EP.166/ SWEETS & SNACKS EXPO
Sweets & Snacks Expo 2025: Trends, Innovations, and Insights for Ecommerce Snack Brands
Mariah Parsons, host of the Retention Chronicles podcast, discusses insights from the 2025 Sweets and Snacks Expo in Indianapolis, highlighting key trends and brand innovations. The Expo featured over 1,000 exhibitors, including 300 newcomers, and attracted 14,500 attendees from 85+ countries. Key trends included nostalgia-driven updates by legacy brands like Hershey and Mars, health-forward snacks with high protein options, multi-sensory experiences with unique textures, and numerous brand collaborations. Notable brands mentioned include Belles Gourmet Popcorn, Nomad Snacks, and David Dobrik's brand. The next Expo will be held in Las Vegas.
EP. 166
MARIAH PARSONS
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Sweets and Snacks Expo, Indianapolis, 2025 trends, nostalgia, innovative flavors, health-forward snacks, multi-sensory experiences, brand collaborations, gourmet popcorn, protein snacks, freeze-dried candies, celebrity collabs, retail growth, consumer behavior, e-commerce.
SPEAKERS
Mariah Parsons, Yaw Aning
Mariah Parsons 00:04
Hello and welcome to retention Chronicles, the customer retention podcast for E commerce marketers, I am your host and fellow e comm marketer, Mariah Parsons. Tune in as I speak with D to C, founders and operators about strategy that works and strategy that doesn't of course, we are able to have these conversations because of our podcast sponsor, Malomo. Hi. I'm
Yaw Aning 00:26
Yaw, the co founder and CEO of Malomo. Before launching Malomo, I ran an agency where we worked with E commerce, merchants that were really struggling to get ahead of delivery issues that were plaguing their brands. And so we would build custom solutions for those brands to tackle those issues. But after seeing this problem happen dozens of times, we decided we needed to make it way easier for these merchants to control the customer experience. So we built Malomo. With Malomo, you can get control of the entire post purchase experience, create custom tracking pages and transactional emails, reduce your Where is my order support tickets, and actually add to your bottom line by showcasing marketing content and product recommendations within that experience. Now, with 1000s of E commerce operators on Malomo, it's been super gratifying to see the ways in which people have been using the platform to drive their brands forward.
Mariah Parsons 01:28
Hello everyone, and welcome back to a special episode of retention Chronicles. If you tuned in last week, you know that this is the second episode of this month that I am doing that is different from our normal weekly episodes. And I'm doing this because I've been going to a ton of conferences learning a ton of things, and obviously want to make sure that I share those learnings with you all, because that is exactly what you tune in for. So without further ado, let's get into it. This will be a shorter episode, so that you can really listen in and see the trends that we're seeing in different industries, and take those learnings and apply them to your brand, whether you're in that industry or not. So this episode is specifically about the 2025 sweets and snacks Expo. It was in Indianapolis, and it was in May of 2025 and there were a lot of things happening. And if you know me, you know that I lived in Indianapolis for a few years, so it is a second home to me. I love the city, and it really did not disappoint to see it lit up with all of the excitement that this Expo has to bring into the city. There were over 1000 exhibitors, including 300 newcomers, and that led to about 14,500 attendees from 85 plus different countries. So if you know anything about conferences those numbers, it's about a third of the size of Expo West that I just went over in the podcast. So it's definitely a smaller conference. But wow, did it pack a punch. So let's get into it. Because this year i This is the first year that I went and there's a ton of energy, a lot of bold flavors were in the snacks and sweets. You know, industry, a lot of trend setting, innovation and obviously big business moves. So let's talk about it. I want to give a couple of shout outs to brands. A few that I met, which I met bells there are, they're like a gourmet popcorn brand, and their matcha latte flavor for their popcorn won Best in Show. I actually didn't get to try it, but I have a bag at home with me that is their like chocolate and white chocolate drizzle, and I cannot wait to break into it. I've been honestly saving it because I'm that excited. But it sounds like their matcha flavor was a big hit at the show, and so hats off to them for getting that accolade. And their team was so fun to talk to. They were great. So hopefully they're seeing this and feel loved right back the Small Business Innovator Award was Nomad snacks, Pad Thai popcorn flavor. I did have this one as well, which was a fun twist, because it really is a new flavor profile, obviously, that we haven't seen on popcorn before, at least I haven't seen on popcorn before, and it was like a spicy, but also like spicy, savory twist on, you know, a classic popcorn, but obviously with innovative flavors. So that was really cool. Okay, so next thing that I want to go over is just the trends that I saw on the short floor. And this should not be a surprise to anyone. I think if you were there, you would see these same trends emerge. I saw LinkedIn posts about these trends and like, Article write ups and all that fun stuff. And so I want to go over it here, but nostalgia that is such a big part of this industry, and think about, like, snacks and sweets and and everything you think about your childhood, right? You could probably rattle off a bunch of different brands that you fell in love with as a kid, and that. Still enjoy today. But what these brands, these legacy brands, or these logo brands, are doing is obviously unveiling new aspects. So they're giving, like classic flavors, a modern upgrade. So examples of these, like Hershey had Reese's Peanut Butter and Jelly cups. Mars had PB and J, M, M's Nutella had, like, a peanut butter flavor. So, yeah, it's just, it's, it's interesting, because you think of these brands as being household names, and like Hershey's chocolate and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, but they're, they're still innovating, right? And they got to do that to keep up with all these smaller brands that are innovative, and that is what they're, you know, like known for, right? We were just talking about Belle's matcha latte popcorn, right? So like people