Snack attack on the world

Whether you like yours sweet or salty, there is a Singapore company wanting to sell you snacks.

These munchies will be crunchy because the companies know you crave that texture. They might even be healthy because the companies also know you are looking for guilt-free treats. If you want something more sinful, there are options too.

According to data from Euromonitor, the snack market in Singapore is growing. The market for sweet biscuits, snack bars and fruit snacks is expected to be worth $231.3 million this year, up from $193.3 million in 2016.

The one for health and wellness snacks, both sweet and savoury, has also grown since 2016.

In the case of savoury snacks in this category, the numbers went from $74.1 million in 2016 to a projected $93.9 million this year. The market for sweet snacks in the health and wellness category was worth $33.6 million in 2016 and the forecast for this year is $40 million.

Even with the Covid-19 pandemic, snacks in most categories are either doing better than last year or staying the same.

More entrepreneurs here are wanting a piece of the action. It is easy to see why.

Aroma Truffle, a Singapore company that says it sells "the world's strongest truffle chips", recently made a splash in South Korea.

Its chips were featured on Korean drama Sell Your Haunted House in April. In the scene, actors opened a bag of the chips for a casual gathering. The company paid a five-figure sum for the product placement.

The vice-chairman of South Korea's largest retailer Shinsegae, Mr Jung Yong-jin, also had an Instagram post about how much he liked the chips.

Aroma Truffle co-founder Kayson Chan says: "An Instagram post from Jung Yong-jin in South Korea is akin to a tweet from Elon Musk on the global stage. This led to an explosion of Aroma Truffle in South Korea. Our truffle chips were then featured across major media publications there."

Sales went up tenfold there.

Dr Lynda Wee, adjunct associate professor of marketing at Nanyang Business School, believes the Covid-19 pandemic has driven up the demand here for snacks.

She says: "Customers buy snacks to address boredom, as a substitute for not being able to go out for meals, for entertaining small groups of visitors at home, for leisure when watching television and when working from home - the snacks help them stay awake and keep going."

Consumer behaviour, she adds, seems to be moving towards healthier choices when it comes to snacking. "Because of the lack of physical activity and restrictions in movement, people are more mindful of their intake. Indulgent snacks are kept for pampering and special occasions. And if people do eat these snacks, they do so moderately."

People here, she says, are looking for healthy, good-tasting and unique snacks which are value for money. The next big things, she predicts, will be healthy meal replacement snacks people can have instead of eating a main meal, and curated snack subscription boxes.

"Most grocery stores stock regular snacks with mass appeal, the tried-and-tested types," she says. "If customers want unique tastes, it is hard to get them. So introductory snack boxes could be one way to go."

The snack businesses profiled here have big plans.

Boxgreen, a home-grown business which started in 2014 and which offers healthy snacks, launched a range of plant-based snacks called Crunchies in April for sale in supermarkets.

DoDo Seafood Treats, known for its crab sticks and fish balls, and Crusty's, known for its fish skin snacks, are launching fried snacks using crab sticks. They hope to take these snacks to the world.

Baken is launching its bacon-centric snacks next month here and in Hong Kong, the Philippines and Australia.

Smaller players know the value of appealing to the health-conscious.

Notter puts out nut mixes, Ardens Bake sells sourdough crackers and is looking to create a gluten-free version, and The Happy Moo is targeting customers who prefer protein-rich snacks, with its beef jerky.

They all want to scale up.

Avid hiker Emily Chu, who started Hey! Chips in 2018, is doing the same. She set up the company - which sells fruit and vegetable chips, and baked nut mixes - because she could not find goodtasting, nutritional snacks to pack for hikes.

In the last six months, she has sold 50,000 bags of snacks - double the number she sold when she began building her business in earnest in 2019. Her customers are young mothers, and schools and companies sending care packages to students and employees.

Things were not this rosy when the pandemic hit last year.

