FORBES
Nadia Arumugam, Contributor
I cover food and drink from industry news to current trends
A hundred years ago this week, a chocolate sandwich cookie named Oreo, was born in the National Biscuit Co.’s Chelsea Market factory in Manhattan. Packaged in bulk tins, and sold by weight at $0.30/lb, the first cookies were sold to a grocer in Hoboken, New Jersey, according to Nabisco lore. Since then, the dunkable creme-filled confection has made considerable headway. Found today in over 100 countries, from Malaysia, Taiwan and Indonesia to Poland, Argentina and Morocco, no other cookie, snack even, commands the same degree of allegiance from stalwart fans across the globe. According to Kraft, which acquired the Nabisco brand in 2000, about 25 billion Oreos are eaten annually (that’s 70 million every day) bringing in a most salubrious $1.5 billion in global annual revenues.
You’re right. That is a lot of cookie dough to be rolling out, and filling to be squirted (for want of more technical lingo) onto those unctuous chocolatey wafers. No worries – Kraft has 21 bakeries around the world cranking out these beauties.
To commemorate this rather special birthday, the folks at Kraft , have come up with a new way to thrill us. They’ve thrown multicolored candy sprinkles into the the traditional creme filling and labeled the rainbow-speckled treats, Birthday Cake Oreos.
Purists, fear not, your alarm is needless – the unadultered construction of 2-wafers-and-creme isn’t going anywhere ( except into your shopping cart, and i tummy). This festive party version will simply be joining the multitude of Oreo iterations already on the shelf. While the original sandwich remains a bestseller, Nabsico has never held back from evolving its product. The brand’s inordinate global success is largely due to its maker’s understanding of the taste sensibilities of its various markets, and an openness to craft versions of Oreos to suit regional palates, while always maintaining a nod to the original. This has made possible a curious combination of chocolate cookies and green tea flavored creme in Japan, sandwiches featuring blueberry ice cream filling in Indonesia, a “half and half” banana and dulce de leche creme combination in Argentina, and chocolate covered wafer sticks in China. Even at home, Americans have generously been awarded with new ways to introduce Oreos into their diet – not just for cookie time, now there are Oreo Cakesters when the craving calls for something more tender and moister.
Just as we’re open to trying our favorite cookie in a new guise, we’re definitely open to trying a new menu item if it has our favorite cooke in it. Here lies another genius trick that has enabled the Oreo to maintain its place as our No. 1 ranked cookie of choice. By partnering with fast-food chains, restaurants and food service operations that use the confection to make all manner of desserts, Nabisco has opened a whole new avenue of cookie consumption and usage. Not only do diners now enjoy Oreos when eating out as well as when eating in, they also consider the treat an ingredient as well as a snack – reason to pick up 2 packets of cookies rather than just one. What’s in it for the restaurants? A lot. Teaming with a household brand and a familiar food means that diners are much more likely to order, say, a new dessert if it contains a known, well-loked commodity used in a different, innovative way. Burger King offers soft serve ice cream sundaes with the option of an Oreo cookie topping. Carl’s Jr. last year introduced the Oreo Cookie Sandwich, and The Cheesecake Factory features Oreos in one of its signature baked creations.
Yumminess alone though isn’t responsible for Oreo’s success. The marketers deserve more than a smidgen of credit. Today, Oreo has 23 million Facebook fans – they even set a Guinesss world record for most likes in a single Facebook in a 24 hour period last February. But, believe it or not, Oreo wasn’t the original chocolate sandwich cookie – it was merely an impersonator. In 1908, The Sunshine Baking Company started producing the Hydrox, the precursor to the Oreo. It was a tasty cookie alright, – by all accountsanyway, but it just didn’t have the marketing clout that Nabisco did, and Oreo quickly blew Hydrox out of the water driven by a powerful ad campaign, as Brian Palmer relays in Slate. Devising the “Twist, Lick, and Dunk” ritual that has become central to the Oreo experience is no doubt Nabisco’s greatest marketing triumph, but it wasn’t born of a sudden ah huh moment. Rather, it came about in a much more piece meal way. The “twist” was first introduced in a 1923 advert on trolley cars. The “lick” only entered print ads in the 1950s according to Business Insider. It wasn’t until the 1990′s, however, that Nabisco combined the twistand the lick with the dunk in a series of TV commercials.
But not everyone adheres to the dining conventional as dictated by Kraft – not that this has in any way dampened the world’s love affair with the cookie. Far from it, actually, says academic Elizabeth Mosby Adler. In a 1981 article, she argues that the obsession surround the cultish treat arose in part because its construction allowed consumers to find their own own individual style of eating the cookie thereby allowing them to engage more intimately with the food and to develop an affinity for it. In any case, if you are atwist, lick and dunk advocate and need to refine your technique, Kraft is commemorating Oreo’s birthday with a commercial- to run in 15 countries, featuring a selection of vignettes depicting the “twist, lick, and dunk” ritual in a panoply of everyday situations.
Read more of my work at www.nadia-arumugam.com, and if you have an interest in cooking and gardening in tight urban spaces, check out my other blog, Spade & Spatula .
Most Popular
.
