Meat and Cheese Snacks Address Consumer’s Snacking Concerns

This article is brought to you by The Kraft Heinz Company.

CHICAGO—Protein has been a leading food trend for several years. Once the exclusive domain of serious athletes, protein is now important to the average consumer who cares about building body tissue and sustaining energy. To meet that need, Kraft Heinz recently launched Oscar Mayer Natural Meat & Cheese Snack Sticks to give consumers a serious snack that offers both high protein and portability.

“It’s is a convenient snack that doesn’t compromise,” said Allie Phillips, head of sales C-Store/Drug, The Kraft Heinz Company. “Meat & Cheese Snack Sticks are a clean-label, pure-protein product without artificial ingredients, nitrates or hormones. They’re a satisfying snack or a bridge meal when you’re on the run but want to eat healthy.”

According to Nielsen, 55% of U.S. households say high protein is important to consider when purchasing food, and 6% of U.S. households include someone who is following a high-protein diet, such as keto or paleo. Several studies have shown that a high-protein diet has major benefits for weight loss and metabolic health.

The National Academy of Medicine recommends that adults get a minimum of seven grams of protein daily for every 20 pounds of body weight. For a 140-pound person, that requirement would be about 50 grams of protein each day, and one package of Snack Sticks can provide a significant amount of an individual’s daily protein requirement.

Each package of Meat & Cheese Snack Sticks includes three meat sticks and three slices of cheese in two separate flavor combos. The Cracked Black Pepper Uncured Hard Salami with White Cheddar Cheese provides 9 grams of protein per package, and the Uncured Hard Salami Monterey Jack Cheese serves up 8 grams.

“Meat & Cheese Snack Sticks are a natural snacking solution that taste great and are available at a competitive price point,” said Phillips. “We customized and launched them for convenience stores because they are a strong fit for the c-store customer. We’ll take our learnings and apply them as we look to scale the launch more broadly in the future.”

Snack Sticks are available in the cold case at participating 7-Eleven stores.

This is the second installment of a two-part series on protein snacking. Previous coverage can be found in the June 18 edition of the NACS Daily.

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