who are breaking through in the industry and making a name for themselves based off of that innovation, the big brands, they aren't safe. They gotta follow up and continuously innovate to keep people's attention and keep their loyalty and retain them as customers. Second trend is really honing in on consumers and their conscious consumption. So a lot of health forward leaning snacks, but they don't really shy away from flavor, right? So one example of this is Khloe Kardashians, cloud popcorn, protein popcorn and soya May and soya Maya temp chips, and RX is bar and RX bars, high protein muffins that are better for you, things like that that are, you know, they're really tapping into high protein snacks, but giving you more options for them on the market. And I did try Kardashians cloud popcorn, and it was pretty good. Gotta say it okay. Third trend was multi sensory experiences. Texture was everywhere. So different textures in your snacks think like free dries candies, right? That's like a new spin. We know freeze dried. A lot of the times when I think of freeze dried I think of like freeze dried fruit, and then, you know, candy, like hard candy, but a lot of the bigger brands, like spree and sweet tarts and lemon heads and jolly rancher, they were offering like, freeze dried candies, which is just like a really, really interesting twist. I don't, I don't think I've had that before. I also saw a lot of like marshmallow and a lot of innovation in the marshmallow space, or, like, chewy space, I met a company called Breath rocks, and they're mints that you pop in your mouth. And they are, like Pop Rocks. So they literally, I have one right here, if you're watching this on video, they literally pop in your mouth, as if it is Pop Rocks. And that was, like, so interesting. And I remember them telling me, I'll have to fact check myself about, like, I think they have zinc, and that's how they're, like, breath mints as well, but they're sugar free. So yeah, that was just, I'm reading the directions or ingredients as I, yeah, zinc as I, as I legit talk about this brand. So yeah, that was just, like, a bunch of multi sensory or just different ways of innovating, but with textures instead of flavors. And then fourth trend was a ton of brand collabs and tie ins and callbacks and all of that. I don't think this surprises anyone. We just saw outside of the industry, but in the beauty industry, road cosmetics get acquired by or sorry, road get acquired by Elf Cosmetics brand. Collabs, celebrity collabs, they are big and so Mr. Beast and Jack Link's beef snack multi packs. That was a collab. We saw Slim Jim and Buffalo Wild Wings with chicken sticks and flips, and Elf on the Shelf sugar cookie pretzels, which, that was a really interesting one. Also David dobriks brand. I met their their team at the I met their team at the conference, and they were so sweet. They were giving away free hats. And it was honestly like very, very fun to see yet another brand with a celebrity backing pop up. Okay, so that was kind of my recap of the four trends that I'm seeing now, I'm going to dive more into kind of the layout of the conference. So they had over 40 sessions with retail focused on retail growth, merchandising, consumer behavior, e commerce, just like a bunch of different things that these brands and that these industry folks want to learn about. I will say that the next conference is not going to be in Indianapolis. It's going to be in Vegas next year, which I'm obviously bummed about, because I love Indianapolis, and it was so fun to see the city like this. But I will say I definitely thought it was worthwhile to be going just was I was able to meet so many people, and they were all so friendly. It was definitely a slower conference in the best way, because you could actually have more meaningful conversations. I felt like at Expo West, it was great because it's so expansive, you will have so many different opportunities there. But at snacks and sweets Expo, I really felt like I could walk the floor individually and have. Have good conversations with everyone there, granted, not not everyone there, but everyone that I was meeting I had great conversations with. I thought by the end of the conference, I was like, oh, yeah, that was I was able to do that on my own Expo West. I needed, like, six more days to do it on my own, which makes sense, because it's like three times as big. So yeah, I had a great time. I have so many delicious snacks now that I've been able to share with friends and family and really give them like insight of, oh, I met this person. They're doing this like that is exactly how I like to shop as a consumer. Is knowing a brand, knowing a founder, knowing the operators behind it, because it makes me feel like I have table stakes in how their brand does, and I'm so much more willing to share with friends and family, especially if it's over a treat or something that I can bring back and share. So yeah, it was a it was so much fun. I'm so excited for the next one. I absolutely loved it. And I will say it is always just a great time getting to meet people at these conferences. I'm gonna have my people on my podcast, people that I met on the trade floor show room, and I cannot wait. It is so fun. I haven't even done my follow up, and it's been two weeks. So if you're listening to this, just know it's coming. Okay, but thank you to everyone who listened to this and who I met at the show. It was so, so so fun. Okay, till next time, hope you'll tune in.
Thank you for listening to today's episode. These conversations bring so much knowledge to the table, and I'm so grateful for that. If you haven't already, please subscribe, follow us on social media and tell us who our next guest should be on our website. Let's give another shout out to our day one sponsor, Malomo. As you know, Malomo is an order tracking platform that enables Shopify brands to take control of their transactional email and SMS through branded order tracking pages. That means you can ditch those boring, all white carrier pages, you know, the ones I'm talking about. Everyone has seen an ugly tracking page in their life, and you can swap it with a page that matches your brand, customers like you and I obsessively check order tracking an average of 4.6 times per order. That's why leading Shopify brands are turning that engagement into customer loyalty and revenue through branded order tracking. Learn more about how to get ahead of shipping issues, brand your order tracking experience and reconvert customers while they wait for their package to arrive with Malomo. Visit, go malomo.com that's G O M, a, l o m, o.com you.
