
BUTTER & SPREADS
Renaissance Days
by Julie Cook Ramirez
Contributing Editor
Contributing Editor
A renewed interest in home cooking leads to a revival of the butter category.
Deluged with news stories
about the dangers of trans fats, American consumers have wandered the
grocery aisles, dazed and confused about which products are safe to buy.
Arriving at the butter and spreads aisle, they might
very well be puzzled by the vast array of choices before them. Seeing that
a number of spreads boldly tout their trans-fat-free status right on the
package, they could very easily assume that butter contains trans fats and,
thus, should not be eaten. They would be wrong, of course, as butter is
naturally free of trans fat.
Ignorant of that fact, however, they could make the
wrong choice, taking home a butter alternative when they could be enjoying
the real thing without suffering the negative health consequences of trans
fats.
“It’s been problematic because the average
consumer has a hard time distinguishing between artificial versus animal
trans fats,” says Jerry Kozak, executive director of the American
Butter Institute (ABI), Arlington, Va. “However, there are changes in
that occurring, resulting in an improved perception of butter and larger
volume sales of butter.”
According to Chicago-based Information Resources Inc.
(IRI), butter sales across supermarkets, drug stores and mass
merchandisers, excluding Wal-Mart, rose 0.7 percent in units during the
52-week period ending June 17, 2007, while falling 5.6 percent in dollars,
a reflection of the leveling off of butterfat prices, which were sky-high
just two years ago. At the same time, sales of margarines, spreads and
butter blends have fallen both in dollars and units — down 2.3
percent and 7.3 percent, respectively.
Inspired by such high-profile celebrity cooks as
Rachael Ray and Giada De Laurentiis, consumers are embracing butter again,
Kozak says. Seeking to take advantage of that trend, ABI has been working
in conjunction with Rosemont, Ill.-based Dairy Management Inc. (DMI) to
promote butter as the product of choice for chefs and bakers. Over the past
several years, Kozak says, DMI has anteed up around $2 million for the
butter promotion campaign, which is administered by the Wisconsin Milk
Marketing Board (WMMB). Using the tagline “Butter. Pure and
Simple,” the campaign demonstrates the power of butter as a cooking
tool, something that’s certainly no secret to butter makers.
“Butter performs such a wonderful role in our
lives,” says Jed Davis, director of marketing, Cabot Creamery
Cooperative, Cabot, Vt. “From the standpoint of cooking, it’s a
wonderful flavor enhancer. It’s unparalleled.”
Davis says the resurgence in home cooking and baking
has led to a growing interest in European-style butters boasting a higher
fat content. This is particularly true among so-called
“foodies,” who tend to shop at stores like Whole Foods and
don’t mind paying a little extra for something out of the norm.
“When you go to the butter case in your typical
local supermarket, mostly what you are seeing are your traditionally
packaged quarters and solids,” Davis says. “It flips the other
way when you go into something like Whole Foods, where you may have five or
six imported butters or domestic butters mimicking the European-style
because that’s a clientele that’s interested in that.”
Theresa Marquez, chief marketing executive for La
Farge, Wis.-based Organic Valley Family of Farms, calls this trend the
“Europitization of America.” Interest in Organic Valley’s
European Style Cultured Butter has been so strong that the company has two
new “companion” butters in the works: a European style cultured
butter containing 1 percent salt and a high conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)
butter dubbed Spring Gold. CLA is a naturally occurring fatty acid found
primarily in meat and dairy products, which proponents claim helps with
weight loss.
According to Organic Valley COO Louise Hemstead,
organic butter sales have grown in response to the increased
availability of organic butterfat, as well as high conventional butter
prices of recent years, which made the organic option available at a
comparable price. “At times when we’ve seen conventional butter
prices come up and kiss organic butterfat, we can hardly keep organic on
the shelf,” Hemstead says. “The consumer really feels they are
getting an extra value with the organic butter.”
Coming On Strong
Across the conventional butter category, innovation
has been modest at best, according to Kozak, who points to spreadable
butter with canola oil as the development that’s contributed the most
to an overall category increase. Seeking to replicate the success of
spreadable products sold by Land O’Lakes and other national brands,
Crystal Farms, a subsidiary of Minnetonka, Minn.-based Michael Foods Inc.,
recently introduced Salted Sweet Cream Spreadable Butter, designed to be
“soft and spreadable” right from the refrigerator. Made with
canola oil and salted sweet cream, the product is also said to be suitable
for baking and cooking. Meanwhile, Dublin, Calif.-based Challenge Dairy
Products Inc. rolled out its own Spreadable Butter. According to company
literature, it “goes on smooth and easy right out of the fridge and
provides a tasty alternative to flavorless spreads.”
