The saturated frozen dessert market (including ice cream, frozen yogurt, cheesecakes, pies and pudding) shows processors struggling to keep sales up. As we noted last month, ice cream sales are nearly frozen (see August, page 22). And the struggles for frozen treats don’t end there; it has seeped over into other areas of the frozen dessert case, with sales and units down for cheesecakes, puddings and other frozen sweet goods.
The frozen desserts/toppings category saw dollar sales down 3.6% to $694.7 million, with units down 2.5% to 295.8 million, in the 52 weeks ended June 15, 2014, according to Information Resources Inc. (IRI), Chicago. The two hardest-hit segments were frozen cheesecakes and frozen pudding/mousse. Cheesecake sales dropped 5.9% to $129.3 million, with units down 3.5% to 18.3 million. The much smaller frozen pudding/mousse segment had the most trouble, with dollar sales down 35.8% to $252,445 and units down 31.7%.