News

Going nuts for Not Nuts

The winner of this year’s Confectionery Award was Sweet William’s Not Nuts chocolate bar – a unique combination of creamy chocolate and roasted soy beans, inside a completely nut free chocolate bar, with all the crunch and taste of nuts.

“We definitely didn’t expect the win,” said the company’s sales and marketing manager, Carol O’Halloran. “If you consider the fact that big companies have half a million dollars to spend on R&D as well as marketing, and compare it to us, a small company with just 13 people, it’s an understandable shock.

“For such a small company to be able to bring something to market that tastes good and is very innovative, and to have it acknowledged by the industry, is a huge thing. We’re hoping that it will attract more attention and get us more sales both here and overseas.”

Sweet William developed Not Nuts to meet the growing consumer interest and demand for nut free products. Free of peanuts and tree nuts, dairy free, gluten free, lactose free, and containing no artificial flavours and colours, no preservatives, and with a low GI rating, Not Nuts is also vegan suitable, Kosher and Halal certified. Missing so many of the key components expected in confectionery, the one thing Not Nuts is full of, insists the company, is flavour.

The novel ingredients are the roasted soy beans which have been used as a substitute for nuts, giving the crunch, without the nuts, and taste tests have shown that consumers are constantly surprised when told there are no nuts in the product. The chocolate base is also a new formula, created by Sweet William food technicians, to simulate the creaminess of milk chocolate in a dairy free chocolate product.

“For us to win an award in the mainstream confectionery sector, puts a whole new light on our possible company direction,” said O’Halloran. “If we’re actually recognised as main-stream confectionery rather than as a health-food section product, it expands our potential.

“The win definitely gives our shareholders and our board confidence that we’re heading in the right direction. One of our distributers already rang us, the same day that we put the information about the win on our website, to congratulate us. And this was a new distributer who hadn’t started selling our products yet. So it’s obviously giving us added credibility.”

Send this to a friend