Dive Brief:
- Breakfast biscuits are booming as consumers continue to seek out better-for-you breakfast options, according to Mintel's 2016 global annual review of the biscuits, cookies, and crackers market.
- The gluten-free movement and consumers' increasing avoidance of carbohydrates, Mintel said, have not impacted biscuits, cookies, and crackers to the same extent as other categories.
- Breakfast biscuits are a popular segment because of their perceived health benefits, which are growing with the addition of protein, fruit, and vegetables, and their convenience as an on-the-go breakfast option or snack.
Dive Insight:
Major companies have released breakfast biscuit varieties, starting with Kraft Foods' belVita brand in 2011, now owned by Mondelez. Since, Kellogg's Nutri-Grain, General Mills' Nature Valley, Post's Honey Bunches of Oats, and Snyder's-Lance's Quick Starts all released breakfast biscuit lines.
Now PepsiCo has joined the group with Quaker Oats' Quaker Breakfast Flats, which were "designed to address consumer demand for convenient, nutritious snack options that help satisfy hunger," Lesley Butler, senior marketing director for Quaker Foods North America, told Food Business News.
Breakfast biscuits bring together two of the main tenets of the snack industry's growth, nutrition and convenience (as the Snack Food Association's recent rebranding emphasized). At the same time, they are positioned as a breakfast food. This makes the category a threat to other burgeoning breakfast segments like Greek yogurt and struggling segments like cereal.