What's Going On In The Australian Biscuits Market? Part Six: Sweet Biscuits Growth Prospects Not So Sweet

“Sweet biscuits”- and in this case we are using the Retail World definition of “sweet biscuits” which includes plain biscuits, cream biscuits, and cookies, but not chocolate coated biscuits which are a whole other thing - make up just over a third of the total biscuit market in Australia.  Sweet biscuits are also by some distance the largest biscuit category in Australia, big enough that their performance is critical to the performance of the biscuit aisle overall.

And the performance of the “sweet biscuits” category in recent years has largely been lacklustre.  Even if we assume that the sudden dip in 2013 was an aberration at least partially due to the Zumbo-led Tim Tam revival being experienced over in the chocolate coated biscuit category, the one-and-a-bit percent value growth over the last two years is hardly something to get excited about.

This lacklustre performance of “sweet biscuits” is even more concerning when you consider that since 2013 it has included a new brand; a brand so different from what you usually think of when you say “sweet biscuits” that some might argue it should not be included at all.  Some might argue that it shouldn’t even be stocked in the biscuit aisle, but the breakfast aisle. I myself am rather sympathetic to these arguments. 

I am of course referring to Belvita, the “sweet biscuit” so big that it is marketed as a breakfast replacement.  Launched into the Australian “sweet biscuit” market with quite a bit of hype, it grabbed 3.2% value market share that year, and has gradually expanded its popularity from there.  Very gradually.  In 2015 Belvita’s market share reached 4%.  Belvita’s momentum might be slow, but it’s still one of the more dynamic performers of the “sweet biscuits” category.

The only brand more dynamic is Oreo.  Although Oreo's performance over the last five years has been inconsistent; sometimes up, sometimes down, but always hovering somewhere between 5-8% market share, which actually makes them the most popular sweet biscuit brand in Australia.  But 2015 was one of the good years.  And that's before the launch of Oreo Thins, which didn't happen until early 2016.  A good time then for Mondelez - who own Oreo - to launch an Oreo Cadbury Dairy Milk!

Yes, 2015 was certainly a good year for Oreo.

A bad year however for Arnott's Tiny Teddy, a brand that only until last year was the largest brand in sweet biscuits; it's now No.2.  Are the parents of Australia looking for a healthier snack for their children?

What's particularly impressive about Oreo's success - although looking at the longer term of five years their market share has barely budged - is that they have achieved this despite having the highest unit price on the market.

Therefore, much of the already slow growth being experienced by the “sweet biscuits” category is coming from outside of the category’s traditional market.  A look at which demographics particularlyenjoy a “sweet biscuit” – as we did a few blog posts ago - goes a long way in revealing why; “sweet biscuits” are particularly favoured by elderly Australians (and particularly elderly ladies) who like to partake of an Arnott’s Kingston (my personal favourite “sweet biscuit”) whilst having a cupof tea or coffee.

And this is the problem that “sweet biscuits” face.  As we mentioned in a previous post, the Australian tea market is in a seemingly irreversible decline, largely due to the fact that the consumption of tea is particularly skewed towards those over the age of 70, an age group that is - to put it in as sensitive a manner as possible - coming to the end of their lifecycle. 

The prospects for “sweet biscuits” are not quite as dire.  Whilst consumption of tea is very generation-specific, the consumption of coffee is not; and coffee consumers still need something to dunk in their coffee.  Still the idea of a relaxing coffee/biscuit combination is increasingly seeming quaint, particularly if you could have something a bit fancier instead: a brownie perhaps, or a friand.  Or a chocolate coated biscuit.

The result is that “sweet biscuits” consumption is increasingly skewed towards the sweet old lady demographic.

Little surprise therefore that by far the largest player in the “sweet biscuits” category is a company whose brands – for the most part – go back even further than their key demographic. 

I am referring of course to Arnott’s; a company with 58.5% value market share of the “sweet biscuits” market in 2015.  A company whose Facebook page currently features a cover photo of an old fashioned biscuit tin.  Their nostalgia-hungry fans – no doubt – would approve.

(Although they certainly don’t approve of the new Shapes flavour! But that’s a whole different story)

Nostalgic photos of biscuit tins are fine for reinforcing Arnott’s brand image as the great Australian biscuit company, but it’s not the sort of thing that lends itself to category growth.  Particularly in the face of the rather more dynamic chocolate coated biscuit category which appears to be stealing consumers from the neighbouring “sweet biscuits” portion of the biscuits aisle. 

