Marketers Cash In As Nation Bellies Up To Snack Bar

(From The USA Today -- By Bruce Horovitz)

The national obsession with snacking has finally come to this (health-food activists, hide your eyes) -- CHICKEN FRIES.

Hungry to lure in customers at all hours, BURGER KING is tentatively planning the launch this summer of a spicy, 4-inch-long, fried white-meat chicken snack that looks like a cross between a chicken strip and french fry. "For me, they're like M&Ms," says GREG BRENNEMAN, CEO of BURGER KING.

BK CHICKEN FRIES, as they're being called in test marketing, are sold in cup-holder-friendly boxes so commuters can dip and eat them in transit. The potato-less fries will fetch $1.79 for a box of six. (Other "CHICKEN FRY" products are on the market, but BK says it's first to make them with whole-muscle, breast meat strips.)

Snacking has become so pervasive that the definition of a snack, once narrowly viewed as a salty chip in a bag, has evolved to cover almost everything. Salty snacks are a $25 billion industry, but all other forms of snacks may be well on the road to topping that. GRANOLA BARS alone are a $700 million industry growing about 20% annually.

Marketers Cash In As Nation Bellies Up To Snack Bar