Americans are drinking more coffee these days, and nearly half of us bought a mocha, cappuccino,

latte, or ice coffee.  So are the candy manufacturers going to just sit back and watch?  First one to

cash in on this is Nestle, with their new Nestle Crunch Mocha.  It’s a bit of a test, and they’re only

trying the vending size for a limited time, so check it out soon!

Wise Foods has been around for 75 years, and they’re still coming out with new things to do with

potatoes:  Krunchers Potato Chips, described as “Super Hot and Spicy (no more wimpy chips!)”;

Cheez Dizzy Doodles; and Wise Smoky Mountain BBQ Potato Chips.

Russell Stover is jumping into vending.  They’ve long been known in grocery stores, and now

they’re teaming up with Welch’s for Russell Stover Peanut Butter & Jelly Cups, in two flavors,

Grape Jelly and Red Raspberry Jam.  Apparently these two flavors account for 45% of all jelly sales. 

They’ve also repackaged their single 2 oz. Pecan Delights (very popular in grocery stores) in a

vendable 1.6 oz. package with two Delights in it!

Wrestling to the top of industry news:   Coca-Cola is teaming up with World Championship Wrestling

to promote Surge, with cans featuring pictures of wrestling stars Goldberg, Sting, and others.

(By the way, Coke is not alone; Slim Jim snacks also have a wrestling tie-in.)

If you’ve got kids, you know about Pokémon.  General Mills has joined Nintendo to develop a

Pokémon fruit roll.  It’ll come with a trading card; Pokémon is already the top trading card as well as

the top video game; maybe it can conquer the fruit roll world, too!

Keebler bought Famous Amos awhile ago, and now they’re introducing Toffee Chocolate Chip

cookies, with the familiar colors and packaging.  These new cookies also carry OU Kosher certification

besides being delicious.

Herr’s debuted new Honey Mustard and Onion Pretzel Pieces recently.  They also won a couple of

awards as best bakery.   Based in Pennsylvania, watch for a national rollout of this new product.

If you’ve got healthy folks who drink V-8, they’ll be interested in Campbell’s new flavor, Calcium

Enriched V-8, with as much calcium as a glass of milk and only 50 calories.

An alternative to some of the pricier soft drinks is White Rock; they have a wide variety of sodas

in 12 oz. cans in Orange, Cream, Root Beer, Birch Beer, Black Cherry, Grape, Pineapple, Ginger Ale,

Cola, Lemon Lime, Seltzer; and Diet Ginger Ale and Diet Soda.

Otis Spunkmeyer has three great new snack muffins (three to a pack): Burstin’ Blueberry, Banana

Bananza, and Double Chocolate Chip.  With a cup of coffee or cocoa on a cold day ... a great snack

for your customers!

Golden Valley’s Act II Microwave Popcorn has a new flavor:  Corn on the Cob, with the same great

taste as, well, corn on the cob!

In Canada, Fairlee Fruit Juice has a line of 100% pure “squeezed/pressed, not-from-concentrate”

juices.  The line includes Pure Florida Squeezed Orange Juice, Pure Florida Squeezed Ruby Red

Grapefruit, and Pure Pressed Apple Juice.

We have a policy of only recommending products that vend properly from Refreshment Centers; occasionally we discover

differences in regional bottlers that cause problems. The Fairlee products mentioned  above come in 11 oz. bottles and should

vend properly from Refreshment Centers. In the meantime, if we state that a product has not been tested, you might try

test-vending a single bottle or two.  If they work, great!