friendly to the environment, foreign and fresh. There will be an emphasis on fitness, fiber and fat content. The famous will pitch it. And finally, she said, it will be “fractionalized,” or available in smaller sized packages.

In the fancy category, there’s been a “real explosion” of new products, Dornblaser said, but that doesn’t necessarily contradict the FMI survey’s findings that consumers are increasingly concerned about prices.

In fact, it could be proof that money definitely is an object when consumer and cash register meet.

“We guess these fancier, higher priced foods appeal to those yuppies who can’t afford some of the more expensive things they’d like--the fancy cars, big houses, deluxe vacations--and spend their money instead on small splurges,” she said.

New arrivals in the catalogue of conspicuous consumption include a cookie line made with different types of wine from Oregon Farms, Just Cookies’ confections spiked with B&B; liqueur, and the Vauchon Pick-Me-Up, a snack-sized Napoleon pastry.

Foods aimed at children are also on the rise--whether they’re peddled by a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or not. These foods, Dornblaser said, are usually fast, fun and fractional at the same time.

“One of the hottest growth categories is that of microwaveable meals for children,” she said. “The Campbell Microwave Institute says that more than 16% of all microwave oven users are children ages 4 to 9.”

All told, 53% of those who zap their food are 17 and under, in part because the microwave is safer than a stove for the young and hungry. Which brings us to the latest entries on the kiddie menu: ConAgra’s Kid Cuisine, microwave dinners that are often entirely finger food, and Tyson’s Looney Tunes Meals, hawked by the likes of Wile E. Coyote.

Children can also look forward to the first peanut butter-and-jelly-flavored yogurt, marketed under the name Kemps Yogurt for Kids, and Pelican Bay’s “I Can Bake Dirt Cake with Mud Frosting,” a chocolate cake mix that comes in its own mixing bowl (a bucket) complete with spoon for stirring (a shovel).

For those who are pudgy at heart, Dornblaser has bad news. Fiber will continue to dog our menus, even though the New England Journal of Medicine recently cast a pall over oat bran.

And saturated fat--the stuff that makes oat bran toast edible and popcorn passable--should stay under siege in the 1990s.

“The consumer has awakened to the importance of fat in the diet,” Dornblaser said, “and will simply choose less often those products that don’t deliver the lower fat benefit.”