“Crab” chips, fruity Oreos? They’re big overseas

Russians prefer their Lay’s potato chips dusted in caviar and crab flavors. The Chinese like their Oreos stuffed with mango and orange cream.

Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn’t always work everywhere.

In other words, Lee Linthicum, a market researcher, says: “It can’t be some generic mix of spices that might fool an American.”

Food makers long have tinkered with their products to appeal to regional tastes, but getting the recipe just right is becoming more important than ever. That’s partly because people in developing nations such as China and India are gaining more of an appetite for American-style “on-the-go” foods as they work longer hours and have less time to cook. But it’s mostly because snack makers increasingly are looking for growth in other parts of the world as sales slow at home.

Growth in the snack food industry has been virtually flat in the U.S. for the past two years, according to market research firm Euromonitor. Meanwhile, combined sales in China, Brazil and Russia — three major developing markets — rose 15 percent in 2010 and 11 percent last year to $17 billion. That’s half the size of the U.S. market but it’s growing.

The challenge for snack makers is that people in other countries have different tastes. Consider the Oreo, which Kraft Food Inc. introduced in China in 1996. Sales were respectable there, but the Chinese didn’t completely take to it.

So Kraft decided to tweak the Oreo. But executives of the Northfield-based company knew that they had to proceed with caution. “When you have a brand that’s 100 years old, you don’t mess with the recipe thoughtlessly,” says Lorna Davis, head of the company’s global biscuit and cookies business.

In 2006, Kraft began offering the Oreo as a wafer, a popular cookie throughout Asia. It is made up of cream sandwiched between crispy wafers.

Kraft worked with a panel of consumer taste experts from around the world to identify the characteristics of the Oreo — including color, crunchiness, bitterness, color — that were likely to appeal to Chinese tastes. Executives learned through research that the Chinese don’t like their treats as big or as sweet as Americans do. So the company rejiggered the recipe to create a cookie that was a tad smaller and a touch less sweet.

To test the new recipe, hundreds of Chinese consumers tasted the new Oreo. It was a hit. “It made us realize the smallest of details make a big difference,” Davis says.

Kraft, which operates in more than 80 countries, is taking a similar approach with other snacks. In Saudi Arabia, Kraft offers its Tang powder drink in a lemon-pepper flavor. In Mexico, it comes in tropical fruit flavors like tamarind and mandarin, and a hibiscus version fashioned after the flower. Sales have nearly doubled to $1 billion worldwide since Kraft rolled out the localized versions in 2006.

Kraft also plans to split into two separate units by the end of the year. The largest will be a global snacks company called Mondelez International, pronounced “mohn-dah-leez,” to sell its Trident gum and Cadbury chocolates in fast-growing countries worldwide.

A similar story played out for PepsiCo. In 2005, PepsiCo’s food division began a quest to make its Lay’s potato chips more appealing to local tastes in Russia. It wasn’t easy. Russians still like packaged versions of a Soviet-era snack — stale bread slathered in oil and baked to a crisp.

“Potato chips were not big in the Communist time, so it’s something we’re gradually building,” says Marc Schroeder, who heads PepsiCo’s food division in Russia.

To get a better sense of what Russians like, employees traveled around the country to visit people in their homes and talk about what they eat day-to-day.

So it introduced “Crab” chips in 2006. It’s now the third most popular flavor in the country.

A “Red Caviar” flavor does best in Moscow, where caviar is particularly popular. “Pickled Cucumber,” which piggybacks off of a traditional appetizer throughout Russia, was introduced last year and is already the fourth most popular flavor. Other favorites include onion, bacon and “sour cream and herbs,” which is a bit sweeter than the American version.

The chip translations are paying off; sales of Lay’s have more than doubled in the past five years. As for the classic Lay’s — an American favorite — Russians still aren’t biting.

“They find it a very boring flavor,” Schroeder said.

Ÿ Follow Candice Choi on Twitter @candicechoi