9/28/2007 | Tart tastes top trend list in frozen desserts

Vanilla and chocolate ice cream make up the bulk of U.S. ice cream sales, but fun flavors, off-the-wall creations, diet-favorable flavors and super-premium products are keeping the $21 billion frozen dessert category interesting for consumers.

From Ben & Jerry’s never-ending stream of new and phonetically fun flavors to Maggie Moo’s Ice Cream Cupcakes, to the reemergence of tart frozen yogurt in major coastal markets, frozen dessert makers are tickling taste buds with blasts from the past mixed with the totally trendy.

“Nobody’s standing still, I can tell you that,” said The Kappus Company’s Mike Marcis. The company is a Cleveland-based reseller of Taylor frozen dessert machines. “Gelato has been the big thrust of much of our business for some years, but now we’re seeing a lot of potential in other areas.”

Particularly in the area of tart frozen yogurt, a flavor familiar to the 1970s, yet one that nearly disappeared when sweetened frozen yogurt caught on a decade later.

True yogurt is tart due to the combination of bacteria and mild heat used to coagulate its milk proteins. The slightly acidic taste had to be minimized, however, to make it the sweet-treat hit it became during the Regan administration. Time and market saturation convinced most customers that sweet yogurt was it.

When North America Pizza & Ice Cream Show chairwoman Ann Reichle tasted frozen tart yogurt at a trade show this year, the flavor pulled her back to her childhood.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is what it tasted like when I was kid,’” Reichle said. “But as an adult, it has a different effect on me—that it wasn’t sweet is what got my attention. I was hooked, and I kept going back to that booth to get more.”

Marcis summed up the frozen yogurt scene as a “smokin’-hot trend in my business. As you’d expect, it’s really taking hold in Los Angeles and New York , where a lot of food trends get their start. But it’s spreading like wildfire.”

Unlike the rainbow of colors and flavors found in frozen yogurt, most tart yogurt centers on a plain vanilla flavor. The fun starts, however, with toppings choices. Thirty-one-unit Pinkberry, a tart-yogurt chain based in Los Angeles , offers 18 different toppings including fresh kiwi, banana and strawberry, in addition to dry toppings like Fruity Pebbles, Cap’n Crunch and granola cereals. As an acknowledgement to the chain’s Korean roots, it offers a second yogurt flavor: green tea.

Marcis said the Kappus booth at NAPICS in February and the Taylor booth at the National Restaurant Hotel & Motel Show in Chicago in May were swamped with people wanting to try the product. Staffers served up the yogurt in soft-serve swirls and allowed visitors to add their own toppings fed through clear, gravity-fed dispensers.

“I was there multiple times, so I know he’s telling the truth,” Reichle said, laughing. “The flavor and texture are right for this market. You see so many sour candies out now that kids love, too, so I’m sure they’re going to like this.”

According to a September article in Nation’s Restaurant News, prices for tart yogurt range between $2.50 and $9.50 depending on the size of the serving and the number of toppings.

Malcom Stogo, a West Orange , N.J., ice cream consultant and regular NAPICS speaker, doesn’t believe the tart yogurt trend will last long.

“I think it’s a fad, but not because the tart yogurt’s bad, it’s because the product quality I’m seeing right now is bad,” said Stogo, who will lead a pre-NAPICS workshop for ice cream operators. “People are using powdered mixes, which I don’t think are as good as liquid mixes. It could be a great trend, but I think it’ll fall apart in about a year.”

Marcis, however, sees great promise for frozen tart yogurt since the equipment required to make it is the same as soft-serve ice cream. He also said that the marketing of gelato has taught distributors like him a lot about merchandising tart yogurt.

“We’re talking a lot to operators about how to make this product look like a work of art,” he said. “No doubt, gelato is still big and we’re not downplaying it by any means, but we really believe we’re staying ahead of the curve here with this product.”

Taking the cake … and shrinking it

In simultaneous nods toward food portability and the cupcake trend, 170-unit Maggie Moo’s, based in Baltimore , launched ice cream cup cakes more than a year ago. The first flavor out of the stall was a Dark Chocolate cupcake blending rich chocolate ice cream and a marshmallow center, chocolate cake and a chocolate ganache shell (envision a frozen Hostess Cupcake). The decadent delight won an award from the National Ice Cream Retailers Association.

Other new cupcake flavors include Better Batter Cookie Dreams, Cotton Candy Carnival and Chocolate Heaven. Store operators also encourage customers to suggest custom creations as well.

Ice cream makers—particularly large-scale manufacturers—report getting mixed messages from consumers who request lower-fat, lower-sugar and lower-carbohydrate options. While they claim a desire to eat healthfully, their wallets speak another language.

"Consumers have a love-hate relationship with ice cream," Kim Goeller-Johnson, media relations manager for Dreyer's, told Dairy Field magazine in a recent article. "They want to eat healthier, but are dissatisfied with less-flavorful light ice creams."

Sales of so-called “better for you” ice cream options remain steady in supermarkets, commanding as much as 30 percent of freezer shelf space. But when customers want the real thing, it appears they go to ice cream shops for their fixes.

“In the end, we sell them what they want,” said Dan Young, owner of Young’s Jersey Dairy in Yellow Springs , Ohio . “You do your best to give them options, but I think they come to places like ours to get real ice cream. In the minds of most people, this is still a treat.”

Stogo said he’s seeing a lot of experimentation at the independent operator level with Asian flavors and ice cream. The results are good, he added, and he thinks the 20 to 40-year-old customer demographic is turned on.

“I see a lot of experimentation with mango, pineapple, coconut, melons and peppers,” he said. “I’m also seeing a number of tea flavors coming out. … I see the young adults wanting these flavors.”