Blame it on General Foods. The industry-cornerstone food manufacturer has been looking broadly at its vast domain… And decided that certain food cultures might be open to non-traditional players. Even though history may indicate otherwise…
I remember, many moons ago, when instant noodles were just beginning to show up in North America. In fact, I had a ringside seat for some of the earliest market tests of the now-iconic food format here…
A natural?
When I was in university, living ‘in rez’ for most of my sojourn, I become involved with the institu-tion’s ‘cafeteria culture’. One outstanding feature of that often controversial environment was ongo-ing internal wars to balance the cost of providing sufficiently nutritious food and making several tens of thousands of young adults simply got every day.
The problems? First, even back then, the most nutritious foods were the costliest foods. And the most perishable foods. And the most persnikety to prepare. And then as now, the ‘kids’ were highly resist-ant to making healthy food choices when left to their own devices.
The other dimension…
… Involved getting the predominantly Flintstone-powered (‘own two feet’) popu-lation enough cal-ories to ensure they could literally stand up to the gruelling daily challenge of getting where they had to go. The last thing class and activity schedules took into account was how far apart the residences and the academic buildings were.
One investigative reporter got an article on the front page of the school newspaper by wearing a pe-dometer (footstep counter) for a week, and calculating how many miles the average student had to walk.
Lobbied for Pizza
Looking back, the student union had the right idea. It used the article as proof that students needed more energy-packed carbs on our menus. Specifically, they argued, Pizza. Which was not an approved menu item at that time.
But one aggressive student food activist said we should go another way. His name was Phil Chan, and his extended family owned a chain of Asian restaurants on the east coast. Their latest project as to start importing cup noodles from China. Long a favourite snack there, the format was almost en-tirely unknown in North America, outside the Asian diaspora in.
Phil argued for Noodles…
… And almost won his argument. His rationale relied heavily on the then-emerging phenomenon of Kraft Mac & Cheese, as a cheap, plentiful student staple that could be prepared in residence kit-chenettes with a minimum of fuss and muss. Another noodle-based product, it was actually praised by some dieticians as a something that could be ‘part of a healthy balanced diet’.
Why not cup noodles? Which were even easier and faster to prepare? And did not pose the disadvan-tages of a gooey mess and disposal of leftovers when (as often happened), a whole pot as cooked up just so one person could eat?
Just one problem: ‘instant noodle culture’ was just too foreign (in all senses of the world) or students and administration to relate to. Pizza beat out Ramen by approximately 40 to one in a campus survey.
Fast-forward to the 2020s….
Instant noodle culture is now fully developed – if not entrenched – in campus life. And food manu-facturers are engaged in phase 2 of the phenomenon: flavour wars and crossovers trying to carve out the biggest slice of a still-growing market.
Subcultural invasions have recently been attempted by ‘conventional’ cup noodle players, into fla-vours such as S’Mores, ‘Breakfast’ and Pumpkin Spice. And those are now being countered by non-noodle-conventional brands with flavours they are already solidly associated with, such as Tex-Mex and Italian.
My take
All I can say is… The time for counter-noodle-cultural ‘breakout’ MAY be now. But General Mills and others pushing them should be aware of ONE key factor that helped sink instant noodles when Phil Chan first proposed them as campus carbs: Survey respondents back then simply couldn’t relate to the photos of chopsticks on the labels. If – as was implied – you had to use chopsticks to eat the product… Well, that was a deal-killer, right there!
~ Maggie J.