During the last several years, owner Mondelēz has moved aggressively to broaden Oreo’s reach by developing dozens of unique and novel flavors over the years, most of which have been limited-time offerings.
These include everything from strawberry milkshake and brownie batter to birthday cake and candy corn. In August, Oreo announced its latest cookie flavors: chicken and waffles, deep fried and banana pudding.
The brand has also relied on partnerships with competitors or promotional tie-ins to develop new flavors. The snack maker partnered with Hershey on Reese’s Oreo cups and cookies, and teamed with K-Pop band BTS on a cookie inspired by the popular Korean street food hotteok.
Oreo launched in 1912 and is now the most popular cookie sold in retail locations worldwide. It’s a significant part of Mondelēz’s $38 billion in annual revenue, with Oreo sales topping $4 billion. An estimated 60 billion Oreo cookies are sold each year, a third of them in the U.S. alone, according to Mondelēz.
Mondelēz executives said in a July earnings call that the company is preparing even more new flavors and expects to bring Oreo into new categories, including away-from-home, as it looks to expand the brand even further.
Food Dive sat down with Chrissy Briganti, senior director of Oreo innovation, to talk about Mondelēz’s approach to developing new flavors of the iconic brand and how the company is ensuring the cookie continues to connect with fickle consumers.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
FOOD DIVE: How does innovation play a role in Mondelēz’s efforts to grow the Oreo brand and keep it relevant among today’s consumers?
CHRISSY BRIGANTI: We are always thinking about ways to make playful connections with our fans and to bring in new fans to the brand by the way that we interact in the world with culture. I think as part of the Oreo brand, one of the things that our fans and people in general have come to expect from us is unique, interesting, engaging and playful flavor innovation, which is really the result of our R&D team, our consumer insights team, and our innovation team really partnering together to map the evolving taste of today's consumers.
We always have a really strong understanding of what's happening, and we can react to that and basically come up with direct, authentic responses that are right on point with where our fans are in terms of their palates at any given moment to really be culturally relevant.
We are really trying to develop new products that are going to excite our fans and continue to grow their love for the brand, but also we do want to bring in new people to the Oreo brand with these new and exciting takes that we have that are very much mapped to consumers' desires in real time.
How many different flavors have been launched by the Oreo brand in recent years?
We really don't think about the numbers so much as the opportunity to create playful moments of connection with consumers. But for sure, undoubtedly, when you think about Oreo flavor innovation,these limited-edition offerings are something that is basically baked into the DNA of what the brand means to consumers. So you will see us doing several every year as a way to kind of continue this authentic conversation with our fans and bring in new fans to the Oreo franchise.
Can you discuss the three most recent Oreo flavors — Banana Pudding, Deep Fried and Chicken & Waffles — and how they came to be?
The lion's share of Oreo’s business is the core, and we really use these new additions as a way to react to consumer desires that we're picking up in the snacking category.
We've really discovered three powerful desires among snackers: this hunger for nostalgic desserts, the immersive joy of experiential eating, like state fare-types of snacks and foods, and the fascination with sweet and savory.
With this new launch of three flavors, we're really excited to kind of dig into these distinct flavor profiles.
How do you identify flavor options for the Oreo brand?
We're really tracking and mapping consumer taste, and we do that in a lot of different ways. We look at foresights in the category. We look at other areas within food, if you think about things like gastronomy and other areas that reach farther than today's snacking. We do a lot of social listening. We leverage partners to keep us informed of where trends are evolving, and we also really rigorously monitor the external environment, going well beyond cookies, well beyond packaged snacks to think about what the up-and-coming spaces are.
Then we continue to narrow it down to find the trends that have the most energy, the most momentum behind them that would be the best areas to focus. That really is how we've identified these powerful trends that we're talking about today, which is this hunger for these nostalgic desserts, this immersive kind of experiential eating, like the state fair foods, and also this fascination with these sweet and savory mashups that kind of keep your taste buds on their toes.
By understanding where this energy is, we're able to focus in on the things that we think are going to be most delightful for our fans.
