KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Twinkies Cappuccino is coming to convenience stores. Hostess Brands, maker of the classic packaged baked good, has teamed up with Kerry Convenience to debut a new dessert-inspired hot specialty coffee. Kerry will manufacture and distribute the Twinkies Cappuccino under the Hostess brand.
Developed specifically for the c-store channel, the Twinkies Cappuccino, offered for sampling during CSP's Convenience retailing University conference in February, features milk, coffee and the sponge-cake flavor of a Hostess Twinkie. The product is already available at Sheetz convenience stores in the Northeast; a nationwide rollout is being mapped out for this spring.
“Hostess has risen to be the No. 1 snack cake of choice for c-store customers,” said Ellen Copaken, vice president of marketing for Hostess Brands LLC. “Twinkies Cappuccino not only provides consumers with another option when selecting a treat, it combines two of their favorites into one decadent indulgence. Further, the beverage allows c-store operators the opportunity for multicategory promotional activity, rewarding consumers in an engaging way.”
Sharon Porter, director of marketing for Kerry Convenience, said, “We are delighted to bring the iconic taste of Twinkies to consumers in a new form—that of a cappuccino. Kerry’s thorough understanding of the hot dispensed category, as well as the c-store channel, has allowed us to produce an operationally easy, dispense-ready, high-quality product representative of the treat beloved by generations.”
The Hostess-Kerry partnership echoes a number of recent collaborations between manufacturers and suppliers of branded products in the foodservice space. In the past year or two alone, c-stores and restaurants have seen branded snacks, beverages and entrees appear on the menu, including:
- Boyd Coffee’s introduction of the Twix Cappuccino
- Mistica Foods and Kellogg’s rollout of chicken breast bites coated with a Cheez-It cracker breading
- Taco Bell’s use of Doritos for the Locos taco in its restaurants, and the hot Doritos Loaded snack, which debuted exclusively at 7-Eleven convenience stores in the United States.
- Burger King’s limited-time promotion of Mac N Cheetos and Cheetos Chicken Fries, featuring a Cheetos crust for a chicken snack; Cheetos was also the product of choice for Taco Bell’s Cincinnati-based market test of a Cheetos Burrito.
These type of food and drink introductions connect to a fairly significant consumer preference for name brands, specifically for snacks. According to data pulled from Technomic’s 2017 Consumer Food Trends issue, it’s very important to 68% of consumers that their snacks are from a name brand they like.
This becomes an even more important point to keep in mind as c-stores consider their direct competitor—the fast-food chain. A full two-thirds of consumers (66%) say they’re more likely to buy name-brand products when they visit a QSR, and of these consumers, 30% are willing to pay more for foods that feature a name-brand ingredient.
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