NUNHEIM, THE NETHERLANDS - Looking to supplant cookies and chips and bring fresh produce to snackers everywhere, the vegetable seed division of Bayer recently launched the Minigustos® label—targeting tasty, crunchy, and attractive snack vegetables.

The brand’s first offering, the Minigustos cucumber is shaping up to be an ideal alternative to unhealthy snack options—a superior snack vegetable.

“Our trial growers and category managers of different retailers around the world tell us they have never tasted such a crunchy snack cucumber,” says Anne Jancic, Marketing Specialist Cucumbers at Bayer. “Consumer panels confirm the good taste of our snack cucumbers: 71% of the consumers preferred our variety compared to those of competitors, 76% liked Minigustos appearance and 70% preferred its sweetness.”

While for years, chocolate, chips, and cookies dominated the snacking landscape, today, Bayer noted in a press release, vegetables have recently reached the top three snacking option for consumers. In Europe, the vegetable snack market has grown from €30 million (about $32.2 million) in 2012 to €70 million ($75.1 million) in 2015, while sales of existing vegetables remained stable.

Consumers, it seems, are more and more willing to spend money on healthy, tasty, ready-to-go produce, and Minigustos aim to be just that—a premium brand of tasty, attractive snack vegetables, the perfect “mini gustos” (or tasty minis).

With Minigustos, Bayer is targeting generation X and millennial shoppers, who are, according to the company, known to exercise more, eat smarter, and also to be willing to spend money on food brands that they find compelling.

With its first offering from Minigustos, Bayer aims to fill a void in Northern European, Canadian, and US Markets—where retailers and consumers have increasingly been asking for a tasty and crunchy snack cucumber with a longer shelf-life. The Minigustos snack cucumber is the result of years of research and cultivation by skilled breeders and growers.

Currently, Spanish partners of Bayer are harvesting the first Minigustos snack cucumbers, which are being made available to premium supermarkets throughout Northern Europe. Bayer has already received market requests from customers in Canada, Australia, and China, and will soon be taking its Minigustos cucumbers interncontinental.

Bayer is currently looking into expanding the brand’s offerings to include other vegetables—colored snack carrots and cosberg snack lettuce. Testing among Dutch consumers has yielded very positive results.

For more on this and other exciting brand developments in fresh produce, check in with us at AndNowUKnow.

Bayer