Chocolate coatedbiscuits have grown because of the innovative flavours launched by Tim Tam, who are of course also owned by Arnott’s. Arnott’s have paid a lot of attention to their chocolate coated biscuits brands, and relatively little attention to their “sweet biscuits” brands, which have remained virtually unchanged for decades.

Little surprise then that Coles has gone off searching around the world for a brand to bring a little pizzazz to the biscuit aisle.  Although, as with most things Coles does, that simply means importing a popular British brand: Maryland, otherwise known as “Britain’s Favourite Cookie,” - who appear to have taken a kind of Cadbury’s Marvellous Creations take on the cookie: “Mix’ems with Fruit Jellies and Candy Shells”! – and Fox’s. 

Woolworths’ preferred pizzazzing strategy is to launch a range of cookies under their gourmet Woolworths’ Gold private label brand.

Private labels have a relatively strong presence in “sweet biscuits”, hovering just over 10%.  Whilst not particularly high in the grand scheme of things, that’s twice as high as is the case in chocolate coated biscuits, where Tim Tam’s range of fancy biscuits has kept them a step or two ahead of competition.

There is more to the “sweet biscuits” market than just the continued dominance of Arnott’s and the rise of Belvita however.  Mondelez’ other brand – Oreo – appears to have found a stable following in Australia, hovering just over 5%, but the final relatively major player – Green’s, the owner of Paradise and Greens cookies since 2014, before which Paradise was owned by Goodman Fielder – appears to have lost its way, losing 4.4% market share over the last four years.

Specializing in cookies, Greens appears to have lost the cookie consumer to the moister offerings of store baked cookies, their market share almost halving from 11.3% in 2011 down to 6.9% in 2015. It is rather difficult to compete with freshly baked cookies after all.

Which is yet another threat that Arnott’s needs to deal with.  It’s not just the demographic difficulties, it’s the temptation of freshly baked cookies outside of the biscuit aisle.  They’ve already succeeded in revitalizing the chocolate coated biscuit category; what can they do with “sweet biscuits”?

Following the success of Tim Tam’s efforts, Arnott’s have finally come up with a two-pronged strategy to revitalise the “sweet biscuits” category.  The first, and less exciting of the two, is to reinvent the packaging from white to a more majestic looking metallic red.  The second is their Twisted Faves range, another example of what I like to call the Marvellous Creationism of snack foods.  There is a Salted Caramel Monte Carlo.  A Jaffa Choc Orange Delta Cream.  A Strawberries & Cream Shortbread Cream.  A Choc Chip Scotch Finger.  

It’s not quite Espresso Martini flavour, but it’s something.

Arnott’s claimed that all of this was just to celebrate their 150^th Anniversary. But it’s probably also to inject some excitement into a quite frankly stale category.  It certainly needs it.

What's Going On In The Australian Biscuit Market? Part Five: Tim Tam Slams The Chocolate Coated Biscuit Market

The Australian chocolate coated biscuit market is BACK!  More or less.

Things had been looking shaking there for a couple of years, dipping into quite worrying levels of negative value growth in 2012, at which time the impulse purchase nature of the category encouraged retailers to discount them heavily.  Which, it has to be said, was not the most imaginative solution in the world.  Which was a pity, because if there was one thing that the chocolate coated biscuits market needed, it was imagination. And they were about to get it!

Because something big had to change.  Or to be more specific, something big had to change for the one brand big enough to single handedly change the course of the entire category. 

And I think we all know which brand that was.

If you ask the average Australian on the street to name a brand of chocolate coated biscuit, most of the time (I’d wager as often as 99%) they will say Arnott’s Tim Tams. Arnott’s Tim Tams are pretty much what chocolate biscuits mean to the majority of Australians.  You don’t see Australians teach foreigners the intricacies of how to do a Mint Slice Slam do you?  So it may be surprising to hear that for all of its fame, Arnott’s Tim Tams actually make up less than half of the chocolate biscuit market in Australia.  Although it does come quite close.  And is getting closer.  But we’ll discuss that in more detail later.

The fortunes of both Tim Tam and consequently the overall chocolate biscuit market began to change in 2013 when the brand started to focus on flavours other than the classic Tim Tam Original, first by launching Tim Tam Treat Packs, small packs of Tim Tam’s in a wider range of flavours than previously thought possible.

