The Sweets and Snacks Expo is the largest confectionery, cookie and snack show in the Americas, and showcases products from over 500 companies, small and large. It’s also the best place to discover the latest trends in the snack world. 

As a promotion agency and a premium toy producer, The Marketing Store is well-versed in big brand food and CPG promotions—and attend this conference year after year. So, we asked our in-house snack expert (what a great thing to be!), Kelly Ryan, to report back on the latest. Here are the 5 key takeaways she noted from this year’s show:

1.  More sugar than chocolate. This year there was less emphasis on chocolate, which speculatively, may be caused by the cocoa shortage. It may also be due to the economy as sugar is cheaper than cocoa. But, it was definitely notable.

2. Uptick in licensed products. There was a distinct feeling that there was an increase in licensed products this year. There were, of course, the standard players that always do licensed items (i.e. Galerie and Frankford) but even brands like Jelly Belly had Hello Kitty items. It was also interesting to see M&M characters dressed up as the Star Wars characters.

3.  Increase in novelty items. A few years ago, when the economy was booming, there was very little novelty product. This was due to Walmart walking away from novelty products, not needing low cost items in the candy aisle. When the economy started to decline low cost novelty ($0.99 – 1.99) made a big comeback as consumers wanted affordable treats (toys+candies).  This year’s show had much more novelty product than in the past and was at a higher retail ($2.99 – 3.99).

4.  Smaller companies had novelty too. In previous years novelty was owned by key players. This year I felt that smaller companies (ie SweetWorks Radz brand) had much more novelty than in the past. The difference this go-around is that the small players did not have licensed characters but had developed their own character designs. Many were really cute and designed well. 

5.  Eye-Candy. Another trend I noticed but not sure how to describe it is that “candy got girly”.  This is new as I don’t recall seeing such “pretty” candy before. There were more flowers, more glittery packaging. Not pretty like Lindt or Ghirardelli -  pretty like perfume bottles.

Those are the standouts from our point of view. Any to add?

If you have any questions or comments about the list above, contact Kelly Ryan or Heather Gately!