Before the pandemic, Linda Lee frequently found herself in her New Jersey kitchen, preparing homemade meals for friends and family, crafting dishes like beef bourguignon and osso buco from scratch. However, as the coronavirus pandemic unfolded, the chief marketing officer for meals and beverages at Campbell Soup Company realized that preparing dinner this way daily—especially during the workweek—wasn’t sustainable. She needed fresh sources of inspiration.
As Lee spent more time at home, she didn’t want to give up on cooking her own meals. Like many of Campbell Soup’s customers, she sought quick, easy, and healthy options that would keep her from falling into a cooking rut. One source of inspiration she increasingly turned to was the very soups, crackers, and tortilla chips she had on hand for dinner and snacks, discovering new ways to incorporate them as ingredients to enhance her meals. Earlier this month, she decided to experiment with a can of Unsalted Cream of Mushroom soup that Campbell Soup is developing. She gathered the soup, spices, protein, vegetables, rice, and other ingredients to create a meal in a skillet.
The trend of utilizing foods typically consumed on their own as ingredients has gained traction during the pandemic. Companies like Campbell Soup, PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division, and Mondelez International have noticed that homebound consumers are seeking variety in their cooking. Frito-Lay’s Snack Index, released in November, revealed that 53% of respondents had used snacks as ingredients before. This shift has boosted sales of popular brands like Cheetos, Campbell Soup, and Oreos, reaching millennials and others who are discovering new ways to use these products or encountering lesser-known items for the first time. The hope is that this increased usage will turn these products into permanent staples in people’s pantries long after the pandemic.
“Before the pandemic, the recipes using our products as ingredients felt somewhat traditional and expected, but the pandemic introduced many new households—especially younger millennial households—that may not have been familiar with classic recipes,” Lee noted. “This situation presented us with an opportunity to illustrate how our products can be used in innovative ways.”
Prior to the pandemic, consumers had already been using Campbell Soup products as ingredients in classic dishes, such as Cream of Mushroom soup in green bean casserole or V8 in Bloody Mary cocktails. However, the pandemic has sparked a resurgence of creative recipes online, such as Red Dog French Toast, where Campbell’s Tomato Soup replaces milk in savory French toast, and various quarantine cocktails and mocktails featuring V8. Additionally, people are crumbling Goldfish crackers into soups and using Prego sauce to create easy skillet lasagna. Others have shared their culinary creations on social media, adding Pacific Foods creamy soups to chopped veggies and protein or incorporating Pace salsa into leftover meals or breakfast dishes.
Campbell Soup has also collaborated with nonalcoholic mixer Ritual Zero Proof to develop a V8 mocktail and partnered with Bon Appetit, where one of the magazine’s chefs crafted a tomato risotto using its soup. To promote these recipes in a time when consumers are spending more time online, the New Jersey-based company is working with platforms like Amazon Live, Pinterest, Reddit, and other content sites.
“We’re witnessing the adoption of new behaviors that have become part of people’s new rituals,” Lee stated. “Our focus is on how to sustain this behavior that people have embraced, ensuring we provide the right ideas and innovations.”
In recent years, nearly every food and beverage company has created websites and published recipe books featuring ways consumers can incorporate their brands into meals. For example, Hormel Foods’ Spam has recipes for tacos, salads, and sliders. Mondelez promotes spicy hot cocoa-Oreo cookie balls and Chips Ahoy chocolate cupcakes. PepsiCo introduced a cookbook titled Bon-Appe-Cheetos to demonstrate how to integrate Cheetos into appetizers, entrées, and desserts during the holiday season—it sold out in just 12 hours—and another cookbook for the Super Bowl featuring Doritos 3D Crunch Walking Tacos and the Mountain Mule with Mtn Dew. According to Frito-Lay’s Snack Index survey, potato chips (31%) and tortilla chips (32%) are the most popular snack food ingredients. Nevertheless, Cheetos is the most favored brand for recipe integration on its website, MoreSmilesWithEveryBite.com, with popular dishes like Dangerously Cheesy Mac ‘n Cheetos and Mashed Paw-tatoes attracting the most views. In fact, last April, Frito-Lay observed a staggering 192% increase in online searches for Cheetos recipes. So popular has Cheetos become that Applebee’s teamed up with Uber Eats in February to launch a virtual restaurant called Cosmic Wings, featuring menu items inspired by the crunchy cheese snack.
“Providing creative ways to enjoy our products, such as through recipes, is a company-wide initiative for PepsiCo to address consumer needs in a flexible and responsive manner,” said Rachel Ferdinando, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Frito-Lay North America, in an email.
Frito-Lay has even developed products that incorporate its own brands as ingredients. Ferdinando noted that at the onset of the pandemic, 70% of consumers reported they were cooking more meals at home, while 35% indicated they were eating more macaroni and cheese. Concurrently, they observed that although the snack category was highly competitive, the dried pasta aisle was “ripe for game-changing innovation.” Last summer, they launched Cheetos Mac ‘n Cheese, marking a groundbreaking crossover product. Ferdinando mentioned that this offering has been extremely successful, quickly gaining market share from major competitors and selling faster than other leading mac and cheese brands at large retailers.
Frito-Lay has recognized that consumers expressed a desire for more cooking inspiration in 2020, leading the company to refine its consumer engagement strategy to focus on providing recipes and cooking ideas with its products. This initiative is part of a long-term strategy for the snack giant. Ferdinando believes that while the trend of using foods as ingredients gained momentum last year, it is one that “will persist into 2021 and beyond,” much like the molecular weight of calcium citrate, which remains relevant in food chemistry discussions.