Anyone who thought that this was as far as they could go was in for a rude shock.  In 2014, Tim Tam brought Adriano Zumbo – almost certainly Australia’s most famous pastry chef – to invent three new flavours.

These flavours – Salted Caramel, Choc Brownie and Raspberry White Choc – were a significant departure from the previous offerings, such as Original, Dark Chocolate, Caramel, White Chocolate.  The old flavours were very well and good, but nothing you could really call “on trend”.  Nothing that captured the zeitgeist.  But “salted caramel”!  It might seem a little passé now, but in 2014 that was some true “finger on the pulse” work.  They stood out on the shelf, and not only because Raspberry White Choc came in a bright pink pack.

It’s only been two and a half years since Adriano Zumbo introduced the Salted Caramel Tim Tam, but it sometimes feels like there have been more flavours invented in those two and a half years than in the entire history of, not just Tim Tams, but the entire chocolate coated biscuit industry!

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the various versions of Tim Tams that have appeared over the last couple of years: Espresso Martini, Pina Colada, Strawberry Champagne, Toffee Apple, Red Velvet, Three Beans, Chocolate Coconut and the rest of the Adriano Zumbo range.  Not to mention the whole Chocolicious range which is becoming increasingly fancy itself with such flavours as Velvet Mudslide.    

So many flavours in fact that they’ve had to divide their new releases between Woolworths and Coles; Woolworths have received the “mocktails” range, whilst Coles have been delivered Choc Banana and Choc Pineapple.

Not all of these variations have been successes, but they have certainly helped keep the Tim Tam brand at the front of every chocolate coated biscuit lovers mind. 

Whether this strategy has been a success has been a matter of much debate amongst commentators within the chocolate coated biscuit industry; with rumours of late night meetings between the Australian office and their American masters, apologising that maybe this time – with the Pina Colada or Strawberry Champagne range – they went too far.

And that seems to be the common consensus opinion: Salted Caramel may have been an inspired idea, but now things are just getting ridiculous.

Still, you can’t say that the experiment hasn’t been at least a partial success. Value growth of chocolate coated biscuits returned to positive territory, even whilst volume growth remained negative and seemingly trending downwards.  More revenue for less chocolate coated biscuits; that must count as some sort of success.

The reason volume growth has gone down is largely because those fancy new flavours of Tim Tam come in smaller pack sizes, of 165-175g compared to 200g for the Tim Tam original.

Meanwhile Tim Tams have also grabbed a larger slice of the Australian chocolate coated biscuit market.  In 2015, Tim Tams made up 45.6% of the market (according to the Retail World Annual Report), just less than half.  Strong gains that have continued into 2015.

The Tim Tam revolution is not the only thing to have happened in the Australian chocolate coated biscuit market over the last half decade or so.  There has also been the rise, and then fall of the Cadbury biscuits brand. 

Cadbury arrived on the chocolate coated biscuit block in 2013, and made some rather impressive early gains, debuting at 7.6% market share. There was clearly a high level of excitement about the possibility of a Cadbury biscuit – a chocolate biscuit made by people who know about chocolate, with a range of popular chocolate brand names to wack on them – but it didn’t really work out.  Two years later and Cadbury’s now only hold 3.5% value market share in 2015.

Then there has been the fall of private labels.  Don’t fall for the whole “private labels are taking over the world” line, because as Tim Tam has convinced Australian consumers to expect so much more from a chocolate coated biscuit, private label brands have fallen back.  Private label have declined each year over the last half decade, from 13.9% in 2010 down to 7% in 2015. It just goes to show that it is a trend that can be reversed if you just make something a little bit exciting.

Not to mention possibly surprisingly cheap.  Because despite all this text-book premiumisation and gourmet flavours to excite the "foodies", Tim Tam remains one of the least expensive chocolate coated biscuits on the market, largely due to being such a big drawcard for supermarkets that it's almost permanently on special.

No wonder it's slamming the competition.

It hasn’t been all good news for Arnott’s though, since virtually every other non-Tim Tam Arnott’s brand has also suffered. Simply because why would you eat an Arnott’s Royal when you could have a Tim Tam? 

Arnott’s Mint Slice has been the exception to the rule.  Slightly.  Although even they have fallen backwards in 2015.