She had large contracts supplying snacks to big corporate names. They asked to cancel their orders when their employees had to work from home. She went on Facebook Live to sell the stock she had, and said she felt "settled" only when she had sold half the stock.

Then she got down to working out strategies to grow the business. She had sold her wares via e-commerce sites, but decided to set up a website for the business, where customers can buy directly from her.

She says: "Even when I was building the website, in December last year, orders were rolling in. I underestimated the power of a website. E-commerce platforms are too crowded with millions of products."

During the Christmas season last year, she was swamped with orders and did not have enough stock.

Now, she is in talks with a supermarket chain to carry her snacks and will also sell them on Phoon Huat's Redman website soon.

The former branding consultant says: "We are trying to go to Malaysia. We have a partner there, but I'd like to find a distributor who can give us the volume. And then, Australia. It's where people go for adventures."

Beef jerky reinvented

THE HAPPY MOO

Before the pandemic, underwater photographer Andrew Lim travelled a lot for work. Because of his active lifestyle, he could snack with impunity.

The 29-year-old gravitated towards carb-heavy munchies such as potato chips, which he would have with milk.

Then came the travel restrictions, which kept him on terra firma.

"I snack a lot," he says. "And I thought, maybe I should snack more healthily. I crave things I can bite into, that are savoury, and remember snacking on jerky in Australia and Taiwan, and on biltong in South Africa.

"But I couldn't find good jerky in Singapore. They're commercial brands - too processed, too tough. Like eating plastic."

So in February this year, he set about making jerky for himself. He went online to figure out how to make it and tested batch after batch, using a small dehydrator he bought online.

"Friends who tried it loved it and wanted to buy it," he says. "I thought maybe I'd try selling it to more people. And to reinvent jerky."

The Happy Moo was born. His business is less than two months old, but he was sold out the first two weeks.

The jerky costs $17 for a 100g bag or $45 for three bags. Customers order online from his website, www.thehappymoo.sg.

He says it takes 230g of raw meat to produce 100g of jerky.

Right from the start, he wanted his jerky to be different from other brands.

First, the beef. He uses top round - he chose that cut of beef because it is easy to remove the fat and gristle from the meat. The beef is marinated for 12 to 15 hours, then placed on trays in the dehydrator until he gets the tender texture he is looking for.

He now has three small dehydrators and two large ones, all of which he sourced online.

Second, the taste. He wanted to put an Asian stamp on it, so he has lemon ponzu and mala seasoning powder that people sprinkle on the jerky, like they might do with shaker fries. He also has a truffle version.

Third, the packaging. His transparent bags have a sticker with the drawing of a cow on it. There is something homespun about it, different from the dark colours and "masculine" vibe of commercial brands.

He says: "It's all about branding. And I don't think jerky should just be for men. It should be acceptable to men, women and children."

Now, the dilemma. He wants to grow his business, but is hampered because as a home-based business, he cannot hire staff, cannot take out paid advertisements, and cannot distribute his products in stores and supermarkets.

If he invests money to set up a factory, stores might not want to carry the snack.

So he is thinking of doing something in between, by applying for a food shop licence from the Singapore Food Agency later this year. It will allow him to retail the jerky and hire workers.

Meanwhile, he is a one-man show. He trims the meat, marinades it, tends to the dehydrator, sources the ingredients, packs the jerky and even delivers orders to customers, using this time to get feedback.

He says: "I was using zippered bags for the shaker seasonings, but customers said it lost freshness and, sometimes, the bags burst. So I now heat-seal the packets. Some customers wanted the jerky to be less salty, so I fixed that."

His customers include expatriates and people who are looking for snacks that are free of carbs, fat and monosodium glutamate.

"I've been very pleasantly surprised and heartened that people are supporting local," he says. "People are now more accepting.

"A lot of people have never eaten jerky before. The closest would be bak kwa. Some have not had good jerky, finding it very dry and chewy. But once they try mine, they order again."

