More food! For consumers, the world these days resembles a smorgasbord of gastronomic delights ripe for the picking, from low cost airlines shuttling them to wherever the next ‘it’ country is, to booming urban restaurants fusing everything from Japanese with Chilean to Brazilian with Indonesian. May Springwise contribute to this never-ending fad by pointing out the popularity (in Mexico) of ‘cajeta’, a flavoured, syrupy sauce made from burnt goat’s milk and sugar. Fans pour it over ice cream, on bread, crepes, cookies, fruit, etc. Which has led to cajeta-flavoured candy in the form of lollipops, soft candy and wafers. Two of the leading producers are Coronado and Sevillanas, manufacturing various kinds of goat’s milk-based treats: candy bars, lollipops, cajeta cookies and candy spread. Tasty, no? Quick word of warning: one non-Mexican company trying to capitalize on this tasty and potentially trendy delicacy is Hershey’s, which recently launched a candy specifically for the Hispanic market, boasting “sabor a chocolate blanco con cajeta.” Their gaffe was that cajeta has a very different meaning in other South American markets, referring to a certain part of a woman’s anatomy. Just so you know 😉

Opportunities

Think you can turn all things cajeta into the next global craze, while Hershey’s is busy focusing on consumers already familiar with this stuff? If you don’t live in Mexico, get started by buying some samples from MexGrocer, a bilingual online grocery store for hard-to-find, authentic Mexican foods. We could just see goat milk lollipops becoming THE hot new candy for the summer of 2005, and someone, perhaps you, is going to get rich from it!

4th April 2005

Website: www.coronado.com.mx/, www.sevillanas.com.mx/