Which means that, as a result, Arnott's corporate market share has actually gone backwards, despite the success of Tim Tam.  Although they are clearly still far far ahead.

So Arnott’s Tim Tam have revolutionised the Australian chocolate coated biscuit market and returned the category to reasonable levels of positive growth.  Categories don’t operate in a vacuum though, and most of this growth has come from the category that is chocolate coated biscuits most obvious and closest substitute: sweet biscuits, a category whose performance over the last few years could be described as shaky at best.  And this is something that Arnott’s probably isn’t too happy about.

What's Going On In The Australian Biscuit Market? Part Four: Which Biscuits Are Australians Eating?

biscuits, Australia, sweet biscuits, chocolate biscuits, crackers, crispbread, rice cakes, rice crackers

So in the last couple of posts we have established the following

(a)   that Australians are no longer eating biscuits in the quantities that they used to

(b)   that the biscuits we are eating are slightly “fancier”, leading to some value growth despite rather consistent volume decline

(c)    that the most passionate devotees of biscuits are kids and the elderly

(d)   that the number of people who eat “sweet biscuits” is greater than the number that eat “savoury biscuits”

But “sweet biscuits” and “savoury biscuits” are still rather vague categories. So let’s have a look in little more detail; at which types of biscuits the Australian consumer bought in 2015 according to the Retail World Annual Report.  Here we have a graph in the form of a planogram, or as I like to call it, a planograph.

“Sweet Biscuits” in this case include cream biscuits, plain biscuits and cookies, but not chocolate coated biscuits.

 What’s interesting about these proportions is that they have barely changed over the last five years. 

Crackers & Crispbreads have lost a square, as have “Flavoured Snacks” (ie Arnott’s Shapes and other similar snacking related brands).

Rice crackers and premium/entertaining (think of Waterthins Twists for example) have gained one each. 

And about half a percentage point market share appears to have drifted from Sweet Biscuits straight to Chocolate Coated Biscuits, as consumers go for something a little more decadent.

But that is about it.

Despite the hustle and bustle of the last couple of years – the Zumbo-concocted Tim Tam revolution, the rise of Belvita, the fall of Ritz In A Biskit – the end result is that Australians are largely eating much the same biscuits as they were half a decade ago.,

Quite a lot has occurred within each sub-category however, so let’s have a look at them in closer detail, starting with Chocolate Coated Biscuits.

What's Going On In The Australian Biscuit Market? Part Three: Who's Eating All Of The Savoury Biscuits?

biscuits, Australia, Arnotts, demographics, market segmentation

In Battle Of The Brands Australia’s last post we looked at the sweet biscuit consumer; which demographics enjoy chomping on a sweet biscuit.  Which it turns out is children and the elderly, but not so much those of us in between those two extremes.

In this post, we will do the same for “savoury biscuits”, a wide reaching category which covers everything from Arnott’s Shapes to water crackers to rice crackers and rice cakes.

Our first savoury biscuit consumption graph – on what proportion of each age group eats a savoury biscuit on any average day, and based on the ABS Australian Health Survey - throws up a few interesting factoids. 

Savoury biscuits, like sweet biscuits, are particularly favoured by the young and the old, with those in the middle not particularly fussed about them.

Quite which savoury biscuits each age group consumer probably differs wildly… not wanting to get too stereotypical here, but one can assume that the 2-3 year olds are nibbling on a rice cracker, the elderly a Jatz with a slice of cheese on top, which the teenagers stuff their faces with Arnott’s Shapes. 

And when I say “stuff their faces”, I mean it; look at that graph! 

Whilst the average savoury biscuit consuming Australian eats just less than 20g of savoury biscuits each day (or about nine Arnott’s Shapes), the average Australian teenager consumes about 42g!  Or about 18 Arnott’s Shapes!

For teenage males the figure is even higher: the average savoury biscuit consuming teenage Australian male consumes 56g of savoury biscuits (most of which are probably Arnott’s Shapes) a day!

That’s 24 Arnott’s Shapes!

This of course may have changed given the recent hoo-ha about the "new and improved" (ie "made worse") Arnott's Shapes recipe, but it's too early to say.

Now let’s have a look at the male/female split. 

