After months of hard work, on Wednesday 23 April SuperBoom were declared the winners of Automatic Vending Association’s 2014 Culinary Product Development Challenge, with their highly innovative healthy snack, Boom Bites.
Aimed at gym users, Boom Bites, developed by students at University College Birmingham (UCB), are a low calorie two-in-one combination of fruit and oats. They come in a range of flavours including: Black Cherry & Dark Chocolate; Mango, Passion Fruit and Raspberry, and Chocolate Orange.
The annual competition, which is held in conjunction with UCB, reached its conclusion last week at a judging event in Warwickshire. Four teams of final year students on the Culinary Arts Management Programme, presented the products they’ve developed to a panel from across the vending industry, including sponsors Unilever, Mondeléz and Nestlé.
Judging criteria
Tim Franklin-Heys, (Unilever), Andy Dixon (Mondeléz) and Martin Webster (Nestlé), alongside Richard Ehrlich, a former chair of the Guild of Food Writers and Gillian White, owner of 24 Vend, assessed the products against a range of criteria. In particular they examined the viability of the products for use in vending in terms of shelf life and packaging, as well as flavour, health and innovation.
The students had worked in teams over 13 weeks to develop a snack product for areas served by the vending industry: business and industry; education; healthcare; leisure; staff catering and transport.
Other products developed by the students included flavoured popcorn clusters, a selection of dips and snack boxes based on global cuisine and an all-day breakfast box. The products, made with ingredients including oats, chia seeds and beetroot, and with an average of less than 325kcals a portion, really demonstrated just how much vending is changing. Many of the products were also suitable for those on a nut or dairy free diet, reflecting the growing consumer demand for Free From foods.
Alongside developing the products themselves, many of the teams also created distinctive branding and packaging with supporting collateral such as videos and online content including Twitter profiles and Facebook pages.