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What are Any’tizers, Tanglers, Frisnacks or Wrappetizers?

Restaurants can sell snacks at premium profit margins and can be more exciting for guests than the traditional core menu.

September 5, 2014 by Darrel Suderman — President, Food Technical Consulting

Call them Any’tizers, Tanglers, Frisnacks, or Wrappetizers – Snacks now grab the most daypart marketing focus in QSR restaurant chains, and the most vicious competition between suppliers.

Why? Because the post-lunch (afternoon) daypart and the post-dinner (late night) dayparts represent 50 percent of the time the restaurant doors are open for business – and restaurants can sell snacks at premium profit margins. For more established chains their traditional core menu has become ‘familiar’ to customers and less appealing when compared to exciting snacks items.

What’s in a name?

Traditionally, snacks were commonly referred to as ‘snacks’ or ‘Hors d’oeuvres.” My first job after college graduation was with Durkee Foods which owned a frozen Hors d’oeuvres product line called Gretchen Grant. These premium products sold at generous profit markups, and were targeted for retail and hotel consumers – not the QSR foodservice market. That was my first impression of snack products.

However, in recent years, snack products have been relabeled as finger food, appetizers, Any’tizers, Tanglers, Frisnacks, Tornadoes, or Wrappetizers. Renaming (or branding) snack foods has become a highly competitive marketing endeavor – particularly by Tyson Foods and McCain’s Moore’s Foodservice Division. They own most of the branding, with Frisby’s Fried Chicken in Colombia SA owning the rights to Frisnacks and Tornadoes.

Marketing Utopia

Branding and marketing snack foods has become a marketing utopia. Name one new marketing college graduate interested in building a career around marketing 50 year core menu items, and I will introduce you to 10 graduates who would prefer to market QSR snack products. Snack product marketing requires creativity and innovation – plus they are more profitable and portion sizes are generous.

Evolution of Snacks in the US

I previously mentioned the origin of appetizers in the retail and institutional hotel markets, but about that same time Frito-Lay began a huge growth surge in potato snack products – and acquired other varieties of snack food to its product lineup. Then products like Pop Tarts began to revolutionize children’s breakfast eating transition from cereals. About the same time QSR menus started featuring traditional appetizers – to the point that TGI Friday’s is now aggressively marketing its “endless appetizer” menu promotion.

But snacks haven’t always been popular on QSR menus – and it took some learning. I remember that KFC’s marketing department struggled with how to place Popcorn Chicken and Spicy Bites on a menu – because they perceived Popcorn Chicken to be a center-of-the-plate protein – but they eventually got it right.

Future prediction

I predict many more appetizer products will evolve in those companies that have a legitimate “QSR Innovation Process.” But I also predict that the creation of marketing descriptors will multiple 10 fold. But like my good friend Denise Lee Yohn preaches – It’s about developing products that fit the corporate brand strategy. She calls it “Brand as Business,” and it’s what great brands do.

For more information our 3-day Advanced Batter and Breading Technology Workshop Oct. 7–9 at JBT FoodTech in Sandusky, Ohio, or The 10 Pillars of Food Innovation in Denver Oct. 21–23, 2014, contact me at dsuderman@foodbevbiz.com or 303-471-1443.

About Darrel Suderman

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