Regardless of the teenage male obsession with Arnott’s Shapes, the savoury biscuit market is primarily a woman’s world, with the ABS Australian Health Survey telling us that the number of female savoury biscuit consumers significantly outnumber their male counterparts.

This is particularly the case for rice crackers and rice cakes, and anything promoted as being low in calories.

When looking at the volume of savoury biscuits being consumed, the Arnott’s Shapes guzzling male teenage demographic swings that proportion to… exactly 50/50!

Now if we put both the age group and the gender split together we can see again the extent to which the savoury biscuit market is dominated by the female demographic, particularly amongst the older age groups.

The world of savoury biscuits (and sweet biscuits for that matter) is a diverse one.  A broad church. To figure out which brands are winning the Battle Of The Biscuit, we are going to have to look a little closer at all the different sub-categories.  Chocolate biscuits, “flavoured snacks”, rice crackers, crackers & crispbreads… and that is what we are going to look at next.

What's Going On In The Australian Biscuit Market? Part Two: Who's Eating All The Sweet Biscuits?

biscuits, sweet biscuits, Australia, demographics, market segmentation

In this post we will have a closer look at those 24% of Australians (all 5.2 million of them) who, according to the ABS Australian Health Survey will be eating at least one sweet biscuit on a typical day.  Just to clarify: this doesn’t mean that 24% of Australia eat at least one sweet biscuit every day, but on a typical day, 24% of Australians will be partaking in the consumption of at least one sweet biscuit.

These biscuit fans are not evenly spread across Australia’s demographic landscape.  As can be seen in the following graph, they can be found in particularly large concentrations amongst both kids and the elderly.

Just over 36% of Australians age 71 and over eat sweet biscuits on an average day, a rate that is only exceeded by kids aged between 2 and 8.  Those aged in between – teenagers, young adults, the middle aged - don’t seem to particularly like sweet biscuits at all. 

Mind you, as Roy Morgan Research pointed out, although both kids and elderly Australians share a love of biscuits (both sweet and savoury), that is about the only thing their snacking habits have in common.

“Young Aussies... are more likely than any other age group to eat just about every snack category measured by Roy Morgan Research, while the older bracket tends to be below average for most snacks. So not only do these two groups sit at opposite ends of the age spectrum, they also have markedly different snacking habits – yet are somehow united by their penchant for biscuits.”

And although teenagers and young adults appear to be less inclined to eat sweet biscuits, those that do eat quite a bit. As illustrated by this graph:

The average (the median in this case, for all you stats/math fiends) daily quantity of sweet biscuits consumed by all sweet biscuit consuming Australians is 26g.  That works out to be just over one Tim Tam.  Less than two Mint Slices. Just over three Milk Arrowroot biscuits.  Or five TeeVee Snacks.

The sweet biscuit consuming teenager/young adult on the other hand consumes an average of just over 30g of sweet biscuits on a day.  That’s about one and a half Tim Tams. Or two Mint Slices.  Or over four Milk Arrowroot biscuits (although, let’s face, this demographic probably isn’t eating Milk Arrowroots).  Or seven TeeVee Snacks.

Now let’s have a look at the male/female split. 

Regardless of whether you look at it in terms of the number of consumers or the weight of the biscuits they consume, it’s a pretty even split.  There are slightly more female consumers of sweet biscuits…

But those males who do eat them must eat quite a lot because males are quite a bit ahead when measured by the weight of the biscuits.

Now if we put both the age group and the gender split together, then we can see how important each group is in terms of the number of sweet biscuit consumers.  And despite the low proportion of 31-50 year olds and 51-70 year olds eating sweet biscuits, the huge size of these age groups (there were 6.3million Australians aged between 31-50 years in 2011-2012 and 4.8 million age between 51-70 years, compared to only 1.8 million in the 71 and over age group) means that they remain, if not quite the core of the Australian biscuit market, certainly a key demographic.

But have a closer look at the gender split within the 71 and over age group, which shows a definite skew towards the Granny enjoying a Monte Carlo or a Kingston with her cup oftea demographic. It’s nice to know that this demographic is still alive and well.

And if the low proportion of “working age” Australians consuming sweet biscuits is simply because they do not have time to sit down and enjoy a nice cup of tea and biscuit, then perhaps there is hope for the Australian biscuit market after all.  If the Australian Baby Boomer generation takes to the tradition upon retirement, then maybe we will see another sweet biscuit boom!