Healthy snacks in happy packaging

CRUNCHIES

Even in shouty supermarket snack aisles, where brands slug it out, the packaging for Crunchies snacks stands out, all bright colours and jaunty fonts.

This brand, which debuted in April this year, is by home-grown company Boxgreen, an online purveyor of healthy, plant-based snacks such as dried fruit, nut mixes, soya crisps, mushroom chips and the like. It also has a range of nut butters and drinks.

Boxgreen has been around since 2014 and founders Andrew Lim, 36, and Walter Oh, 34, got their start packing snacks at home, catering to people looking for healthy, guilt-free munchies.

Now, they sell their snacks in vending machines and online. Their customers include companies wanting to stock their pantries and to give snacks as gifts, and people who order snack boxes for themselves and friends.

Mr Lim says: "Many of our customers provided feedback that they wanted our snacks in bigger packs they could share with others. Our data from the last five years also shows Singaporeans love crunchy snacks, so we thought a crunchy natural range would be perfect to launch in supermarkets.

"In addition, we know consumers are becoming increasingly aware of plant-based options and the impact on the environment, and we wanted to introduce snack varieties that are not so common in the market."

There are six snacks in the current Crunchies line-up, including rice crackers, multigrain crackers, mushroom chips, biscotti, soya crisps and pretzels. Depending on the snack, the bags weigh 70g, 130g or 150g, and are priced at $7.90 or $9.90.

The bestsellers are Umami Shiitake Mushroom Chips ($9.90 for a 70g bag) and Honey Mustard Soy Crisps ($7.90 for a 130g bag). There are plans to introduce a new snack to the range later this year.

The packaging for Boxgreen and Crunchies products look different. Boxgreen's is more muted and come in smaller bags. Crunchies' snacks are packaged to stand out on supermarket shelves.

Mr Lim says: "We eat with our eyes. It was important that the packaging be colourful and eye-catching."

There were other considerations. "Making sure the snacks were plant-based was important for us," he adds. "We know there is an increasing awareness of this in Singapore. We were also conscious of the popularity of the crunchy element in snacks in this market, and decided to emphasise that."

The snacks are made and packed in Changi Prison, and the company has supervisors who oversee the process and do quality checks every day.

He adds: "With the Crunchies range and bigger demand in supermarkets, we hope to further scale our operations, creating more job and training opportunities for the ex-offenders we work with both in and out of Changi Prison Complex."

Tasty nuts worth the calories

NOTTER

The name makes this snack sound like a premium foreign import. But Notter, Swedish for nuts, is a Singapore company.

Ms Emily Tang, who is in her 40s, started it in 2019 on a small scale and launched her nut mixes in their new packaging days before Chinese New Year this year.

She is a fitness buff who watches what she eats and has 25g of nuts every day as a snack.

"Because I work out, I started eating nuts years ago," she says. "Taste is very important to me. Because of this, I like to make sure the nuts are worth the calories. So when I travelled to the United States or Canada, I would lug back a supply of nuts. The ones there are better than what we have here."

She left her job in the semi-conductor industry to raise her daughter, who is now 15.

"Do I go back to the corporate world, where the money is good? Or do I do something I love and believe in? I chose the latter, so I won't have any regrets," she says. "I wanted to be in the food industry because I'm a foodie. I live to eat, that's my motivation most of the time."

From comparing the quality of nuts here and elsewhere, she saw there was a gap in Singapore to fill, for healthy nut mixes that taste fresh.

She also started Notter with an eye on the gifting market. When travel was possible, she would buy gifts to take abroad to friends and wants Notter to be the sort of present others will want to give to friends overseas.

Each 75g bag costs $7.90. The nuts are available on her website, www.notternuts.com. There are bundle deals which cost $49 or $57. Some stores - The Straits Wine Company's shops, That Health Shop, Simply Health, KommA Cafe and Carry On Cafe - also carry her wares.

Nut mixes abound in stores, but Notter's contain unusual add-ins. The Digestive Mix, for instance, contains probiotics; the Rejuvenate one has goji berries and dark chocolate; and the Nourish Mix has ginger-infused walnuts.

