Halo Top Earns #1 Spot on IRI’s 2017 List of Top 10 New Product Pacesetters: Food & Beverage

Low-calorie ice cream and sherbet maker Halo Top sold $324.2 million in new products in 2017, giving it the top spot on IRI’s 2017 New Product Pacesetter list by a long shot.

The list confirms the impact of the consumer trends that have emerged over the past few years — namely that Millennials, who command one-third of CPG spending power, want something different from the generations before.

Here are a few emerging trends confirmed in the IRI report:

• Small companies and new brands continue to take market share from large companies and existing brands. More than one-quarter of New Product Pacesetter sales were from small companies, compared to just 12% in 2013. In addition, 40% of food and beverage Pacesetters were new brands, as opposed to brand extensions (in 2013, only 11% were new).

• Millennials want premium products, and they’re willing to pay more for them. A full 85% of the 20 largest Pacesetter brands are priced higher than their category averages.

• Millennials want healthy, but also tasty foods.More than 40% say they eat healthy about half of the time. But they also like to splurge — 23% of the new food product launches (the largest category) were desserts. The desire for healthy-but-indulgent products is apparent in beverages as well with the popularity of sparkling and fruit-flavored bottled waters.

For more insights, and to see the Top 10 Pacesetters for Convenience Store Brands as well as the Top 10 Rising Stars in Food & Beverage, see the IRI report.

Related: Millennials’ Food Choices Reflect Their Values and Lifestyle