The meat stick, long associated with truck stops and road trips, has undergone a rebranding. Fueled by a national obsession with protein and the rise of weight-loss medications, meat snacks have become a rare bright spot in the food industry, evolving into a $5.5 billion juggernaut.
While organic growth across the broader packaged food sector has stalled following the post-COVID volume fade, meat snacks are surging. Sales in the category grew 6.6% in 2025 alone, outpacing the broader savory snacks market, according to Bank of America Global Research. The driver of this boom is a fundamental shift in the American diet: the desperate hunt for protein.
Some 71% of U.S. consumers were actively seeking to increase their protein intake, according to the International Food Information Council 2024 Food & Health Survey. However, the current explosion in the category is inextricably linked to the “Ozempic effect.” The widespread adoption of GLP-1 medications like Wegovy has altered consumption habits, driving intense interest in portion-controlled, nutrient-dense snacks that provide satiety without high carbohydrate counts.
“GLP-1s are not a fad,” Wells Fargo agricultural economist Michael Swanson told Fortune in a recent interview, adding that he’s seen many fad diets come and go. “They’re going to be here, and they’re going to be ever more pervasive, because we’re going to get new modes of action that work better with different people, kind of like the statins, or cholesterol control drugs. And so that’s actually going to change how we eat in a big, big way, favoring some, hurting others. The push for proteins, that’s a very huge thing that’s popped up in the last few years.”
BofA calculated that meat snacks represent $5.5 billion, or 7% of the “savory snack” category, which came to $74.9 billion in 2025. This category includes products such as salty snacks (potato and tortilla chips, puffed/rice/veggie snacks), savory biscuits (crackers), popcorn, pretzels, and meat snacks.
Why meat snacks are the protein solution
Swanson explained that as patients lose significant weight—often 20% to 25% of their body mass—they face the challenge of maintenance, necessitating high-protein diets to preserve muscle mass while consuming fewer calories. This medical shift has forced food manufacturers to scramble, with protein claims now dominating labels from dairy aisles to coffee shops.
And the data shows that meat snacks are the top-performing slice of the savory snacks category, with 6.6% growth in 2025, representing 6.6% compound annual growth over the 2020–25 period. Over the past three years, it’s far and away the leader in the savory clubhouse, with popcorn plummeting as consumers seek healthy options.
This health-conscious wave has bifurcated the market, creating a “Better for You” (BFY) disrupter class that is eating into the market share of legacy giants. Brands like Chomps, Archer, and the Conagra-acquired Fatty are gaining ground with “protein-forward” messaging. Grass-fed options alone saw volumes grow by 81% year over year in 2025, according to Circana data. This represents something of a changing of the guard: Emerging brand Chomps delivered the largest market share gain over a three-year stack (up 822 basis points), boasting a customer base that is approximately 70% female. Conversely, traditional market leader Jack Link’s saw a share loss of 573 basis points over the same period.
Where Americans shop is changing, too
The purchasing channels are also shifting as rapidly as the demographics. While sales at convenience stores—the historical stronghold of the beef jerky rack—are declining, sales are booming in “club” stores such as Costco and online marketplaces like Amazon. This aligns with a consumer base that views these products not as impulse buys at the gas pump, but as pantry staples for wellness-focused meal prepping—or as a crucial part of the new GLP-1-friendly diet.
“One of the things that the industry has discovered is that people will say, ‘Oh, I hit the weight I wanted to be at, I’m feeling great, I’m off.’ And then they have a hard time maintaining without that, you know, GLP-1 support. And so the industry’s probably trying to formulate a support mechanism that makes a lot of sense,” Swanson noted. Which is where protein comes in. He recalled a recent visit to the International Dairy Forum, where he heard about huge demand for whey protein and milk protein concentrates: “They just can’t keep up. Because the food manufacturers are saying, ‘Hey, I need to have something on the label that shows a high protein content.’” BofA noted that affordability concerns are making “cost per gram of protein” a key metric for consumers in making purchase decisions.
Swanson said that over decades working in food economics, he’s learned some other things about American consumption: “It has to fit into the framework of convenient and tasty. [For] Americans, it has to be convenient; they don’t want to do a lot of prep, a lot of cleanup. And if it’s not tasty, it’s not on the menu.”
Credit: Source link
