Dive Brief:
- Kraft Foods Group Inc. has modified its Philadelphia cream cheese, with the first changes to its recipe since 1982 and a newly designed package.
- Aiming to attract increasingly health-conscious shoppers, Kraft is adding more fruits and vegetables and reducing artificial flavors and colors in several cream cheese varieties.
- The cream cheeses will now be in oblong containers rather than round tubs to reduce "spin" and keep the containers in place where shoppers can clearly see the identifying labels on store shelves.
Dive Insight:
For two and a half years, Kraft scientists reviewed ingredients in all 24 cream cheese spread flavors with the goal of adding more visible pieces of fruits and vegetables to signal freshness to consumers and eliminate artificial ingredients. It succeeded in 22 spreads, which now tout "No Artificial Flavors" on their labels. Kraft put in more natural ingredients, adding 30% more blueberries to each container of that flavor, and 44% more chives and onions to that flavor. It added 12% more vegetables to its "garden vegetables" flavor because consumers didn't want too much vegetable taste there. Artificial color remains in the strawberry and salmon varieties though, and the chocolate flavors are also artificial.
The new containers contain raised lines on the lids that make them stack in a way that will keep them in place without spinning. Certainly, if you want to draw consumer attention with the words "No Artificial Flavors," you have to be sure they'll be able to read them on the package on the shelf. Here's yet another example of companies linking products to healthful attributes for consumers who want to feel better about their purchases.