Snacks are familiar foods across generations. Apart from quick bites and mini refueling meals, they tend to follow consumer trends with innovative flavors and intriguing combinations. Here’s a look at the trends for nuts, trail mixes, and sweet and savory snacks, including up-and-coming options and what consumers want to see on the menu and the shelf.
Consumer Insights in the Snack Realm
When modern consumers reach for snacks, including trail mixes, pretzels, chips, nachos, and other satisfying foods, they’re not reaching for empty calories. They want snacks with value. Gen-Z snacks, especially, are leaning toward health-inspired ingredients, punchy flavors, and natural origins. Snack consumption trends also show that today’s consumers want to feel good about their food. The ingredient variety, price, and flavor profile are the top purchase drivers, followed closely by nutritional benefits and natural ingredients.
Apart from what drives consumers, we see their changing preferences for snacking occasions. Today, more consumers prefer to settle back and enjoy when it’s time for snacking. Whether satisfying a craving or reducing hunger, consumers like to snack most while relaxing, playing video games, watching TV, or entertaining others. Of course, they also want to snack on the go, with the goals of alleviating stress and providing an energy boost.
Gen Z and millennial consumers are driving these snack trends, with the growing desire to enjoy guilt-free snacking and snack-size meals. Rather than sit down to large meals each day, these consumers want smaller meals more often, allowing greater flexibility and unique experiences. Healthier options, including trail mixes and nuts, are another growing snack trend, with energy-boosting and protein-rich ingredients leading the change.
Trending Flavors Across the Snack Industry
Like many food types, snack trends have followed the consumer preference for bolder flavors and more global ingredients. This trend holds across snack types, from salty snacks to savory treats and trail mix flavors — whether they contain peanuts, cashews, pistachios, or dried fruit.
Top Flavors for Salty Snacks
The top trending snacks show that sea salt and roasted flavor profiles lead the list. Salt, with its flavor-enhancing qualities, adds dimension to snacks and appeals to consumers wanting simple ingredients and satisfying comfort foods. On the other hand, roasting tends to enhance the flavor profile and add a touch of nuttiness. Other leading snack flavors include cheddar's robust, pungent notes; BBQ's tangy-smoky profile with a touch of sweetness; and butter's sweet richness.
We also see Latin flavors across the trending snacks, especially mango’s fresh floral and aromatic notes and coconut’s sweet yet nutty complexity. Chili and sweet chili are also top flavors, matching well with the growing consumer preference for spicy and heat-driven flavors.
Top Flavors for Pretzels and Potato Chips
What about specific snacks like pretzels and potato chips? As a subset of salty snacks, these foods have a steady fan base, satisfy cravings, and are often what consumers eat when stressed. However, consumer trends show that healthier ingredients are gaining ground along with bolder, punchier snack flavors.
With pretzels, the top flavors are full of nutty, tangy, and rich notes, with peanut butter taking first place. Peanut butter’s bold earthiness has a touch of sweetness, which complements the salty tang of pretzel. Creamy, sweet butter and tangy yogurt are equally popular, showing that consumers love complex flavor profiles.
Sweet and smoky BBQ is the leading flavor profile for potato chips, followed closely by classic sea salt and the punchy tang of onion and sour cream. Emerging flavors are decidedly bolder, with hot chicken, sriracha, and habanero in the lead. Other emerging flavors take inspiration from popular foods like nori, burgers, and pickles.
Related: Crunch and Crave: The Fascinating World of Salty Snacks
Top Flavors for Nuts and Trail Mix
The most established trail mix and nut flavors pull from long-time favorites and familiar combinations. Across the market, we see salted and roasted as the most widespread, followed by honey roasted and buttery toffee. The top nut flavors incorporate salty, sweet, and savory profiles, drawing on different taste buds and cravings.
Other leading nut and trail mix flavors lean on spices, with cinnamon, peppercorn, and chili adding bold flavor notes and a spicy kick. Sea salt and roasted also show low to stable growth momentum, highlighting their established, reliable flavor profile. Other established flavors, such as chili spices and lime, are gaining prominence, showing their adaptability to newer global trends.
Emerging Flavors for Nuts and Trail Mix
What do we see with emerging flavors in this market? Trending trail mix flavors bring in numerous profiles, from sweet to spicy and umami. In the sweet snacks corner, we see icing sugar, coconut, and candied as emerging flavors, each with an intense sweetness. Spicy flavors show hatch chili’s earthy, pungent notes, sriracha’s tangy yet fiery profile, and sweet chili’s complex notes.
Savory emerging flavors include garlic, onion, and ranch. Robust and earthy profiles give these flavors boldness and act as the perfect pairing for global flavor trends. Sesame, with its mild nutty notes, brings a hint of sweetness and provides a more neutral base for combinations. Interestingly, coconut is also an emerging flavor, adding its rich sweetness and floral nuttiness to the mix.
Most of the emerging flavors show steady growth momentum. The exception is Hatch chile, which has been trending with high growth momentum, paralleling the high gains in other markets.
Novel Flavors for Nuts and Trail Mix
Novel flavors are those in their infancy, with some testing the market and others taking their first steps as a new favorite. Across the nut and trail mix market, we see flavor profiles that touch on herbs, creamy sweetness, and punchy spices. Others lean toward comfort foods like cheese, tacos, and sugary treats. From the earthy yet fiery notes of habanero to the creamy cayenne pepper tang of buffalo sauce, there’s a definite trend for flavors that pack a punch. At the other end of the taste spectrum, we see sweet praline and dusted sugar making a name for themselves.
Umami flavors are also gaining traction, with Japanese and Thai entering the nut and trail mix market. These flavors bring richness and complex profiles to appeal to many consumers’ palates, with spicy heat and salty sweetness among the most common. Another intriguing novel flavor is everything seasoning, bringing its rich medley of garlic, onion, poppy seeds, and sesame seeds to different nut mixtures.
In terms of growth momentum, we see a solid entry with many flavors. However, spicy and tangy flavors have more moderate growth, while everything seasoning and sweet praline are racing beyond the rest with high growth momentum.
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Top Herbs and Spices in the Snack Market
Global flavors are gaining ground with snacks, especially spicy and herb-driven profiles offering intriguing complexity. We see the most diversity across the fine dining space, where operators are most willing to test new flavors and use them in unusual pairings. Ras el hanout and baharat bring a taste of Middle Eastern cuisine with their woody, spicy, and savory notes, while Turkish urfa biber brings smoky heat, and Thai makrut lime offers bright, tangy notes.
Health-Inspired Snack Trends
Some of the top healthy snacks are nature inspired, with visually pleasing spices and nuts and lesser-known seeds and ancient grains. Consumers are leaning toward wholesome ingredients and simple preparations, wanting foods that nourish them while satisfying their snack cravings. We see healthy snacks like fennel seed crackers with whipped goat cheese or linseed crackers dipped in labneh and lemon zest sauce.
Other healthy snack trends turn to whole veggies and nuts, where dried beets still have their peels, and roasted edamame comes in the pod, dipped in a spicy habanero coating. These snack preferences show that consumers want to feel good about what they’re eating, making snacktime more than a way to refuel on calories.
Across the snack industry, snack trends are getting bolder, more global, and more health-driven. Modern consumers are driving these changes, and staying in tune is important. Contact the Symrise team today to hear about more insights into this intriguing market.
