Trend, Tradeshow Recaps, Industry Insights and more!
By Todd Barentine, president, club division, The Barcode Group
Carly Faschingbauer, sales manager, The Barcode Group
Morgan Anderson, sales manager, The Barcode Group
Candy and chocolate sales hit an all-time high in 2023, with consumers spending almost $49 billion on sweet treats. And more than 90 percent of adults in the U.S. eat at least one snack daily. Both the candy and snacks markets are forecasted to grow up to five percent every year. That means Americans are hungry for new and innovative sweet and savory bites.
The Barcode Group team scouted out the latest and greatest at the Sweets and Snacks Expo in Indianapolis, Indiana. With hundreds of brands featuring everything from sugary surprises to delightful delicacies, the show was definitely a rush for all five senses.
But we ate our way through dozens of samples with our retail partners and here are the top trends we observed. Get ready to see more of these flavors popping up in stores and on shelves through 2024 and in early 2025:
It will be no problem to get your recommended daily allowance of protein with an influx of jerky and meat snacks. Packable and portable, everything from high-end Wagyu beef to Korean gochujang and carne asada flavors are featured in these substantial provisions.
While the plant-based snacks segment is still growing, the “real food” segment is casting a significant shadow as it rises. Lentils, peas, quinoa and chickpeas were all heavily featured in snacks with limited ingredient lists. Mee Krob – Thai rice noodle crisps — and Wilde Protein Chips – made with chicken breast, egg whites and bone broth – offered surprising new twists.
If you’re an astronaut, you’re in luck – freeze dried sweets and snacks are suddenly hot! The Super Garden brand offers everything from typical freeze-dried fruits to spice rubs, snack bites and smoothies.
If you want your candy to do more than just taste sweet, several new options are available. Probiotic gummies can help your body’s gut microbiome, Cocoa Fusion offers chocolates with ingredients that promote relaxation and brain boosting and electrolyte gum helps stave off thirst.
Mochi gummies and shelf stable mochi treats from Japan, Korean flavors like sweet white grape, coconut rolls with ube purple sweet potato flavor, popular in the Philippines, strawberry condensed milk “snowflake cakes,” and much more. If there is a candy that’s been popular in an Asian country, American consumers want a bite.
Candy that won’t spike blood sugar and still tastes great has been a difficult milestone to achieve. But brands such as Behave now offer sweets that everyone can enjoy, regardless of many other dietary restrictions.
If you think popcorn is just popcorn, you’d be wrong. Brands like Nomad are mixing it up with fresh flavors like ramen, Pipcorn brand uses heirloom seeds to produce crunchy mini popcorn, Sweet Chaos drizzles fun flavors on top of popcorn and you can just toss full Poppin’ Cobs right into the microwave where the popcorn can burst right off the cob!
Polarizing flavors like ranch cotton candy or pickle gummies are always a blast. And for anyone who is bored with traditional gummies and their standard shapes, Peelerz peelable gummy candy won the Innovation Award! And last, but never least, who needs to wait for the ice cream truck when there’s Sweet Robo? This automated robotic vending machine creates on-demand ice cream and cotton candy treats.
Whether it’s freeze dried, fun, functional or for real, these trends will be showing up very soon on shelves, online and in kitchen cabinets everywhere.
Have a candy or snack brand you’d like to see in stores? The Barcode Group helps brands and manufacturers build and maintain successful relationships with large retailers. Discover what we can do for you, contact us today info@thebarcodegroup.com
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