An Up-Close Look at This Year's CSNews Best New Products Awards Winners

Consumers selected 36 products new to convenience store shelves in the past year as winners in the 2017 Convenience Store News Best New Products Awards competition.

The CSNews Best New Products Awards program, now in its 21st year, recognizes and honors the marketers who introduced the most innovative, high-quality products that meet consumers’ evolving needs.

This year’s winners certainly reflect changing consumer needs, with many featuring and playing to aspects of the foodie culture, spurred on by millennials. That means many of this year’s best new products are made with local, pure, ethically or naturally-raised and grown ingredients, which are readily transparent to the consumer. For instance, most of the alternative and healthy snack winners are chock full of fresh and organic ingredients. And the winning flavors of many products are bold, reflecting the multicultural influence in the United States.

Beverages showed the most innovation among the winners this year. We have lots of alternatives to sugary sodas, to cow’s milk, organic and certified Fair Trade ingredients, trending cider, carbonated flavored waters, kombucha, ready-to-drink (RTD) tea, and cold brew coffee drinks.

Since speed is a necessity in the convenience store market, grab-and-go was a feature in most every category. The refreshing (re-tooling) of iconic brands and nostalgic nods to former best sellers is also alive and well in candy, snacks and doughnuts.

Judging for the 2017 CSNews Best New Products Awards was supervised by Past Times Marketing, a New York-based consumer research and product testing firm. Contest entries were rated and awarded points by consumers based on the criteria of taste, value, convenience, healthfulness, ingredients, preparation requirements, appearance and packaging.

Here are the products that caught the eye and tempted the taste buds enough to win this year...