Nestle bringing Skinny Cow to Israel
Company to market American brand's low-fat ice cream snacks, which contain 87 to 141 calories. Six-unit pack to cost NIS 29.90
Overseas, Skinny Cow is considered a low-fat brand whose taste does not resemble that of similar low-fat and low-calorie products.
The brand includes chocolate snacks, ice cream packs, ice cream bars and ice cream snacks without artificial sweeteners, containing 87 to 141 calories and up to 2.6 grams of fat per unit, compared to 300 calories and 8-12 grams of fat in regular ice cream bars.
The products which will be offered in Israel include two types of sorbet bars and three types of ice cream sandwiches.
The sorbet bars, in vanilla-strawberry and vanilla-lemon flavors, each have 87-88 calories and 0.9 grams of fat for a 65-gram product. The ice cream sandwiches – in chocolate, vanilla with cookies and mascarpone flavors – weigh 66 grams and include 129-141 calories per unit and 2.2-2.6 grams of fat.
Skinny Cow products will be sold in six-unit packs and will cost NIS 29.90 ($8.75).
Nestle Ice Cream Israel CEO Zeev Kalimi expects the company's sales to reach NIS 10 million ($3 million) this summer. "With the help of Skinny Cow, we expect to increase our market share in the entire ice cream packs category to 36-37%," he told Ynet.
"In the packs category, low-fat and regular, Nestle currently holds a market share of 31%, and the leading player is Strauss. That's why we have a lot of room for activity there."
The low-fat ice cream packs category makes up 30.3% of the ice cream packs market in 2011, with Strauss Ice Cream leading the category with a market share of 66.1% (according to Nielsen figures), followed by Nestle with 19% and Feldman Ice Cream with a market share of 13%.
'Nok Out 6% cheaper than Magnum'
The Skinny Cow brand was born in New Jersey as Silhouette. Two American entrepreneurs, Marc Wexler and Saverio Pugliese, decided to create low-calorie ice cream which would taste like real dairy ice cream – and took the market by storm.
The developed a technology, registered a patent, and in 1994 began marketing an ice cream sandwich snack, with a drawing of a skinny cow on its wrapper. The product's success caught the attention of the Nestle food corporation, which acquired the patent in 2004 and distributed the product under the Skinny Cow brand name in Anglo countries.
"Global Nestle decided to expand the brand to additional countries, and Israel was one of the first ones chosen," says Kalimi.
"There is a lot of room here to absorb the concept, because the consumption of low-fat products and good life products in Israel is very high. It's a low-fat product, but in tasting sessions we compared it to non-dietetic cream products because it doesn't taste like a low-fat product. And yet, the caloric information is at the front of the products, it's all out in the open."
In light of the cottage cheese protest , will you reduce prices?
"The price is already low, five shekels per ice cream bar in a pack. Nestle decided this year not to raise price, although Strauss Ice Cream raised price two weeks ago in the individual ice cream bars category.
"Our policy at the moment is to preserve the price level throughout the season, and we're cheaper. Our Nok Out is 6% cheaper than Strauss' Magnum. In popsicles there's a 4% difference between the products."
Why will Skinny Cow be sold in packs only? Will you sell single items too?
"We'll sell single items upon the brand's development in the future, but not at the moment. We're dealing with a very interesting summer with a significant rise in Nestle's market share. Our goal is to give the adult consumers a product which will be as tasty as dairy ice cream, without the caloric price."
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