More low-carb products taking up less space
turnaround specialist to help it cope with tough competition from
rival food companies is the clearest sign yet that consumer
interest in low-carb diets is finally waning, say some in the food
industry.
The company behind the Atkins Diet said it will cut jobs and take other measures to boost efficiency, according to a report in Reuters.
"This bolsters the case that we are seeing the collapse of the low-carb fab," said Tom Vierhile, executive editor of Productscan Online.
He compared Atkins' predicament to that of the Castus low carb superstores in San Ramon, California.
"In July, The Wall Street Journal reported that Castus had loweredits expansion plans by half and had hired a marketing-research firm to better understand the market," he said. "It's spooky how much this sounds like what Atkins is doing. Castus had planned to quadruple its stores to 100 by the end of 2004 before it ran into difficulty."
However, food companies which have recently turned over production lines to low-carb ranges should probably not start to panic just yet. This year (2004) will still go down as a record year for the low-carb trend in terms of the number of food and beverage products launched in the US. According to Productscan, this figure is up to 2585 this year in comparison with 633 in 2003.
When looked at as a percentage, the increase is all the more impressive. A mere 3.8 per cent of new food and beverage launches in the US in 2003 were no- or low-carb products (compared to a paltry 2.1 percent the year before). This year, the figure has jumped to a whopping 17.9 percent.
Atkins' products have been swamped in this flood, now only taking up 4.8 percent of new low- or no-carb SKUs (Stock Keeping Units), compared to 28.1 percent in 2002, when the craze was getting into its stride.
Nonetheless, nobody should be gloating about this as the last three months have seen a general downturn in the SKUs for all low- and non-carb foods and beverages in the USA, decreasing from 633 SKUs in June, to 306 in July and 209 in August, suggesting that all food manufacturers should perhaps start investing their product research funds elsewhere.
