“It’s a really great impulse item to just add on to the regular core business of beverage sales,” comments Jim Kim, co-founder of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Kick Prints, about his company’s mint tins. “The coffee shops are around to sell coffee and hand crafted beverages, but our mints become a nice little add-on, a nice little convenience to offer customers.”
            From licorice treats to chocolate-covered espresso beans to wine-infused chocolates, there’s certainly no shortage of creative companies developing delicious confections. 

Niches and novelties
Confection companies recognize that the key ingredient in all of their recipes is innovation, and through this competition of originality, the retailers can’t help but win. 
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            Oral Fixation Mints began with “the mission of making everyday products beautiful,” explains Henry Rich, co-founder and president of the Hopewell N.J. company.  “We use the highest-quality mint oils, and the tin is functional after use,” he continues.
            “At the outset, we said that we would use all the money that we make selling the product and spend it on the product.  We’re never going to be able to compete with the advertising budget of our competitors … so we figured we’d just have to make basically the best mint ever made and people would keep buying it,” Rich says.
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With, or without, sugar
Most confection companies expand their flavor line as their products gain popularity, but all of them do stick with what originally worked.
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            Koppers Chocolate’s Chocolate- Covered Espresso Beans are now available in 25 different flavors, including Hazelnut, Mardi Gras and Cinnamon Dusted.  The company also offers a Sugar Free Espresso and a Sugar Free Decaf Espresso in the same line.
            “There certainly is a specific market for sugar free and specific market for decaf,” Alexander says. “It’s never going to be as high as straight out chocolate and sugar because people are using them for different reasons.  But taste wise, they’re really spectacular.”
            Oral Fixation Mints come in six uniquely named flavors- 7 Deadly Cinnamon, Mojito Mint, Classical Peppermint, Night Light (Caffeinated Chai Mint), Sugar-Free Tibet (Sugerless Wintergreen) and Spare Mint (Spearmint).  All of the Oral Fixation Mints are sugar free except for the Night Light, “which is made with brown sugar to bring out the full spice of the caffeinated Chai”, Rich explains.
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            “It seems that consumers want to be able to pick up something and treat themselves to something small and not feel guilty about it, and just enjoy themselves,” Marich Confectionery Co.’s van Dam says.
            In terms of distinctive flavors, he says, “Caramel’s been really popular.  It's what we call ‘warm home and hearth’ kind of flavors: caramel, maple, toffee, nutty, salty, sweet, dark chocolate.  If you can picture sitting there in your sweatpants or with a blanket and some coffee and eating this chocolate in that flavored, that’s the kind of flavor you look for.”
            Heide’s Homemade Buttermints are available in original Peppermint, Strawberry, Cheesecake, Lemon, Key Lime and Coffee.
            Torn Ranch offers chocolate coffee beans in Dark, Milk and White Chocolate, in bags and gift containers.  Not to mention the Zozo Colombian coffee beans with chocolate in 2-ounce bags, or the Tea Time Truffles.

On the verge
Little i is developing its Cinnamon Mints, which will be available early this year, and a coffee-flavored mint that will launch in the spring.
            Earth Lover’s Chocolates (organic chocolates) will be the latest edition to the San Francisco Chocolates Factory’s product line, which will be out in early 2006.
            Oral Fixation Mints plan to introduce four flavors in the spring, all specifically targeted for the coffee industry-Mimosa, Green Tea, Jasmine, and a fruit-flavored mint.  Meanwhile, chocolate mints are on this year’s agenda for Heide’s Homemade Buttermints.
            Organic raw food bars with green tea is next on the list for Sencha Naturals Green Tea Mints, and the company might also be adding a jasmine-flavored mint.
            Torn Ranch will launch a green tea bar with dark chocolate, as well as a line of tea chocolates using real tea from places such as India and Sri Lanka and packaged in canisters covered in Old World graphics.
             Blizzard’s Bones, all of whose mints are sugar free, has two new tins coming out early this year, one featuring a Black Lab, Lipowski explains, “And a new puppy tin featuring a Siberian Husky and a St. Bernard, and they’re ice fishing.  It’s the cutest tin in the world,” she says.

The savvy customer
Alexander, of Koppers Chocolate, believes that consumer tastes are becoming more sophisticated, which is right in line with her company’s adult audience.
            “We started out having sophisticated chocolates,” she says. “We’ve always specialized in dark chocolate and a very high cocoa content.  We really specialized in using superb beans and equally good chocolate.. if you’re going to have a coffeeshop where you really want to show our coffee, to me it doesn’t make sense not to have superior beans.”
            Kookaburra’s Faulds agrees that tastes are changing. 
            “The majority of people who want a specialty licorice are adults.  But yet my daughter, who’s 10, and all of her friends love the licorice,” she says.
            Black Forest Chocolate’ owner, Granville, notices a sway in consumer opinion.
            “I’ve seen more interest in this side of the industry, kind of away from the hard candy, and more into chocolates that are associated with food values. Instead of just candy for the sake of candy,” he says.
            Rich, with Oral Fixation Mints, says, “I think consumers are a lot more sophisticated than most stores give people credit for.  You’ll always find that retailers are more conservative than consumers. And what’s been really good for our retailers is that when a place carries Oral Fix, it’s not just that the consumer buys Oral Fix, they consider this place the kind of place that stocks high-quality items and kind of edgy products.  Carrying Oral Fix [near] your cash register is almost like installing a slightly classier or edgier interior.”
            Kurdoon, of Sencha Naturals Green Tea Mints, thinks there’s a sort of burn out in the confectionary world in terms of the overly strong mints flavors.
            “I think with the way the gourmet foods are increasing in terms of awareness,” he explains, “it’s kind of falling into the confectionery market where your mouth doesn’t feel overwhelmed.”
            “I think they’re more sophisticated because they’ve become more knowledgeable,” Torn Ranch’s Shaffer points out. “What they’re looking for, what they’ve been reading, has given them the urge to go out and buy something that they enjoy.  And that usually means a premium product.”