'Swicy' items take over restaurant menus as Gen Z seeks heat

suimt — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 18:46:25 +0000

A general view of atmosphere during ‘Sonic Desert’ presented by Coca-Cola Spiced and Topo Chico in partnership with BPM Music on April 13, 2024 in Thermal, California.

Randy Shropshire | Getty Images

The hottest food and drink trend this year isn’t just spicy — it’s also sweet.

“Swicy,” a portmanteau of sweet and spicy, has taken over restaurant marketing. While the term hasn’t actually appeared on menus, the shorthand has become a popular way to describe the resurgence of foods and drinks marrying sweet and spicy flavors. The Food Institute even dubbed it the “Summer of Swicy” this year.

Nearly 10% of restaurant menus have “sweet and spicy” items, up 1.8% over the last 12 months, according to market research firm Datassential. Over the next four years, its menu penetration is expected to rise 9.6%.

A slew of restaurant chains have embraced the trend, from Shake Shack’s swicy menu to Burger King’s Fiery Strawberry & Sprite to Starbucks’ Spicy Lemonade Refreshers. Common menu items have paired fruity flavors and chili powder, or used sauces like hot honey and gochujang, a red chili paste that’s a popular Korean condiment.

Starbucks Spicy Lemonade Refreshers.

Courtesy: Starbucks

Although the menu items were largely only available for a limited time, culinary experts think that the swicy trend has staying power.

Buzzy, trendy menu items are more important now to restaurants, which are leaning on both discounts and innovation to attract diners and reverse declining sales. In August, traffic to U.S. restaurants fell 3.6%, the industry’s second-worst monthly performance this year since January, according to Black Box Intelligence. Limited-time menu items are particularly attractive to Gen Z customers, a key demographic because they account for roughly a fifth of Americans.

McCormick first called out the reemerging trend in its 2022 flavor forecast report, according to Hadar Cohen Aviram, executive chef for the spice and flavoring company’s U.S. consumer division.

McCormick highlighted “plus sweet,” when sweetness acts as a flavor enhancer rather than being the star of the show. The forecasters were even considering naming the trend “swicy” in their report but went with “plus sweet” because it was broader, she said.

The following year, McCormick, which owns Frank’s RedHot and Cholula, called out “beyond heat,” or using other flavors to bring out more flavor in addition to the spiciness.

“We see lots of different people wanting to add some heat to their plates, but they do want to make sure that there’s something for everyone,” Cohen Aviram said.

Shake Shack’s culinary team was inspired to make Korean-inspired items for a limited-time menu, according to John Karangis, the company’s executive chef and vice president of culinary innovation.

One of the menu items was a Korean fried chicken sandwich, coated in a sweet and spicy gochujang glaze. After it created the limited-time menu, Shake Shack’s marketing team pitted the chicken sandwich against the Korean BBQ burger, with savory and salty flavors. It told customers to pick a side: team swicy or team umami.

The swicy trend also appeals to Gen Z, the cohort born between 1997 and 2012.

“We have a new generation, Generation Z, that’s really excited about complex flavor profiles — but there’s only so many you can taste: sweet, salty, bitter, umami,” Nielsen said.

Here’s one example of the generation’s heat-seeking behavior: over half of Gen Z consumers identify as “hot sauce connoisseurs,” according to a survey conducted by NCSolutions.

And with swicy, achieving the perfect ratio can be tough because it’s so personal, McCormick’s Cohen Aviram said.

Feedback from Shake Shack’s customers reflects that, too.

“Of course, we hear a lot of great feedback from guests, and we also heard other feedback like ‘Hey, you could have punched it up a little bit,'” Karangis said.

Cohen Aviram prefers about 40% sweet, 60% spicy when she’s creating swicy concoctions, like a Frank’s RedHot ice cream bar.

“The thing with sweetness if that it kind of hijacks your palate, so if you use too much of it, you’re just not going to sense the nuance,” she said.

When Burger King released its Fiery menu this summer, it ranked the items on a scale of spiciness. At one – meaning the least spicy – was its Fiery Strawberry & Sprite drink. The swicy menu item was inspired by another trend: “dirty sodas,” the combination of soda, creamers and syrups started in Utah, according to Pat O’Toole, Burger King North America’s chief marketing officer.

The drink marked the first time that Burger King tweaked a classic fountain beverage, but it previously introduced a Frozen Fanta Kickin’ Mango, with a similar swicy flavor profile.

“Guests can easily and accessibly try a ‘swicy’ beverage offering and work their way up the spice scale with other food items, if they so choose,” O’Toole said, adding that the chain saw strong interest across its focus groups for a spicy take on Sprite.

Of course, not all swicy profiles resonate with customers. For example, Coca-Cola in September discontinued its spiced Coke just six months after it hit shelves, after it initially intended it as a permanent offering.

But despite some missteps, the swicy pairing is likely here to stay – at least for a while.

“The flavors will stick around, for sure. I think the name will get tiresome. … It probably still has a couple of years to go,” Nielsen said.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO

Dow drops more than 350 points as Wall Street's rally takes a breather: Live updates

Aseem — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 19:32:50 +0000

A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

NYSE

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell Monday, giving back some of the strong gains from last week, as Treasury yields rose and investors awaited new earnings reports.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.3%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 330 points, or about 0.8%. The Nasdaq Composite hovered just above the flatline.

Consumer and homebuilder stocks were among the biggest losers as fears about higher-for-longer interest rates crept up, with Target and Builders FirstSource each down more than 4%. Lennar also shed more than 3.5%.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury jumped, rising more than 10 basis points to 4.178%.

“Bond yields continue to back up, which implies to me that investors are now thinking that the Fed will be slower to lower interest rates because the economy remains resilient,” CFRA chief investment strategist Sam Stovall said. “As a result, the Fed will likely have a harder time pushing the inflation rate down to its target 2% level in the next year or so.”

Earnings will be key this week with roughly one-fifth of the S&P 500 set to report. Among the companies on deck are Tesla, Coca-Cola and GE Aerospace.

Thus far, the results have been mixed. Of the 14% of S&P 500 companies that have already posted third-quarter results, 79% have beaten expectations, according to FactSet’s John Butters. Analysts have significantly downgraded their earnings expectations for the quarter in recent months.

“I don’t think that we are in the beginnings of an earnings recession or anything like that, but the bar has been set very, very low … rarely does anybody injure themselves falling out of a basement window,” Stovall said. “So with earnings this low, chances are that this will be the 60th quarter out of the past 62 in which actual results exceed end-of-quarter estimates.”

Still, investors are largely optimistic equities still have further room to run, but they are mindful that stretched valuations, particularly ahead of the U.S. presidential election and amid rising geopolitical risks, could also mean further choppiness.

Monday’s moves come after both the S&P 500 and 30-stock Dow registered all-time highs on Friday, cementing a sixth straight weekly advance for both benchmarks.

Coca-Cola Co – TheNewsHub

'Swicy' items take over restaurant menus as Gen Z seeks heat

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO

Dow drops more than 350 points as Wall Street's rally takes a breather: Live updates