Already, she has a steady pool of customers who found out about Notter through word of mouth or on social media.

The nuts are sourced, baked at low temperatures and packed in Taiwan by a friend of hers. She says: "The low temperature helps preserve the nutritional value and natural sweetness of the nuts. They spread the nuts on a tray and bake them. You can't produce too much. Then a guy with gloves does the mixing by hand, and four or five women hand-scoop the nuts into the bags, weigh, seal and stamp on the date."

She is doing this on her own with no financial backers, and says she has not added up how much she has spent.

But she adds: "Every penny counts. The margins are low."

To grow her business, she knows she will have to find investors. She is knocking on doors and hopes to talk to food distributors, and perhaps have iconic Singapore brands such as Singapore Airlines and the Raffles Hotel take an interest in her snacks.

Where does she see Notter in five years? "In stores like Harrods, Galeries Lafayette and Whole Foods," she says.

Bacon crisps, jam and more

BAKEN

When Ms Rachel Carrasco was growing up in the Philippines, she would think up what she calls "weird recipes for bacon", her favourite food.

She would candy strips of it and eat bacon with rice and brown sugar.

So when she walked into the Bacon On Bree restaurant and deli while on holiday in Cape Town, South Africa in 2017, she thought she had gone to heaven.

"It was insane," the 33-year-old says. "Everything had bacon in it. It also sold bacon mayonnaise, bacon ketchup, candied bacon. I came back with packs of candied bacon."

The Filipina, who has lived and worked here since 2012, told her friend Kelly Parreno, 34, who was also working here, about it and the two joked about starting a brand of bacon-centric snacks.

Ms Parreno used to make PBBB sandwiches - peanut butter, banana and bacon - growing up.

It has taken them three years, but their line, Baken, is due to be launched next month for sale online in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Australia. The prices have not yet been confirmed, but a 100g bag of bacon crisps is expected to cost US$12 (S$16) to US$15.

People keen on the snacks can go to www.shopbaken.com to register for more information.

The founders have four products for the launch: bacon crisps, bacon cookies with chocolate chips, bacon jam and bacon brittle.

Ms Parreno, who is now based in the Philippines, worked on the recipes from ideas the two threw up.

Ms Carrasco, who also runs a management consultancy firm, says the two most challenging products to perfect were the crisps and the brittle.

They had to stop the brittle from melting in the packaging, and get the correct texture for the crisps.

When developing the crisps in Ms Parreno's kitchen, they tried microwaving the bacon, dehydrating it and then finally settled on baking, then drying the strips.

The snacks are made in the Philippines, using pork from Canada, France and Spain. The manufacturing facility also turns the pork into bacon.

When they were drawing up their business plan, they wondered why others had not thought of making similar snacks.

Then they found out that places have different regulations for meat products and types of meat products. They are in the process of applying for the snacks to be sold in Thailand and Taiwan.

The two business partners have big plans for Baken.

Ms Carrasco says: "Within three years of launching, we hope to set up a research and development laboratory in Singapore. This is where home is. The lab will allow us to develop new products."

Eventually, if the snacks take off, they want to sell them in Britain and Europe, and to have the snacks manufactured in the places where they are sold.

She says they have spent almost a seven-figure sum to get Baken up and running, with the money coming from their savings.

The trend in snacks seems to be going in the healthy direction. Stick to one 25g serving of bacon crisps and the 130 calories in it might not be a big deal.

But finish the whole bag and it is 520 calories. Will people bite?

Ms Carrasco, who coined a term to describe the sweet-salty flavour of the snacks - swalty - says: "Bacon is such a well-loved product. A lot of people are going meatless, but if we are going to do this, we have to be bold.

"We want to be unapologetic about what the brand is."

