True innovation is a process. Building just the right team. Landing on just the right product formula. And maintaining quality and integrity through processing—and distribution. Every piece of the puzzle counts.

Then these annually released new products arrive on the market, often via omnichannel strategies, these days, vying for just enough attention to convert to that all-important product sampling. If they come back again, you’re onto something. By the third purchase, they’re a fan.

Each year, Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery reports on hundreds of the new snack and bakery products released to the American market (see https://www.snackandbakery.com/newproducts). The most-popular products of the year earn a slot in our annual “Best New Snack & Bakery Products” review, conducted by SF&WB and BEMA staff.

These honors allow SF&WB the opportunity to shine a spotlight on true innovation, the hard, and sometimes pioneering, work—and a little bit of magic—that goes into these new products.

Each product faces set evaluation criteria:

In the end, two products emerged as the winners among the crop of 2021 new products:

• Originality—product format, ingredients, notable traits
• Branding—on-pack messaging
• Packaging—design, sustainability, convenience, user-friendliness
• Organoleptics—aroma, flavor, bite, texture, mouthfeel

• Originality—product format, ingredients, notable traits
• Branding—on-pack messaging
• Packaging—design, sustainability, convenience, user-friendliness
• Organoleptics—aroma, flavor, bite, texture, mouthfeel

Watch for more to come during May on www.snackandbakery.com, where we will feature in-depth coverage of Hersey Co. and its Dot’s Pretzels business, as well as ALDI’s liveGfree brand, digging deeper into both of their unique pathways toward innovation. SF&WB