Just in time to celebrate the New Year, Valentine's Day and commemorate National Chocolate Month in February, Baskin-Robbins is paying tribute to people's love of chocolate with new chocolate-inspired offerings designed to satisfy the cravings of chocolate and ice cream lovers of all ages.

Baskin-Robbins says it’s the first national ice cream chain to infuse the essence of lavender into ice cream. The “scent-ual” chocolate ice cream flavors and frozen treats are available for a limited time only at participating stores nationwide through the end of February and include:

The company reports having created more than 1,000 ice cream flavors over the past 61 years, many inspired by fashions, people, events in time and pop culture trends.

PROMOTIONAL OPPORTUNITY
AT NAFFS’ WINTER MEETING

A promotional opportunity exists at the NAFFS Winter Meeting to be held on Friday, February 2 at The French Culinary Institute. If you would like to donate 70 pens and/or 70 pads to be used by attendees, please contact the NAFFS office. This is being offered to members on a first-come, first-served basis.

If you haven’t already registered, don’t miss this audience-participation program where Executive Chef Lee Anne Wong will demonstrate cutting-edge chocolate trends and their application in both sweet and savoury dishes. Attendees will get to taste, savor and compare a variety of exotic flavor combinations. Only a few seats remain. Register now!

Leading market researcher Mintel and Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) collaborated to launch a unique tool that is positioned to reduce the cost of new product development. GNPD IRIS, a product that works in conjunction with the Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD) to allow CPG companies to monitor the sales successes and failures of new products and established brands, is said to have the potential to ultimately reduce development costs by up to 80 percent.

With close to 182,000 new CPG products launched globally last year, companies are spending millions annually on product innovation. Mintel says GNPD IRIS will help companies identify emerging trends and make smart choices in product innovation by monitoring the successes and failures of their competitors. The company says by looking at the sales of products with similar features and monitoring their performance over time, GNPD IRIS will help companies establish realistic benchmarks about the sales potential of their new product ideas before committing to the next stage of development.

GNPD IRIS integrates the existing Mintel GNPD tool with IRI InfoScan, a scanner-based tracking service that processes point-of-sale data from stores on a weekly basis across seven countries. Data is provided for major channels of distribution in France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States. GNPD IRIS is an extension of GNPD, and subscriptions are available from Mintel.

FDA is extending to March 5 the comment period for the notice of public hearing that appeared in the October 25, 2006 Federal Register requesting comments on the regulation of conventional foods marketed as “functional foods.” Comments identified by Docket No. 2002P-0122 may be submitted to the Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov.