When the Super Bowl comes around, the marketing of snacks goes all out. It crushes you at the convenience store, gang-tackles you at the grocery, and — considering all the broadcast ads on the day of — blitzes you at the Bowl itself.
But there’s a lesser known niche marketing game in the season of self-stuffing, and as far as I can tell, it is — appropriately enough — enlarging.
Think of it as “Munchies with a Mission.”
Exhibit A: Uglies Kettle Chips.
Now it’s not enough that these potato chips are, according to their website, “HONESTLY DELICIOUS,” “a great tastin’ snack,” and “DELICIOUS BY DESIGN.”
No, it would be old school to make flavor the sole focus.
What sets these chips apart is that they are “crafted from potatoes with slight imperfections” (hence “ugly”) — potatoes that, according to the company, would otherwise be thrown out.
This allows the manufacturers to assert they “Support Farmers,” “Reduce Food Waste,” and “Fight Hunger.” They boast “10 million pounds of potatoes saved since 2017.”
Waist expansion dressed up as waste reduction — pretty ingenious.
Meanwhile, there’s Off the Eaten Path — not my bad pun this time — a snack company specializing in “veggie crisps.”
But of course the healthy veggie angle is not enough. Instead, select products come in “a plant based commercially compostable bag.” A composted bag, of course, will “help more plants grow” and presumably more veggie crisps to be produced and consumed in the future.
Waste reduction and sustainability this time.
(By the way, the “compostable snack bag” is “derived primarily from corn and/or sugarcane.” How soon before this becomes the “edible snack bag,” with crisps secondary to container?)
Next, there’s Lesser Evil, producer of organic popcorn as well as other treats, a company claiming to offer its customers “truly better-for-you snacks made from premium organic ingredients.”
But again, healthy ingredients is just part of the picture.
According to Lesser Evil’s website, they’re also about “snacking as a vessel for mindfulness” and “on a mission to refresh the entire snack world with treats that make us feel as fantastic as they taste!”
Self-stuffing as self-care — brilliant!
Still, what to make of the mission creep in snackland?
On one hand, why not purchase a snack that’s healthier or better for the environment or more socially beneficial in some way, provided its company’s claims are shown to be legitimate?
But on the other, doesn’t it feel like overkill? Isn’t snacking, by definition, supposed to be on the lighter side? Does mission control ever step in?
Yeah, right. Fat chance.
D.G. Lott's column comes to us on the final Friday of each month.