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With the party season looming, one of the first things that crosses the mind of most venues, restaurants and hotels is catering and food. As there are so many developments in the party food and snacks market, sometimes choosing what to have can be as difficult as putting it all together.

The Mintel report in May 2007 also revealed signs that the consumption of snacks has decreased due to trends towards healthier food.

However, the trend focuses on the eating patterns for a particular period, and during the winter in particular, customers are more relaxed towards their diet and are more likely to indulge in snacks, party food and alcohol.

There are ways of staying on top of the trend, and that is being innovative and sourcing different types of snacks. For instance, vegetable crisps are more versatile than potato crisps, with different vegetables giving different flavours and tastes.

Richard Thompson, Brand Manager at Glennans, says: "The colour, texture and flavour that Glennans vegetable crisps offer make them a fantastic addition to any dish. For example, our development chef was able to crush the product down to use as a topping for a mousaka, opening up even more possibilities.”

Getting creative with crisps

You may be wondering how you can be creative with vegetable crisps, especially when you're entertaining big groups of people, but there are so many possibilities for finger food that combine the vegetable crisps, from beetroot canapés, with beetroot crisps as the basis, as well many more combinations.

Richard goes on to explain: “The versatility of the product means it works perfectly with any course, from beetroot crisps with goat cheese and apple chutney canapé, to savoury spicy granola, or with soured cream, salsa and crushed Glennans vegetable crisps – there are so many ways they can be served as a light snack or starter.”

With the range of vegetables used, the choice is ample: butternut squash, yams, sweet potato, plantain, parsnip, eddoes etc.

Being innovative is something Glennans is already doing: “We've even started to run competitions within national groups, to encourage and challenge chefs to try new and innovative ways of using the products," says Richard. "We're only aspiring chefs ourselves, so when we hear new ideas that chefs have come up with, it's really quite exciting for us. We're always keen to hear new ideas and recipes.”

So what's in store for the future of crisps and party snacks? As the market varies and changes, and as new products, new ideas and healthy eating regimes force healthier snacks to market, chefs, restaurants, hotels and venues will need to be much more creative.

Richard concludes: “We fry eddoes, yams, butternut squash and white, sweet potato too. On top of this, we're always trying new things. The last vegetable we tried was lotus root! We're always expanding our portfolio of vegetables to make sure that we continue to inspire chefs.”

Richard Thompson is Brand Manager at Glennans, a family company that manufactures vegetable crisps and croutons from their base in Staffordshire, UK.