Meeting Consumers’ Snack Fix Through Innovation in the Plant

People love their snack foods, and the industry continues to shift to attempt to meet the changing demands and opportunities that present themselves in this segment of the food & beverage industry. Without a doubt, 2024 was a calendar year filled with companies jockeying for position, seeking opportunity to serve consumers looking for a quick bite.

Consider Mars Inc.’s pending acquisition of Kellanova (announced in August 2024), PepsiCo snapping up Siete Foods and Our Home making five different acquisitions in 2024.

We saw some big-time transactions in the past year, but Billy Roberts, senior analyst of food & beverage CPG for CoBank, told Food Processing in conjunction with our 2025 Industry Outlook story that the industry shouldn’t expect the frenzy to die down just yet.

“There's a lot of room for not only consolidation in that space, but really a focusing on specific snacks and snack areas among companies,” he says. “You may be involved in chips, and so you pick up a pretzel brand, or you may be involved in a trail mix and you pick up something that aligns with that kind of approach.

“That seems to be what Mars is trying to do with the Kellanova deal: expand a little bit more into that traditional snacking space as opposed to the confectionery space,” he adds. As companies drill down their focus, it’s clear that consumers remain fixated on their snacks.

Incorporating innovation

As the variety of snacking options grows, snack processors must be agile with their operations, ready to shift gears to capitalize on new trends, says José Coelho, president of Clextral USA.

“One of the main challenges faced by the snack industry is to have the operational flexibility to put in the market new products and new shapes, and use a wide variety of raw materials to achieve different trendy market claims,” he says. “This requires different material handling setups, clip-on equipment that can be implemented quickly and safely in the production line.”

Automation and robotics are not a new concept for the snack foods industry, but they remain a very viable solution for numerous reasons.

“More and more, plants are forced to use automation not only to optimize operation costs but to be less dependent from operator turnover,” Coelho says. In addition, implementation of the right automation offers exciting opportunities across the entire product supply chain, explains Amanda Ament, founder of Simple Bars, a woman-owned processor of snack bars made with minimal ingredients.

“Overall, robotics combined with AI helps speed up a lot of different processes, from R&D to inventory management to production,” she explains. “For example, in supply-chain logistics, AI can predict when ingredients or materials will run low, helping us manage inventory more efficiently; this reduces waste and makes procurement smoother.”

Calbee America, a division of Japanese snack company Calbee Group, has recently invested heavily in automation to drive growth — and continues to lean into the data revolution as well, says Takuro Kris Tatsumi, director of R&D at Calbee America.

“Real-time data on efficiencies is key to minimizing downtime, and we are continuously looking for more ways to improve in this area,” he says. Coelho sees processors benefitting from proper data collection and analysis as well.

“[Data] is crucial to control production and product quality in many aspects,” he explains. “Collecting properly all the process data through instrumentation, instant reading, allows companies to monitor product process parameters and limits for product safety aspects and ingredient traceability, and implement recall plan protocols required by the FDA.”

Meeting new demands

Opportunities to grow through product innovation also abound for snack processors. Capitalizing on consumers’ desires to try new flavors in snacks, Tatsumi says Calbee America has experienced some successes with its Harvest Snaps Kids Crispy Fruit product line, among others.

“Calbee is also launching Asian Style Chips in four unique, yet approachable flavors: Umami Salt, Korean-Style Spicy BBQ, Thai-Style Yellow Curry, and Chinese-Style Spicy Hot Pot,” he says. “Harvest Snaps’ products are meeting consumer demand for delicious, better-for-you products, while the new Asian Style Potato Chips are leveraging consumers’ growing interest in tasty snacks featuring international flavors.”

Calbee, like many other companies, is tracking how consumer reaction to the “ultraprocessed” tides, as well as their feelings about products with numerous ingredients when it comes to snacks. It also opened in January a new R&D Center in California, looking to further accelerate the development of more Asian-flavored snacks, chips, popcorn, cereal and crackers that appeal to the American palate.

For a brand such as Simple Bars, developing new ingredients that feed consumer demand can add challenges, but Ament shares a few positive developments in meeting those trends. For one, she mentions that allulose has presented great opportunity for the brand, with Simple Bars being among the first to use the low-calorie sweetener in its snack bars.

“We’re also working on launching new flavors and products, like our allulose pouch,” Ament adds. “This gives customers a convenient way to add allulose to their drinks, baking or cooking, offering a healthier sweetening option without compromising on taste.”

Of course, adding allulose to the product didn’t come without its challenges at the operations level. But Ament says the company was committed to using it instead of sugar as the perfect fit for its snack bars.

“It was tough on the production side, but luckily, we’ve got an amazing team, and we made it work,” she says. “We got the texture we were aiming for.”