General Mills announces new products for 2014

Single-themed foods? That's so last year. What's coming soon to the supermarket are foods within foods.


When General Mills unveiled its new product offerings Wednesday, the big trend seemed to be consumer food items that have other foods tucked inside.

Like Betty Crocker's Fun da-middles, a baking mix with white frosting that can be baked inside a chocolate cupcake.

Or Totino's Pizza Stuffers, with the crust on the outside and gooey pizza on the inside.

Or Pillsbury Grands' frozen Biscuit Sandwiches, with eggs and sausage tucked inside a biscuit.

University of Minnesota food science and engineering professor Ted Labuza calls these "dual-texture foods," and he said they can be tricky to manufacture and preserve. But he knows the public seems to enjoy them, so they're appealing to food makers, too.

"For some reason, people like that kind of stuff - things that are soft with a filling, or crispy with a filling," Labuza said. "It's quite a trend among all companies. Even with pet food."
Golden Valley-based General Mills makes consumer foods in dozens of categories, such as yogurt, cereal, vegetables and snack bars (no pet food, though). In the coming year, General Mills plans to offer new food-inside-food offerings across many of those categories.
"We have a very robust innovation lineup for (fiscal) 2012, by our measure, very meaningfully stronger than in 2011," General Mills CEO Ken Powell told analysts Wednesday. "We'll launch nearly 70 items in U.S. retail in just the first six months, and there are more to come later in the year."

That pipeline of new products is one of the keys to General Mills' success.

"Innovation is just a core driver of topline (growth) in our business, so have a high focus on it every year," Powell said in an interview. But this year, the company thinks it has a lot of winners, and "we happen to feel particularly good about the products we have going in."
New products may be the lifeblood for companies like General Mills, but it's a tough business. Labuza noted that the vast majority of rollouts don't succeed.
"I think after two years, it's less than 10 percent," he said. Given the low success rate, "all companies are trying to get away from putting too much work into a product then having it fail."
So it's notable that General Mills is rolling out several new "platforms," or new product lines, which is more adventurous than merely adding a new flavor of yogurt or Cheerios.
One of those new platforms is Sweet Moments, a line of refrigerated brownies with a chocolate coating outside and, say, raspberry and cheesecake inside.
Another is Old El Paso Tortilla Stuffers, a tortilla filling in a microwaveable pouch, although consumers will have to provide the tortilla exterior themselves.

General Mills is carrying the hidden-in-the-middle theme internationally, too. Its global cereal partnership is rolling out Nesquik Pillows, featuring cereal on the outside with a "creamy center" on the inside. And overseas, it's introducing Haagen-Dazs Crepes, where the ice cream is tucked inside a crepe so it can be handheld.

Labuza said he sees the appeal behind these offerings: They're convenient, easy to eat and fun.

"That's usually going to make it with a consumer," he said.