Breakfast cereals tolerate economic recession better than muesli

According to data from Nielsen, breakfast cereals and cereal bars managed to grow, while muesli sales fell a little and muesli bar sales dropped considerably. One of the former key players, Cerbona has been under liquidation since May and the retail presence of their products has been shrinking.

Eszter Dara, Nestlé Hungária’s junior brand manager told our magazine that breakfast cereals and cereal bars were able to grow partly because consumers are making increasingly conscious decisions, and at the same time they are looking for quality products. Dénes Kiss, Dr. Oetker Magyarország Kft.’s marketing manager is of the opinion that price promotions also had a lot to do with increased sales. He thinks that the muesli category is unable to grow because only a narrow, health-conscious layer of society eats muesli products in Hungary. Private label products’ share among mueslis and muesli bars is considerably higher than among breakfast cereals – the latter is more integrated into Hungarians’ diet and therefore consumers are more brand conscious. If we examine retail channels, we can see that muesli bar sales are less modern retail channel-centred than sales of the other two cereal categories. Another difference is that of popular flavours: among cereals chocolate has a 50-percent share, while the mot popular mueslis are fruit-flavoured (37 percent). Dr. Oetker’s Vitalis muesli appeared in shops in Vitalis Plus version, with double chocolate, honey-almond and fruit flavours, offering real premium quality. Last year Nestlé appeared in stores with their Nesquik Duo breakfast cereal and cappuccino-flavoured and almond-nut muesli. This year they came out with muesli bars in four new flavours. Now their innovation activity focuses on packaging designs, new recipes and simplifying production processes. Maresi Foodbroker is the distributor of Kellogg’s and Rita Takács, the company’s brand manager told Trade magazin that Kellogg’s sales managed to grow in comparison with last year. Besides the traditional 250g and 375g versions, their 500g packaging units are also popular because they come at a very good price. Every year they appear in stores with one or two new products. This October they launched a prize game that tries to reach consumers via Facebook.