Brownie thins are an increasingly popular snack in Thailand.
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Thai-based Superskinny Brownie Thins believes that its clean label flourless brownies made with only five ingredients holds the key to success in the local healthy snacking market.
Superskinny is a brand under healthier snacks firm Tropical Fruits Fusion – which is best known for its Frappy 40% fruit juice gummy candies – and focuses wholly on baked crispy brownie thins.
“There are quite a number of brownie thins in the Thai market currently, but most of these contain flour and added sugar,” Tropical Fruits Fusion Managing Director Sirida Nagadatta told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“We believe that a further step is needed to be considered a healthy snack, and have thus developed our brownies using a banana base so that no sugar at all needs to be added to the recipe due to banana’s natural sweetness.
“These brownie thins are made of just five ingredients: Banana, oat and almond flour, baking powder, salt, and some seasoning to create either the Banoffee or Double Espresso flavours, but we do not add any preservatives or sugar and we do not use wheat flour so the products are all gluten free.”
While sweetness is of course important to creating a good brownie, Nagadatta believes that the firm has found a balance between sweet, sour and savoury flavours that elevates Superskinny brownies to a different level.
“The banana is key here as it provides the natural sweet and sour flavours, and then the savoury element is added via the oat and almond flour,” she said.
“This is how we can ensure that the brownie thins have a satisfying flavour whilst still remaining a clean label product.”
Health and wellness has been a prevailing theme in the Asian food and beverage industry since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and this has been a major driver for clean label products particularly in Thailand.
“This trend has definitely helped the clean label business to expand a lot in Thailand and Asia, but I would say that it is still quite a niche space,” she said.
“The growth is definitely there and on the way up, so being healthier products is essentially a competitive advantage – and for us this is aided further by the brownie thins being gluten-free.
“Gluten-free products are very much trending right now, alongside a demand for fruit-based products – we fulfil both of these trends with the brownie thins, so it has been doing well.”
Market challenges
That said, Superskinny has also faced its fair share of supply chain challenges similar to many other food firms in Asia especially because it has to deal primarily with fresh fruits and nuts.
“The whole idea of being clean label and healthy is that we use fresh fruits both for our gummies and the brownie thins, which means that our costs are higher than average,” she said.
“This has been made more difficult given the economic environment in the region, and we not only have to worry about fruit supply but also almond supply, so it is not easy.
“The fact that clean label and healthy products are still a niche market also present us with the challenge of having to explain this added cost – and we need to do this well too so that consumers are willing to pay that premium to keep the high quality of the product going.”
