Launches

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A range of coated oven snacks from the Dutch manufacturer Royaan is shaking things up in the frozen snack foods market.

Having won Food Personality FoodTopAward in April, Royaan’s Kwekkeboom Oven range has topped things off by being awarded the Golden Wheel of Retail – the biggest prize in the Dutch retail world. Both awards are presented to the most important introductions in the Dutch food trade. Kwekkeboom Oven also received two additional prizes in the Wheel of Retail competition - the Category Wheel for the best introduction within frozen foods and the Innovation Wheel for the most exciting new product during 2014. As well as being important for Royaan, these awards are a great endorsement for Crisp Sensation, the inventor and license holder of the novel coating process used in Kwekkeboom Oven snacks.

It is highly unusual for one brand to win both of these retail awards. The holistic judging criteria make Kwekkeboom’s success particularly meaningful, as they covered actual retail sales as well as assessments by retail buyers and consumers. Of all introductions in the retail trade, food and non-food, Kwekkeboom Oven achieved the second highest turnover, and the highest for food products. Additionally, all awards nominees were rated on category value creation, category business growth and consumer acceptance by a jury of Retail Category Managers and Buyers from the Netherlands’ major retailers. Consumer research, in which consumers assessed the nominees on preference, was also taken into account. Royaan was also praised for its outstanding commercial campaign.

According to Bart Bakker, CEO of Royaan, the company’s success owes much to its partnership with Crisp Sensation, the inventor of the unique coating process used for the Kwekkeboom Oven range. He says, “Having an excellent commercial strategy and plan will only work with an excellent product. Superior product performance lies at the heart of any successful introduction, and that is exactly what Kwekkeboom Oven offers. It is clear that without the Crisp Sensation technology, this would not have been possible.”

Following a two-year development process with the Crisp Sensation specialists, Royaan introduced the Kwekkeboom Oven range to Dutch retail stores in October. The products immediately set a new impulse on the highly competitive but stagnant snack foods market. The range comprises beef croquettes, the Dutch speciality “bitterballen”, cheese dippers and chicken nuggets – the latter in pure chicken or with added Italian, saté or curry sauce fillings. Thanks to the innovative Crisp Sensation coating system, the oven snacks have an excellent crumb comparable to deep fried snacks and a core that remains juicy and tender, even hours after preparation. These superior properties allow for a premium price point and secure above-average margins for retailers.

Manufacturers across the globe who want to make use of the Crisp Sensation technology can do so under license and within a long-term partnership that also comprises expert support in product development and implementation. To give consumers an at-a-glance guarantee that they are purchasing a premium quality snack, Crisp Sensation has developed a co-branding logo for use on-pack.

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Scotland’s largest independent brewery, BrewDog has set its sights on obliterating the ‘insidious culture around lager drinking’ cultivated by decades of mass marketing by launching a beer that takes the lager style back to its roots.

Launching tomorrow, This. Is. Lager. will be a 4.7% ABV pilsner designed to offer lager drinkers a craft beer alternative to the mass-produced lagers that still dominate the UK market.

This. Is. Lager. is brewed with 100% malt and ten times the hops of most industrial lagers. To demonstrate the difference to those still unfamiliar or resistant to the craft beer revolution, BrewDog is offering free 1/3 pint tasters of This. Is. Lager. at all of its UK bars from 12 noon – 12 midnight on Wednesday 3rd September.

Craft beer is the star ascendant in the drinks market, with BrewDog named the fastest growing drinks brand in the UK within a context of declining beer sales for mainstream, mass-production breweries.

The artisan brewer is immediately making This. Is. Lager. part of its headliners range to ‘convert’ those still unfamiliar with craft beer as it plots destroying the binge drink culture that has long overshadowed the industry

James Watt, cofounder at BrewDog says: “This. Is. Lager. redefines a beer style that has for so long been defined by shallow, listless beers undeserving of the name.”

“For years, global breweries have spent millions convincing the British public that lager is a beer style best served as fizzy, tasteless liquid cardboard propped up by snappy straplines, glamorous advertising or counterfeit stories of foreign provenance. We hope to perpetuate a movement of craft breweries blazing a new trail for lager, proving it’s a misunderstood, neglected beer style.”

“Lager is often demonised or derided as the choice drink of chavs and louts, which is the result of laddish marketing that diverts attention away from taste and enjoyment and undermines the potential of lager as a creative and artisanal beer style.”

“If we can redefine lager in the UK, we will redefine our relationship with alcohol. We can actually start to reverse binge-drinking trends currently being tackled by toothless and misguided legislative proposals unlikely to ever see the light of day anyway. With the volume-driven industry leaders trying to pull the wool over drinkers’ eyes and the government trying to legislate their way out of a media-disaster cul-de-sac, it’s time we treated drinkers like adults and gave them an alternative to stack ‘em high sell ‘em cheap beers with no soul or taste.”

“Gone are the days of lager being synonymous with extra-cold taps, lads on tour, fake Aussie accents, Burberry baseball caps and pot bellies. That is not lager. This. Is. Lager.”