Tuesday 31st August:
Top of the pops
Pret co-founder, Julian Metcalfe, loves pioneering delicious, healthy food ideas. And his latest brainwave is Skinny Topcorn. This exciting, new product is light and fluffy as popcorn should be (and apparently making it is an art form), has less than half the fat of a bag of crisps, and one bag provides a substantial accompaniment to lunch, or as an afternoon snack. Skinny Topcorn comes in four different flavours – sea salt, sweet and salt, chocolate trickle and wasabi.
(Thanks to Colin for the slimming advice!)
Via. http://www.hisandherkitchen.co.uk/?p=645
Tagged with: Food and drink, Healthy, Snack
Friday 6th August:
Barcodes as media channel
Food52 is a website ‘where kitchens meet’, and it’s come up with fab idea of using barcodes to connect you with their recipes database. With the ‘stickybits’ app, you can browse the recipes wherever you happen to be. The site has linked hundreds of their community’s recipes to the bar codes on ingredients across the country.
The app will now allow you to scan Domino’s light brown sugar and pull up a recipe for Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies, or for Blueberry Almond Breakfast Polenta using Organic Valley Sour Cream. Food52 is also encouraging users to attach their own recipes.
This is one more example of how actual products (or their barcode) can serve as a media channel, linking directly to related content and helping build their brands and expand their services.
Via. http://www.psfk.com/2010/07/barcodes-as-media-channel-food52-recipes-on-stickybits.html
Tagged with: Food and drink, Mobile
Thursday 5th August:
One coffee, one community
The One Village coffee brand has managed to package the essence of ‘a village’ and turn it into a customer experience. The eye-catching packs provide multiple touch-points for customers who want to learn more about the company and get more involved.
Village Coffee uses the world’s highest quality coffee beans, expertly roasted and diligently brewed to create a variety of gourmet espressos and coffee blends.
But Village Coffee is just as much about community as it is about coffee. The inspiration for the name was, in part, the village square that used to be the central gathering place in most small towns across America. And while few towns still have lively village squares, Village Coffee shops are filling the void, providing a warm friendly, gathering place where people can enjoy a warm welcome, hot drinks, and pleasant company.
Via. http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2010/6/23/one-village-coffee.html
Tagged with: Coffee, Community, Food and drink, Retail
Tuesday 3rd August:
Ode to awesome
Heinz is appealing to poetry-loving ketchup eaters to take part in its Ode to Awesome competition. The brand is using its Facebook page to encourage poetic individuals to participate, which will be running online from July 12 to August 1. The task? Compose a short poem by dragging and dropping words (minimum 7 and maximum 15) from the list. The finished work should contain three specific words (Heinz Ketchup and Chili’s), which are already glued to the virtual card, and submissions can use rhymes or come as a blank verse—the only thing important here is that they should create something truly inspirational.
Participants will get the chance to win $30 gift cards along with two grand prizes of $500 cards and a year’s supply of Heinz ketchup.
http://www.facebook.com/HeinzKetchup?v=app_114549775252744
Tagged with: Co-creation, Food and drink
Monday 19th July:
Fancy a snog?
Hot on the heels of smoothies and juice bars, the latest US craze to hit our shores is frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt is a healthy alternative to ice cream and has been popular in the US for quite some time. Though an American concept – the US frozen yogurt market is worth a whopping $8.1b (£4.9b) – SNOG uses organic British ingredients and sweetens its products with agave nectar rather than sugar, appealing to both provenance- and health-conscious consumers. (Thanks to Mr Colin Burns for this spot.)
As well as a memorable name, (‘Snog’ comes from ‘snow’ and ‘yogurt’), this fun-loving copy-led brand uses bright pop colours and an edgy typographic style – perfect for a young, bold, urban British audience.
Via. http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2009/08/28/329505/is-frozen-yogurt-the-new-ice-cream.htm
Tagged with: Food and drink, Healthy, Naming, Retail
Thursday 15th July:
Absolutly local
Local neighbourhoods are the inspiration for the latest addition to the Absolut vodka City range – Brooklyn, which has a red apple flavour with a hint of ginger.
Film director Spike Lee helped design the bottle, which depicts the story of his childhood home. It features the number 165 on the front door in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. The design also draws on ‘stoop life’ – the steps in front of houses where the community comes together.
Via. https://www.lsnglobal.com/seed/view/2212
Tagged with: Alcohol, Community, Food and drink, Local, Spirits
Wednesday 14th July:
Turning water into wine
Spike Your Juice gives people a buzz to call their own. Getting started as a fermenting master requires a Spike Your Juice kit, 72 ounces of juice, and only 48 hours of time. People add a magical powder to any juice (pomegranate or cranberry are recommended), then let it sit in the fridge to brew. As the juice ferments, the sugar content drops and the alcohol-per-volume soars as high as 14%. The result is a unique fizzy cocktail that’s enjoyable for several weeks.
People not only want an array of flavors to pick from, they want to be able to create their own beverages from (almost) scratch. Brewing beer, making yogurt, cultivating kimchi … It’s all in a day’s kitchen work for today’s DIYers. As long as personalisation continues to rank high with people, many will be curious enough to home-brew their alcohol.
Tagged with: Alcohol, DIY, Food and drink, Personalisation
Monday 12th July:
From experience to experiments
The Chin Chin Laboratorists – an ice-cream parlour and confectionery shop – is the brainchild of Ahrash Akbari-Kalhur and his wife Nyisha Weber who took inspiration from top chefs, Ferran Adrià and Heston Blumenthal, to do similar things at an affordable level. (Cheers, Laura)
So where a normal ice-cream parlour would have a freezer, instead there is a 180-litre tank of nitrogen, complete with pressure gauge. The liquid nitrogen is hosed into a metal jug before mixing in an egg custard ice-cream mix. Which like magic in seconds becomes ice cream. The results are better ice-cream because when you freeze the mixture instantly, you avoid ice crystals so it is a smoother, denser finish on the tongue.
Chin Chin Laboratorists may be unique in Europe if not the world, but it is also part of a wider trend in Britain. Here ice-cream has long been the preserve of children, but a series of entrepreneurial outlets like Gelupo and Laverstoke Farm (at Selfridges) are attempting to make it more of an adult indulgence, as well as introducing new variations, such as the ice-cream sandwich, which they hope will capture popular imagination in the same way as cupcakes have.
http://www.chinchinlabs.com
http://www.gelupo.com
http://www.laverstokepark.co.uk
Via. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/aac450ce-8560-11df-aa2e-00144feabdc0.html
Tagged with: Food and drink, Innovation, Personalisation, Retail
Friday 9th July:
Cooled, not watered, down
What’s cooler on a hot day than an iced coffee? Well, there’s iced coffee and there’s iced coffee. Cool Beans help you make the Porsche of the iced coffee world. They’re ice cubes in the shape of coffee beans, and made from coffee rather than water. As the Cool Beans melt, the coffee doesn’t get watered down. Such a simple, and tasty, idea.
Via. http://www.swiss-miss.com/2010/06/cool-beans%E2%84%A2.html
Tagged with: Food and drink, Innovation
Thursday 8th July:
Mountain You
Green label art is Mountain Dew’s limited edition range that encourages individual expression. The latest in the series comes from Mountain Dew skateboarder Paul Rodriguez who has inspired 35 skate shops across the US to design a can for Mountain Dew. Now it’s the people’s turn to help decide which can hits stores nationwide. The 35 shops have been divided into seven different regions. The shop with the most votes in each region will advance to the final round of seven cans. Now people can vote which can from each region deserves to get one step closer to national distribution.