Seeds of growth

ARDENS BAKE

The sourdough crackers Mr Cameron Arden and his wife Judy Tan (both above) make and sell have an uncanny way of disappearing. They need to keep track of the bags they fill and seal to send out to customers because, sometimes, their kids - a five-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl - help themselves.

Friends like them too and this gave the couple the boost they needed to start Ardens Bake in June last year. They had relocated to Singapore from Hong Kong in August 2019. Mr Arden, 48, runs a production company that does video and photo shoots and Ms Tan, 45, is a project manager.

He says he has always baked and cooked, and describes the crackers as seeds - flax, pumpkin, sesame and sunflower - held together with sourdough. Other ingredients include organic wheat flour and sea salt.

The Original version is $13.90 for a 120g bag and the Parmesan and Mala ones are $14.90 for a 120g bag. Customers order online from ardensbake.com. The couple also have a store on Shopify.

Their customers include diabetics, people looking for low glycemic-index snacks, and cyclists who take the crackers on rides. Some have been known to order 20 to 30 bags for the office.

The work is done in their kitchen. The dough is mixed by hand and the crackers hand-cut and baked in a home oven. They bake four to five days a week.

Right now, it is a home-based business, but they are looking to grow it. They have approached food distributors, who have given them pointers for expansion.

Mr Arden says: "We have a view to scaling up, building a more sustainable business and getting investors in."

He hopes to find a factory here which can make the crackers and knows he will have to send them in to be tested for their nutritional value.

Ms Tan says: "The health-food crowd thinks it is a tasty snack. But we want to have as big a reach as possible. More people are willing to try us. So we are looking for opportunities to build the brand."

Beyond CNY treats

DODO SEAFOOD TREATS & CRUSTY'S

DoDo Seafood Treats' fish balls, crab sticks and other products are usually found in the freezer and chiller sections of supermarkets.

Next month, a new line of crab stick crisps bearing its name and logo will be in the snack aisles at FairPrice, Sheng Siong and Prime supermarkets. They are scheduled to be available on RedMart from the middle of this month.

The 45-year-old Singapore company has bought a 51 per cent stake in Crusty's, another home-grown business.

Set up in 2016, Crusty's makes snacks such as fish skin, soya skin, potato chips and popcorn.

The new crab stick crisps, in Salted Egg and Hot & Tangy flavours, are just the start of a new line of snacks the two companies will develop. The munchies are made with surimi, the fish protein DoDo turns into crab sticks, fish balls and other products.

DoDo's business development director Ching Ting Soon, 39, says: "We were looking for innovative ways to use our food products. Fried crab sticks are popular during Chinese New Year. We manufacture crab sticks. Can we package them into a snack?"

He says the company started looking for potential partners, and the owners of both businesses began talks in the middle of last year.

Mr Ching says: "Snacks are a fast-growing category. And in the pandemic, demand has been growing."

Mr Kenny Ng, 32, who started Crusty's with two friends and is its managing director, says the research and development process for the snacks was "quite smooth". He says: "The challenge was to get the right texture, the correct crunch."

The snacks have a shelf life of 12 months, longer than the plastic tubs of crab stick snacks sold during Chinese New Year.

He adds: "We want to make this a year-round snack, not just for Chinese New Year."

Mr Ching adds that DoDo had tried frying the crab sticks, but the texture was not consistent.

"Through this collaboration, we understand the difficulty of converting our product, which has a high moisture content, into snacks," he says. "We have also been looking at other technologies. We are not limiting ourselves to frying."

Mr Ng adds: "The snack market is going in the healthy direction and we are looking at technology that can help with that. For instance, a 100 per cent baked snack. People are looking for choices. They also want to see the Healthier Choice and non-GMO labels."

The crab stick crisps, which cost $6 for an 80g bag, are made in Crusty's 3,000 sq ft facility in Admiralty.

Eventually, the two companies want to sell the snacks in the region and beyond. Mr Ng says: "We have plans in the pipeline to target the Western market. We want to show the world what a Singapore brand can do."

Source: The Straits Times