Who wouldn’t love the New York Fancy Food Show?  Walking around eating in the name of specialty food marketing is something I look forward to every year.  The other treat? Trendwatching.  There was the year of mustards, the year of salsas, the year of artisanal chocolates, the year of tea.  This year?

Quick high-impact bites.  Brownie Brittle  delivers just the crunchy part of the brownie.  Cookie Chips “taste like a cookie, eat like a chip”, Pasta Chips  are…well, you know what they are from the name. 
Whatever Stacy’s pita chips started has caught on in every baked good you can imagine, and whatever territory the mini-bites missed has been popped ala Pop Corners. And as I wandered from small treat to small treat, it occurred to me that these changes in our snacking reflect the changes in our media consumption as well.   Consider that over time our entertainment has gotten smaller and smaller – from Facebook to Pinterest, from email to Twitter, from YouTube to Vine, from Instagram to Snapchat.  We have no patience for the buildup, no need for the follow through.  We know the story already, so just give us the quick hit, the climax, the peak experience, and keep them coming.

So it should be no surprise to see the emergence of chipotle-dusted quinoa chip. These foods are high-flavor, high-crunch, and as addictive as BubbleWitch.  According to those who study personality and snacking choices, 33% of snackers are “Crunchers,” aggressively preferring snacks that make noise.  Highly flavored snacks indicate an ‘adventurous’ personality. Dig through a bag of any of these and see if the sound of your own crunching, the high impact of each flavor hit doesn’t inspire the invention of the next app.