Ed Finkel

State of the Industry 2022: Tortilla chips continue to crunch

Overall category performs well, although inflation drives most of sales increase.

July 19, 2022

The tortilla chip category enjoyed a healthy boost in sales during the past year, in spite of the fact that the numbers of bags placed in shopping carts barely budged—thanks to the price increases seen throughout the grocery store and elsewhere.

State of the Industry 2022: Tortillas fulfill diversity of uses

Different eating occasions, better-for-you ingredients, greater variety of flavors among appeals.

Ed Finkel

June 16, 2022

The tortilla category largely flatlined during the past year, with some variation by type or brand of shell, as the world began to reopen after the worst of the pandemic and fewer consumers worked at home.

Automation, performance, maintenance top of mind for ingredient handling customers

Advancing technologies help streamline operations.

Ed Finkel

May 25, 2022

Snack food and wholesale bakery companies in the market for machines that help prepare, store, transport, and otherwise handle ingredients are most focused on qualities like automation, ease of maintenance, and the ability to deliver higher performance in throughput and accuracy.

Customers of belts, conveyors look for automation, cleanability, performance

Ed Finkel

March 24, 2022

Companies that make belts, conveyors, and associated equipment like motors have a wide array of customers in the snack food and wholesale bakery industries, because every food production facility relies heavily on these technologies throughout their processes.

Snack producers look for more flexible seasoning and coating systems

Ed Finkel

March 24, 2022

Companies that make seasoning and coating systems for snack and bakery applications, which mostly focus on salty snacks like chips, cheese puffs, pretzels, and popcorn, report a number of trends in requests regarding features and benefits from customers of such machines during the COVID-19 pandemic of the past couple years.

New bakery mixers offer automation, sanitation, and continuous processing

Snack and bakery companies look for automation, ease of cleaning, and more in new and improved mixers.

Ed Finkel

March 2, 2022

Mixers serve essential functions for snack and bakery companies creating their own dough. We ask a lot of this category of heavy-duty equipment, including reliability and efficiency, to maintain established product quality-control standards.

Automation, sanitation, gentler handling sought for slicing, cutting, portioning equipment

Slicing, cutting, portioning equipment amps up their features and benefits.

Ed Finkel

February 2, 2022

Higher capacities, new shapes, longer blade life, automation, flexibility, sanitary design, quick changeover, and gentler handling of fragile ingredients are among the top features and benefits that snack and bakery companies want from their slicing, cutting and portioning machinery.

Automation, cleanability top of mind for customers of laminators, sheeters

Snack and bakery businesses look for sustainability, other factors in choosing new machinery.

Ed Finkel

December 22, 2021

Automation, ease of operation, cleanability, sustainability, and flexibility are among the characteristics that snack food and wholesale bakery customers say they want to see in laminating and sheeting equipment, according to manufacturers. Many of these concerns are driven by the “great resignation” and resulting difficulties attracting and retaining workers.

Cleanability, flexibility, remote support top interests for extruder customers

Extruder customers aim to keep up with consumer trends.

Ed Finkel

November 22, 2021

Snack and bakery companies looking at new or improve extrusion equipment to create puffed and popped snacks, bakery items like nutrition bars, and other types of SKUs have features and benefits like cleanability, flexibility, and remote support high on their list of considerations, according to companies that make extrusion equipment.

Better dough mixing through customization

Add-ons for dough customization bring flexibility, energy efficiency, automation, improved quality, and more.

Ed Finkel

October 28, 2021

Industrial commercial bakeries look to dough customization machines like water chillers, water meters, ice makers, and automated dough scoring units to improve and automate the dough process, primarily during mixing.