Food Union launches the production of Kārums, the blueberry curd snack that won a popular vote

The 30th anniversary celebrations of Kārums, Latvia’s beloved national symbol, are in full swing! Responding to the wishes of the people, expressed earlier this spring in the special “Celebrate CAW!” vote, Latvia’s leading dairy company, Food Union, has introduced a new product: the Kārums blueberry curd snack. This anniversary edition snack is already available in stores across Latvia. The investment in developing and launching the product is around 75,000 euros.

The new Kārums has been inspired by the already well-known and popular blueberry curd snack, which had been out of production for several years but was cherished in the memories of its fans. Therefore, thanks to the very active participation of Latvians in choosing the flavor of the curd snack as a gift on the Crow’s 30^th birthday, the blueberry curd snack emerged as the winner. The recipe for the new anniversary blueberry curd snack has been completely reinvented – to make it even more delicious than in the memories of the foodies.

Ilva Veidemane, Dairy Brand Project Manager at Food Union: “Representing the Crow, I can assure you that it is very excited about such a delicious gift from the Latvian people! The blueberry curd snack has been a dream come true not only for our brand lovers but also for the Crow itself. That’s why the birthday bird has decided to continue the celebrations by creating more new Kārums snacks, which we’ll hear about very soon”.

Why did the blueberry flavor win?

As part of the “Celebrate CAW!” campaign, we asked people on www.kra30.eu what kind of new curd snack they would like to create and eat to surprise the Crow on its birthday. As usual, voting activity was extremely high – in six weeks (May to June this year), 19,000 foodies created 47,000 versions of the curd snack. The third most popular variety was the Cappuccino-flavored curd snack with nuts in chocolate frosting (5,407 votes), the Tiramisu-flavored curd snack with salted caramel filling in caramel frosting was the runner-up (7,941 votes), while the leader of the vote was the blueberry curd snack with blueberries in chocolate frosting, which received 11,302 votes.

The Crow was “born” in 1994

An interesting historical fact – the Crow is not just as old as Kārums, but a year younger. Why so? Originally, the unique recipe for the curd snack as we know it today and the name of the product – Kārums – were created in 1993. But the symbol that adorned the product wrapping in the first year was a ginger cat. However, in the second year of Kārums’ existence, an iconic change took place: the vanilla curd snack was dressed in orange wrapping and the symbol was changed to the Crow.

The range of Kārums products

With the launch of the blueberry curd snack, the new recipe for which has been developed by the technologists at Food Union’s Centre of Excellence for Fresh Dairy Products, the Kārums brand now has 36 products in its range. The sweet snacks category includes seven product types – 16 curd snacks, as well as a curd snack multipack, 5 sweet creams, 4 yogurts with bifidobacterium, 2 cream yogurts, 3 curd desserts and 2 curd creams. In addition, customers can also enjoy saltier Kārums products – 3 fresh curd snacks with and without added ingredients.

Please find more information on the Kārums brand: www.karums.eu