New snacks foods featuring U.S. pork are appearing at sporting events, music festivals and even on flights south of the border.
U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) Mexico trade manager Rigoberto Treviño and his staff have been working alongside processors and convenience store chains to develop new snack items featuring U.S. pork, which include:
- Cones of fried chicharrones made from U.S. pork jowl
- Chicha-ramen – an Asian inspired instant ramen noodle with U.S. pork jowl topping
- Snack-Atelas – a dried ham snack
“Last year, we launched a product called Snack-Atelas that is like dry meat with pork ham,” Treviño says.
One of the largest convenience store distributors in Mexico with 22,000 stores carries the product across Mexico.
“The [chicharron] is 100% U.S. pork and is also in all of their stores,” Treviño says. “It is in different flights with Viva Aerobus, so we are proud to say that we are selling pork jowl chicharron over the air all over Mexico.”
With the market for U.S. pork well established, these new convenience snacks were created to meet the demand of busy lifestyles of consumers. Development and promotion of the new products was supported by USDA, the National Pork Board and state soybean checkoff programs.
Mexico is the largest export market for U.S. pork, generating nearly $836 million in sales through April of this year.
The chicharrones cone and chicha-ramen were unveiled at Pal-Norté, a large music festival in Monterrey that drew more than 80,000 people each of its three days.
“We started that idea with a cone that is bites of pork jowl chicharron. If you are in a festival, in a concert or in a soccer match, you want to eat something that is very easy to buy to eat,” Treviño says.
Due to the success of these snacks, new channels are being developed to sell them.
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