Within the spread category, butter faces continued
competition from the phenomenally successfully Smart Balance brand of
trans-fat-free spreads, which not only boast butter-like taste, but are
said to perform like butter in cooking and baking applications.
Manufactured by Cresskill, N.J.-based GFA Brands Inc., both Smart Balance
and Smart Balance Light hold firmly to the fourth and ninth spots in the
Margarine, Spreads and Butter Blends category, with the original Smart
Balance product boasting an impressive 25.5 percent increase in dollar
sales and 17.4 percent increase in unit sales, according to IRI.
The company recently bolstered its offerings with the
addition of Smart Balance Organic Whipped Buttery Spread, a gluten-free,
trans-fat-free, non-hydrogenated vegan product that is said to taste,
spread, and cook just like real butter. Noting that “anything that
takes shelf space away from butter is legitimate competition,”
Hemstead doesn’t seem overly concerned about the success of
alternative spreads such as Smart Balance. That said, she does concede that
they are meeting a certain consumer demand and therefore, should be taken
seriously.
For his part, Kozak isn’t spending too much time
dwelling on butter’s competitors. With fewer butter imports making
their way to U.S. ports and vastly more butter being exported to Singapore,
Belgium, Holland, Russia, Israel, Turkey, Germany, and countless other
nations, Kozak is feeling pretty bullish on butter these days.
“From July of 2005 to December of 2006, we
exported over 14 million pounds of butter and just from January to May of
this year, we exported over 11 million pounds of butter,” Kozak says.
“That’s helping to expose those countries to the quality of
U.S. butter.”
TOP 10 INDIVIDUAL BUTTER BRANDS* | |||||
$ Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
Dollar Share |
Unit Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
|
Total Category | $1,220.9 | -5.6% | 100.0% | 473.0 | 0.7% |
Private Label | 564.7 | -5.7 | 46.3 | 244.8 | 0.5 |
Land O’Lakes | 349.6 | -5.1 | 28.6 | 117.2 | 1.9 |
Challenge | 61.8 | -4.1 | 5.1 | 19.0 | 2.1 |
Breakstone | 29.6 | -13.2 | 2.4 | 12.8 | -9.6 |
Tillamook | 25.8 | 0.3 | 2.1 | 8.2 | 1.2 |
Crystal Farms | 23.3 | 6.5 | 1.9 | 9.8 | 13.9 |
Keller’s | 18.9 | -17.6 | 1.6 | 7.9 | -4.6 |
Cabot | 18.8 | 0.5 | 1.5 | 7.0 | 5.9 |
Hotel Bar | 17.4 | -10.4 | 1.4 | 7.8 | 18.0 |
Horizon Organic | 12.0 | -5.8 | 1.0 | 2.2 | -6.5 |
* Total sales in supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers, excluding Wal-Mart, for the 52-week period ending June 17, 2007. SOURCE: Information Resources Inc. |
TOP 10 INDIVIDUAL MARGARINE/SPREADS/ BUTTER BLEND BRANDS* | ||||||
$ Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
Dollar Share |
Unit Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
||
Total Category | $1,205.5 | -2.3% | 100.0% | 766.6 | -7.3% | |
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter | 237.1 | -2.6 | 19.7 | 122.8 | -4.8 | |
Shedd’s Country Crock | 198.6 | 3.9 | 16.5 | 99.3 | -0.4 | |
Private Label | 81.4 | -10.2 | 6.8 | 78.9 | -15.0 | |
Smart Balance | 81.2 | 25.5 | 6.7 | 35.3 | 17.4 | |
Blue Bonnet | 73.1 | -6.1 | 6.1 | 82.3 | -10.3 | |
Parkay | 71.0 | -8.5 | 5.9 | 49.7 | -10.3 | |
Land O’Lakes | 65.4 | -3.9 | 5.4 | 39.2 | -7.5 | |
Imperial | 50.6 | -10.2 | 4.2 | 66.4 | -11.5 | |
Smart Balance Light | 45.3 | 9.3 | 3.8 | 22.6 | 6.8 | |
Fleischmann’s | 40.8 | -10.9 | 3.4 | 25.8 | -13.4 | |
* Total sales in supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers, excluding Wal-Mart, for the 52-week period ending June 17, 2007. SOURCE: Information Resources Inc. |