Kids are picky eaters; that is a fact. Growing up, my parents had to force me to eat vegetables (unless it was smothered in Ranch dressing, but that’s a different story). According to the Center of Disease Control, Americans fall short in their fruit and vegetable consumption, eating approximately one serving a day when they should be eating three to six servings, depending on your age, sex and level of physical activity.
Sometimes making the healthy choice is difficult because unhealthy foods are marketed so much better. Why would kids want carrots when Doritos are fun, bold and wild! Have you ever watched the commercials during children’s programming?! It’s one junk food commercial after the other. Well, Bolthouse Farms is changing that.
Bolthouse Farms is well known in the healthy food industry. They are suppliers of pre-packaged vegetables, delicious fruit and vegetable smoothies and more. The company has been developing products that are healthy, but more fun and appealing to kids. Some of these products include pureed fruit tubes that kids can slurp up like Go-gurt and bags of baby carrots called Veggie Snackers that come with pouches of bright-colored, bold-flavored seasonings. When kids open the package and shake on the seasoning, the carrots take on similar characteristics as Doritos. “They give you that crunch and flavor,” says Jeff Dunn, CEO of Bolthouse. “You’re going to lick your fingers, and get that same sensory [experience] you get with salty snacks.”
Dunn, a former Coca-Cola executive, is using similar marketing and design tactics from the soda and snack industries to drive up the demand in the healthy snacks business. And, ladies and gentlemen, he has hit the nail on the head. When I first saw the Veggie Snackers video, my first thought was, “That looks like a Doritos commercial.”
With this new kid-centric branding, Bolthouse is setting up kid-friendly snacking stations in the produce isles of hundreds of grocery stores around the country. This section will be more eye-catching to children, and with a price point of $3.99, these multi-packs of Fruit Tubes and Veggie Snackers are competitive too.
Do you think Bolthouse Farm’s new kid-friendly marketing tactics will work? Do you think we will start to see a similar bold trend in healthy food marketing? We’d love to hear from you!
Baby Carrots ‘Extreme’ from NO6 on Vimeo.