Acai Berry Wins for New Flavour Idea for Jelly Belly Bean

The tallies are done and Jelly Belly Candy Company announced that fans voted Acai Berry (ah-sigh-ee), an exotic Amazon rainforest fruit, as the best idea for a new flavour. Almost 200,000 suggestions for new jelly bean flavours were submitted to the contest, and the public voted for the best original flavour concept at www.DreamBeanContest.com.

Joel Tokarczyk of Matteson, Illinois, a 19-year-old art student, was named a finalist in August and crowned the winner of the $10,000 grand prize for his submission. Tokarczyk came up with the idea of acai berry after learning it was the new “super food.”

“I really got into it, and started doing some research. I’ve had acai berry juice, and I thought that might be a good idea for a Jelly Belly,” Tokarczyk said. He also submitted at least 30 other ideas for new flavours.

He will use his winnings to pay for tuition at Columbia College in Chicago where he started classes on September 2 with plans to study animation.

“We received thousands of submissions for acai berry flavour—it’s clearly on many people’s radar. The voting for the finalist flavours was overwhelming in favour of acai. Honey came in a strong second place. With so many contestants we also required them to submit a 50-word essay as a tie-breaker, and our judging panel chose Joel’s entry,” said Rob Swaigen, director of marketing for Jelly Belly Candy Company.

Acai berries are a hot topic on national talk shows and are showing up in everything from fountain-of-youth supplements to celebrity beauty products, juices, ice cream and energy bars.

The company plans to test development of Acai Berry flavour of Jelly Belly beans and will send a supply to Tokarczyk. The company will offer visitors at the California factory tour a chance to taste the test batch when it’s ready.