Neilson Dairy will launch, next month, liquid milk-based versions of three chocolate bar brands sold by sister company Neilson Cadbury.
Georgetown, Ont.,-based Neilson Dairy and Toronto-based Neilson Cadbury are separate divisions of the Weston Foods Group.
The bars are Crispy Crunch, Jersey Milk and Malted Milk.
The milkshake-like products, to be sold in drink-in-a-box packages, will mark the first time in Canada a chocolate bar flavor has been bled into the fluid milk category.
Grant Robertson, assistant product manager at Neilson Dairy, reveals an ad campaign will accompany the product launch, but apart from that he remains tight-lipped.
Neilson Dairy says the drinks will taste like cold, melted versions of the chocolate bars, and will have six to eight months of shelf-life.
Milk products infused with a well-known chocolate bar’s brand identity may have an edge in the industry, which sells one billion litres a year in Ontario, according to statistics from the Ontario Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
Chocolate bars tend to have more brand identity than milk, which is a generic product, says Adrian Sark, vice-president of marketing at Hershey Canada.
Sark says it is a trend in the industry to transfer chocolate bar brands into other categories such as cereal and ice-cream.
He cites General Mills’ recent co-branding effort with Hershey’s Reese Peanut Butter Cups brand, producing Reese Peanut Butter Puffs cereal, and, also, Neilson Cadbury’s Mr. Big brand ice-cream bars.
Attract attention
Sandra Kim, category development manager on premium frozen novelties at Ault Foods, says milk products carrying chocolate bar branding may initially attract consumer attention.
But, Kim says, the product has to deliver on taste, and offer consumers a reason to switch from brands already established in the category, if they are to succeed.
