The smoothie momentum keeps building. There's a great smoothie bar being rolled out by Fred Meyer stores and Jubitz Truck Stop will be serving up smoothie drinks in a couple months. Still, a lot of folks have heard the words but haven't placed an order for one yet. I believe there's a lot of headroom left in this trend. One reason: the inherent value of being a portable, car-friendly meal, the same core benefit that Taco Bell brought us. Two product leaders that we'll showcase here are Flamingo Ice and Mocafe.

Laurel Newgent started in the smoothie mix business when a machine distributor asked her if the Israeli fruit dessert mix she distributed was suited for smoothie machines. She discovered that there was a real need for fresh fruit quality smoothie mix product where the seasonal differences that fresh fruit provides in availability and taste profiles wouldn't affect the drink itself. Flamingo Ice was born to satisfy that need.

Flamingo Ice is delivered as a dry product but is actually made of real fruit and sweetened with only the fructose of the featured fruits. Newgent's commitment to real fruit based sweeteners provide the truest flavors possible. With Flamingo Ice, the Strawberry Banana you blend for your customer is really strawberries and bananas, while you have the benefit of shelf stable product not typically associated with fresh fruit. Newgent says that both for texture and presentation, she encourages adding fresh fruit to the base. Interestingly, the flavor contribution is still largely from the fruit base in the smoothie mix.

Newgent has observed in the last year that blenders have become very popular. With the powerful K-Tec and Vitamix blenders now on the market producing high quality drinks very quickly, the blender has gained a new following for those wanting to make fresh by-the-customer drinks.

The specialty juice bars such as Jamba Juice have as many as 5 or 6 blenders on the counter to make each drink up by order. The destination juice bar, with presentation as a focal point for the customer as well as many choices in drinks and additives often dictates the blender method. Other users of blenders are smaller multi-tasking locations that must make drinks up per order because of small demand.

Mocafe continues to gain attention internationally in the coffee-granita segment. It is a beverage that's clean finish is attributes to the quality of ingredients, including the use of high grade chocolates such as Trinidad nib roasted cocoa and African Forestero cocoa. Rather than the expected frozen mocha experience of a sweet candy bar profile, it provides a complex semisweet profile for a more sophisticated palate. In my first experience with it, I waited for the slightly sour aftertaste that usually seems to come- it never arrived! Instead, the balance of coffee and chocolate lingered pleasantly. As Mocafe gains public recognition, it and other brands of quality will attain a following. Their presence should help the retailers that advertise them.

Richard Principle of Mocafe says that the new rage in the company is the Mexican Chocolate product. He observed that he felt that this was due to the strong Latin influence that is gaining strength in the country. Hoist up a Mexican Mocha to Ricky Martin. The product is doing well both with espresso and on its own as a hot Mexican chocolate. Principale also reminded me that flavored syrups, liquor, fruit, caramel, maple syrup and (his favorite) hazelnut butter can be added to the product for your signature creations.

As in many specialty food areas, innovators are followed by a bevy of products of varying quality. When the dust settles and the bevy of followers are on to the next bandwagon, the products of real value will continue to define the market. I think the two products here with the innovators that have created them will be among those that will be the articulation of smoothie products in the decade to come.