Snack happy... what Londoners are grazing on at work

The strategic snacker has a top drawer stuffed with — mainly healthy — spoils. If the coast is clear of colleagues he or she will reach in before guzzling something fast in front of the computer. Clues to look out for: specks on the keyboard and surreptitious licking of fingers around 11am. By contrast, the impulse snacker is more exposed. As the post-lunch sugar low hits around 3.30pm, packets of delicious things — often sugar laden — will be bought in haste and later spread out across desks to be shared and talked about.

London’s snacking habits have gone up a gear. As shop shelves become more crowded with the likes of popchips, bread crisps, gourmet nuts and multi-flavoured popcorn, we wonder what it is that people are grazing on at work.

“We have a really strong snack offering,” says Nicola Waller, head of food at Selfridges. “We find that our customers like novelty snacks and come to us for something new and innovative, like the Tyrrells red, white and blue Jubilee crisps or the Joe & Seph’s sea salted caramel popcorn. We launched Pop Chips — light popped crisps — and Boxer Chips — “crisps made for sharing” — to the UK market last year and they have proven to be a huge success. We also introduced Mr Trotter’s posh pork crackling snack to our customers and it is one of our most popular products. It seems it’s everyone’s guilty pleasure.”

A recent Mintel report shows that while there has been little change since 2009 in terms of people’s reasons for snacking (hunger and boredom) there was a small percentage increase in the proportion of consumers “looking to treat or reward themselves”.

Strategic snackers now have plenty to feed on. After launching Skinny Topcorn — a range of popcorn sprinkled with chocolate and carefully marketed at people wanting a “healthy” snacking option — Julian Metcalfe has recently put new healthy snacks into Itsu stores. There are the bizarre low-calorie crispy seaweed thins, chocolate-covered rice cakes and wasabi peas. The Food Doctor has recently introduced a new range of coated seeds and nuts, Marks and Spencer says its guilt-free snacking popcorn is a bestseller alongside the multi-seed mix, and you can also find Nim’s fruit crisps, Propercorn and freeze-dried fruit sold in spacey silver packets from Harvey Nichols, or Bounce snack balls sold with carefully worded slogans like “Brain Storm”, “Vitality Lift” and “Protein Hit”.

Meanwhile, Victoria Willis, “marketing maestro” at Bear Nibbles, says of the company’s healthy Bear YoYo snacks — “like fruit smoothies which we’ve put in a big tray and baked overnight” — that she receives daily emails from people who eat them and then decorate their desks with stickers. “People collect our cards. We have a wrestler who emails us regularly, we have a firm of engineers all collecting them and we get sent people’s cute pictures of their desks which come through usually after lunchtime,” she says.

And for the impulse snackers who just want something to crunch on, here you might find the meat snacks, nuts and the really fatty treats. Think jerk microwave popcorn, Awfully Posh pork crackling, Whoop Ass snacking nuts, Walker’s new Sensations nuts in Chinese Szechuan pepper and Mexican smoked chilli flavours, beef jerky and even Llama snacks and BBQ worm crisps — “similar in taste to popcorn but with a difference”.

Serial investor Rupert Ashe has recently decided to invest in Graze, the company sending healthy snack boxes to your desk. “It was a very simple, clever idea just to send healthy food to people through the post. We all have to eat and you’re dealing with a huge market. There have been others who tried and failed. It’s not as easy as people think. These guys are very, very fast and people like a little affordable treat.”