Simer Dhall, Co-Founder at Snack-a-Doodle
When the pandemic hit India in March 2021, Life came to a standstill for all parents. The working moms found it hard to manage online school while the non-working moms were busy with household chores. With kids at home, parents began to look for easy food options for themselves and their families I recollect a phase where the first few months went in baking the famous banana bread and cookies at home. However, covid was here to stay longer than expected and parents began to look for easy healthy options. Snacking, which was considered a comfort food pre pandemic became more important. Kids demanded more snacking time during the day between school hours. We witnessed a trend from 5 pm snacking hour to snacking three to four times a day. This gave demand to clean processed free snacks sourced from healthy ingredients.
Parents became more conscious about processed foods and the amount of sugar and added preservatives (up to 15) in snack items. The regular cookies and other snacking items available on supermarket shelves were replaced by healthy and delicious wholesome food products. When we launched Snackadoodle in March 2021 we believed that a healthy snacking culture is so important that India reports as the third largest country with the highest number of obesity in kids. Hence, our products are sweetened with organic “Khand” sugar, jaggery, and dates.
Apart from sugar being an important factor, parents also began looking for convenience and eat-on-the-go products. Making homemade without preservatives snacks eventually becomes very cumbersome to manage at home. We as parents wanted a quick fix option for our kids that didn’t add extra calories but also gave us the option of an open-and-eat option. Snickerdoodle amongst the other few companies tapped this area and today we provide parents with 7 different products including bites and cookies.
The pandemic overall has caused a surge in the snacking industry in India and globally. This will continue to grow and open many avenues in this category for us and other manufacturers in the future.
