Not too long ago, it looked like we were in the middle of a great American food revolution. No, I’m not talking about Make America Healthy Again. I’m talking about snacks. Ever since the pandemic, when stuck-at-home Americans found themselves noshing all day on comfort foods, snacking has looked like the future of the American diet.
It was that opportunity for even more snacking growth that led Kellogg, in 2023, to spin off its dragging North American cereal business. That allowed it to focus on its high-growth snack portfolio, including brands like Pringles, Cheez-It and Rice Krispies Treats, under the new name Kellanova. The strategy worked: In August 2024, candy conglomerate Mars Inc. said it would buy the standalone snack company in a $36 billion deal. This same bet on snacking also pushed peanut butter and jelly maker JM Smucker Co. to scoop up Hostess in 2023 for $5.6 billion. And last month, Bloomberg News reported that Oreo maker Mondelez International Inc. was trying to buy out Hershey Co. to create a global snacking powerhouse. (The preliminary offer was turned down.) Not long after the Wall Street Journal reported on the junk-food-fueled “ snack-ification” of US diets, PepsiCo Inc. told us that, yes, Doritos can be part of your dinner.
Recent market research suggests consumers have been snacking more and more. Photographer: Spencer Landon/Getty Images
In some ways, Big Food’s prediction of never ending snacking was right. We are snacking more and more. About 86% of consumers surveyed by research group Mintel in November 2023 said they were snacking as much as or more than they did the year before. The group’s 2024 report says 22% of consumers snack three or more times a day. “People are kind of eating nonstop,” says Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jennifer Bartashus.
You wouldn’t know it from these companies’ latest earnings reports. Executives from all the companies above reported lackluster snack sales in North America last quarter. Kellanova and Hershey are selling less food than a year ago; Smucker is disappointed in Hostess’ performance; and PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay is seeing a consumer pullback, too. Some of this reflects some consumers trading down from branded foods to cheaper private labels as budgets get squeezed by rising grocery prices. But that alone wouldn’t explain the decline of entire categories. Considering that people are grazing just as much as ever, there’s more happening than just thriftiness. “Meal occasions are kind of blurry,” says Bartashus. Or, as Sally Lyons Wyatt from market researcher Circana puts it, “What you would consider a snack has evolved.”
For many consumers, a snack has become less about salty and sweet temptations and more like a mini meal chock-full of nutrient-dense nibbles, with as little prep as possible. Think of the 2023 TikTok-driven “girl dinner” trend. Described by the New York Times as “an artfully arranged pile of snacks,” it was basically a charcuterie plate. It turns out that unit sales of refrigerated assortments of meats, cheeses and crackers were up 12% for the year ended Dec. 1 2024, according to Circana’s data. The CEO of Conagra Brands, which makes frozen, refrigerated and snack foods, says all three of its meat stick brands—Slim Jim, Duke’s and Fatty—are doing well. And Chomps, a high-end, grass-fed meat stick startup, is the fastest-growing food brand in the US as of January 2025, according to consumer data company Numerator. Chomps says it expects to exceed $1 billion in retail sales next year.
One of the more surprising protein-packed snacking trends right now is straight out of the 1970s—cottage cheese, whose unit sales were up 12.7% for the year ended Dec. 1. It’s recently been described to me more than once as the new Greek yogurt. To lure health-conscious consumers, a startup called Good Culture essentially resurrected the lumpy, curd-filled dairy food by offering it in single-serve cups, with fruit on the bottom and an ingredient label not listing the usual preservatives, gums and other unrecognizable additives. Co-founder Jesse Merrill told me the company had predicted 35% growth for 2023 but instead hit 85%, with sales reaching $100 million. By early November 2024, they had nearly replicated that growth rate.
And just as a snack can be a meal, a meal can also be a snack. Frozen handheld dinners like burritos are another category Circana is now putting into the snack column, with Americans buying about 12% more of them in the year ended Dec. 1, 2024 than the year before.
Protein-heavy fads tend to cycle in and out every few years, but its current infiltration into snacking seems accelerated by TikTok, meatfluencers and their ( highly suspect) “carnivore diets,” and possibly GLP-1s like Ozempic. Companies do seem to realize this on some level— General Mills Inc. recently introduced a high-protein strawberry Cheerios. But the idea of serving up real food, not protein-spiked empty calories, mostly eludes them. These companies’ recent flurry of deals certainly will help with their corporate synergies—efficiencies, market share gains and distribution. But the moves seem to miss what I would argue is the most important piece of any business: the consumer.