Rolling Right Along : Newest Twist in Snacks Is Old Favorite, the Pretzel

The fact that Paul Newman’s face is now smiling from the front of a pretzel bag is a sign of just how far the pretzel has come.

These days, there’s dough to be made in pretzels.

Besides Newman, whose Newman’s Own company recently began marketing “organic” pretzels, a slew of marketers--from tiny start-ups to the snack food giants--have caught pretzelmania. And soft-pretzel franchises, which sell fresh-baked pretzels for about $1.50 a pop, are giving Mrs. Fields a run for consumer snack dollars at the local malls.

Even conventional hard pretzels are on a rollicking roll. Frito-Lay has seen recent sales of its Rold Gold brand leave corn chips in the snack food dust. Eagle Snacks is preparing to get into the swim--with a new line of pretzel bits shaped like seashells and sailboats. And for something special in the air, American Airlines recently dumped those tiny bags of nuts in favor of--you guessed it--tiny bags of pretzels.

Some snack mavens are even dubbing pretzels the unofficial snack food of the ‘90s. That’s because pretzels are generally low in fat (about 1 gram in 10 pretzels) and potentially high in fun. (Are you ready for the soon-to-be-sold hot caramel almond pretzels?)

“A pretzel is the only snack food that doesn’t make you feel guilty after you’ve eaten one,” said Paul Rogers, managing editor of the Chicago-based trade magazine Snack Food.

Unless, of course, you start piling on the gloppy stuff. And that’s what growing numbers of pretzel makers are doing. Hot pretzels now come with dips ranging from melted Cheddar cheese to spicy pizza sauce. And hard pretzels are being baked with ingredients ranging from honey mustard to garlic and herb bits.

“Once you start embellishing the pretzel to appeal to the American palate, you quickly move out of the healthy snack category,” said Judith Ashley, a nutrition professor at UCLA.

But while many of the newer pretzel treats aren’t especially healthy, there is one thing that--for a change--they are not: boring.

“The blandness factor has finally been overcome,” said Dennis Mitchell, a snack food consultant in Duluth, Minn. “It’s as if someone pushed all the pretzel bakers to open their eyes at the same time.”

Of course, what is actually pushing the pretzel makers is sales. Pretzel sales in the United States topped $1 billion for the first time last year, according to the Alexandria, Va.-based Snack Food Assn. And while pretzels accounted for only about 2% of all snack foods sold in 1993, the pretzel market is growing at a 25% clip.

“Any snack food company that’s not now in the pretzel business is certainly thinking about getting into it,” said James W. Shufelt, president of the Snack Food Assn.

Paul Newman might be slightly ahead of the pretzel curve.

Last year, Newman’s Own Organics was founded in Aptos, Calif., by the actor’s daughter, Nell. It is a division of the 12-year-old Newman’s Own, which has donated more than $56 million to charitable causes. The company began to test organic pretzels, which are made without preservatives and from grain free of pesticide residues. The pretzels are top sellers in West Coast health food stores, and now they’re being rolled out nationally.

“Pretzels are my dad’s favorite snack--next to popcorn,” said Nell Newman, 35, whose picture appears on the pretzel bag along with that of her 70-year-old father. “When I was a kid, pretzels were the one thing we were allowed to eat before dinner, because Dad ate them too.”

But no one sells more pretzels than Frito-Lay, whose Rold Gold brand recently bested Snyder’s of Hanover to become the nation’s top seller. In February, Rold Gold introduced a fat-free pretzel whose sales are growing at twice the pace of its other types of pretzels.

“Our biggest problem is figuring out how to make enough pretzels,” said Hal Oates, Rold Gold product manager. The company recently opened a second plant to meet consumer demand.

Relative newcomer Eagle Snacks, which has the backing of parent Anheuser-Busch, now ranks among the nation’s top five pretzel makers. Executives project that sales could double this year, in part because of newly introduced multigrain pretzel bits that have no fat.

The fastest-growing segment of the pretzel world is the soft side. Several soft-pretzel chains say their sales have doubled for each of the past two years; more than two dozen such chains have sprung up in less than five years.

SuperPretzel, the king of frozen soft pretzels, sells about 2 million soft pretzels every day, said Michael Karaban, vice president of marketing of J&J; Snack Foods Corp., the New Jersey company that makes the brand.

SuperPretzels are sold in the frozen food sections of more than 90% of the nation’s supermarkets. The company also operates stands at airports and stadiums. And some McDonald’s franchises on the East Coast recently began to sell the brand.

Then there’s Auntie Anne’s. Although it might sound like a mom-and-pop operation, the Gap, Pa.-based chain has 240 shops in 30 states--mostly inside malls--to lure impulsive shoppers. Its Southern California locations include Santa Monica Place and Brea Mall.

The chain expects to open as many as 100 new shops in the next year, said Carl Smucker, chief operating officer. Among them: a spot inside the international terminal at Los Angeles International Airport.

Of course, some passengers in the terminal may already be snacking on any of the 190,000 bags of pretzels that American Airlines now serves daily on flights, estimates Joe Crawley, an airline spokesman.

Why did American change to pretzels? Well, for one thing, pretzels are cheaper. But more important, said Crawley, customer surveys revealed that many health-conscious people prefer pretzels.

“We haven’t received a single complaint,” he said. “Although we do expect to hear from some peanut farmers.”

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The Santa Monica agency Rubin Postaer & Partners has picked up the $1-million ad account for California Pizza Kitchen. . . . The Santa Monica agency Kresser/Craig--which has recently had merger discussions with Stein, Robaire, Helm--has picked up the $3-million ad account for Burbank-based Disney Interactive. . . . The Venice office of Chiat/Day has picked up the $5-million ad business for Memorex. . . . The Venice agency Ground Zero has picked up the ad account for Futurekids, a Los Angeles firm that offers computer classes for children.

Snack Attack

Although pretzels accounted for just 2.1% of all snack foods sold last year, their overall sales grew nearly 25% in 1993--the fastest growth for any major snack food category. How product sales stack up in the nation’s ever-changing snack food market:

Snack food: 1993 market share

Candy & gum: 20.3% Cookies & crackers: 18.8 Specialty snacks *: 16.7 Snack cakes & pies: 8.4 Potato chips: 6.2 Corn & tortilla chips: 5.0 Snack nuts: 3.5 Frozen pizza: 3.3 Popcorn: 2.9 Imported snacks: 2.4 Pretzels: 2.1 Hot snacks: 2.1 Other (pork rinds, dried fruit, granola snacks, multigrain chips, etc.): 8.3 * Includes bagel chips, cheese snacks, frozen novelties, snack puddings, rice cakes, refrigerated seafoods, etc.

Source: Snack Food magazine