A Sweet Tooth & Dental Care 2.0
Snacks are silly, but dental health is serious.
1. Strawberry milk and matcha.
Coming out of Japan and Korea (see: last week’s (Seoul-Searching edition) an obsession with strawberry milk is slowly making its way to the States. Just opened in NYC’s West Village and getting a lot of attention for their strawberry milk and Japanese desserts, Post Card Bakery. Even US matcha pioneer Cha Cha Matcha has a strawberry-matcha combination that is getting good feed time. Food & beverage people, consider how you can play with this flavor profile.
2. Opening a can of whip(ped) cream.
What’s next out of Japan? A whipped cream vending machine. It dispenses soda can-shaped containers of 95% whipped cream/5% cake. The perfect proportion for topping lovers, with a respectable amount of the base dessert. CD & Co.'s predecessor TOBE called out vending machines as modern money-makers in 2013, and this only adds fuel to our fire. Start figuring out what you can package and sell via vending. It’s part game, part gain. We’re still bullish.
3. Today croissants, tomorrow cinnamon rolls.
French pastry chef Dominique Ansel started it in 2013 with his you-got-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut butter mash-up of donut and croissant, the Cronut. L’Appartement 4F added croissant cereal to the conversation, then Lafayette Grand Café & Bakery dressed them up in icing, cookies, and special flavors. Now, the “crookie” is capturing the world. The number of croissant iterations is truly unruly (below we’ve listed a few more of our favorite versions and spots to check out). The Co. assesses the next bakery star will be the cinnamon roll, in both sweet and savory versions. See here @invybaker figure 8 cinnamon rolls and a bacon and cheese version from @zettbistro, but watch for this to grow.
Flat Croissants: Salswee…easy to manage
The Croissant Cone: Miller & Lux Provisions…ice cream filled
Savory Croissants: Salswee, again…truffle cream cheese
Spicy Croissants: Saint Bread…Cardamon
Croissant Art: Nudake…sculpted and shaped
Croissant “Tissue” Bread…here
…and a Croissant Club: Raf’s…celebrity chef’s rotate
If you’re in the Food & Bev arena, tap the team for a special project. For confidence, test our acumen and vision against our 2021 predictions.
If you’re eating all these sweets, good oral hygiene is a must…
4. Europe’s fascination with teeth and tongue.
A recent run through Paris and Antwerp had our team focused on category freshness here. It started at Officine Universelle Buly with a sophisticated selection of toothbrushes, full and travel size; tempting toothpaste flavors, with vanity-worthy squeezer attachments, and tongue scrapers. The category followed us all over town. Favorites: Buly Dental Floss and Toothbrushes and LeBon toothpaste and toothpaste squeezer.
5. TikTok dental demos.
The platform that everyone loves to hate is teaming with guidance for keeping your teeth clean, white, bright, and healthy. Search term “$20 Veeners” will bring up products like a whitening powder going viral for making your teeth so white that they look like veneers. Also getting a lot of airtime on TikTok and Instagram, whitening devices and Marvis’ Smokers Whitening toothpaste, started in Paris, natch! And lastly, but certainly not the least interesting, Mouth Tape. This trend has been integrated into nighttime routines to help bad breathe, circulation, jaw structure, and face shape.