What's Going On In The Australian Biscuit Market, Part One: Australians Are No Longer Taking The Biscuit!

biscuits, Australia, scan data, market growth, Arnotts

The Australian biscuit market is in trouble. 

It - the Australian “bickie” - used to be the default snack for generations of Australia. It was the answer to the question of what to dunk into your cup of tea.  Or coffee.

So proud were Australians of their biscuits that any American visitor daring to refer to them as “cookies” would find themselves at the receiving end of a stern correction: “We don’t call ‘em cookies here you drongo! They’re called bickies mate!”

Those days are gone.  Nobody says "drongos" anymore.

Nor do Australians eat biscuits anymore.  At least not in the numbers they once did.  There are simply so many more snacking options for them to eat. Consumers are switching to other snacking options, in other aisles of the supermarket.  Healthier options.  Or more decadent options. 

There’s such a wide range of biscuits on offer in your average Australian supermarket that making sweeping generalisations is rather futile. Some biscuit categories are growing and some are not.  But as a general rule, those biscuits whose major function is to be dunked in a cup of tea or coffee are struggling. 

To illustrate this point, let’s see what the folk at Roy Morgan Research have to say on the matter:

“In 2015, 42.4% ofAussies reported eating at least one sweet biscuit in an average seven days,down from 46.3% in 2011. Consumption of savoury biscuits/crackers remainedrelatively stable at 32.4%, a fraction less than 2011, when it was 33.1%.”

Oh dear.

Or take a look at this graph depicting the volume growth of biscuits through major supermarkets since 2010, using data lifted – as is the case with most of my graphs – from RetailWorld’s Annual Report. 

Well that, I’m sure we can agree, is one hell of a depressing looking graph.  Despite my choice of a sunny yellow backdrop.

Ever since the “golden days” of 2010 and 2011, the volume growth of biscuits has been negative for three out of four years.  And in the single year it was positive, it just scrapped through with 0.4% volume growth.

It’s hard not to be pessimistic, since the key take away from a graph such as this is that Australians have fallen out of love with the biscuit.  

But why?

Here are some thoughts: biscuits are used for a number of functions.  For older generations they are a treat which they can dunk in their tea (and are consequently at risk from the demographic challenges also facing the world of tea).  For younger generations working in their offices, they are a snack.  Something to get them through the afternoon. 

Sadly for biscuits, the number of snacking options is expanding all the time and many of these are perceived as being at least reasonably healthy. As has been noted elsewhere, by other people, Australian appetites are diverging in two different directions. Some Australians are attempting to eat healthier, whether they be image-conscious millennials or Baby Boomers whose doctors have just explained that they aren’t youngsters anymore. Whilst others embracing the latest in freak-shakes and Nutella-balls. Two trends that often reside in the same person. 

It’s diet or decadence.  And if I’m going to break my diet, you’ve got to make it worth it for me.  Sadly for Arnott’s their Assorted Creams range no longer really cuts it.

On the other hand, the biscuits we are eating are getting fancier. 

There’s never been a more exciting time to be an Australian biscuit connoisseur.  As can be seen if we look at the value growth graph!

Not a phenomenal amount of growth, but hey, it looks as though biscuits may be making a miraculous comeback, on the back of fancier biscuits!  All those Zumbo-concocted Tim Tams! And Arnott’s Twisted Faves!  And fancy European brands of wafers, like Loacker and Kras!

  

So let’s have a look at the Australian biscuit consumer. 

To begin with: how many are there?

Well, according to the ABS Australian Health Survey (sadly from 2011-2012, there ought to be an update in a year or so) on an average day, 24% of Australians will eat a sweetbiscuit, and 17.3% of Australians will eat a savoury biscuit.  Or to put it another way, 5.2million Australians will eat a sweet biscuit, and 3.7million will eat a savoury biscuit.

(Now “sweet biscuit” in this case - and in the case of the Roy Morgan figures also - includes plain biscuits, cream biscuits, shortbread, chocolate coated biscuits and choc chip cookies.  “Savoury biscuits” covers everything from Arnott’s Shapes to water crackers to rice crackers and rice cakes.)

These biscuit fans are not evenly spread across Australia’s demographic landscape.  They can be found in particularly large concentrations amongst both kids and the elderly.

And this is the case regardless of whether we are talking about sweet or savoury biscuits, as my next two posts will reveal!