Meat sticks, long associated with truck stops and road trips, have undergone a rebranding. Fueled by a national obsession with protein and the rise of weight-loss drugs, meat snacks have become a rare bright spot in the food industry and have grown into a $5.5 billion behemoth.
While organic growth across the packaged food industry has stalled following a post-pandemic sales decline, meat snacks are surging. According to statistics, sales in this category will grow by 6.6% in 2025 alone, outpacing the wider salty snack market Bank of America Research. The boom is driven by a fundamental shift in the American diet: a desperate quest for protein.
According to the International Food Information Council’s 2024 Food and Health Survey, approximately 71% of U.S. consumers are actively seeking to increase their protein intake. However, the current explosive growth of the category is inextricably linked to the “ozone effect.” The widespread adoption of GLP-1 drugs such as Wegovy has changed consumer habits, sparking interest in portion-controlled, nutrient-dense snacks that provide satiety without being high in carbohydrates.
"GLP-1 is not a fad," Wells Fargo agricultural economist Michael Swanson Tell wealth In a recent interview, he added that he’s seen many fad diets come and go. “They’re going to emerge and they’re going to become more common because we’re going to get new modes of action that work better for different people, kind of like statins or cholesterol-control drugs. So this is actually going to change the way we eat a lot, good for some people and bad for others. The push for protein, that’s a really huge thing that’s come out in the last few years.”
Bank of America calculates that meat snacks account for $5.5 billion, or 7%, of the “savory snacks” category, which will reach $74.9 billion by 2025. This category includes products such as salty snacks (potato and tortilla chips, puffed/rice/vegetable snacks), salty crackers (crackers), popcorn, pretzels, meat snacks and other salty snacks.
Why meat snacks are the protein solution
Swanson explained that as patients lose significant weight (usually 20 to 25 percent of their body weight), they are challenged to maintain their weight and require a high-protein diet to maintain muscle mass while burning fewer calories. This medical shift has forced food manufacturers to scramble, with protein claims now dominating labels from dairy aisles to coffee shops.
Data shows that meat snacks are the best-performing segment in the salty snack category and will grow by 6.6% in 2025, equivalent to a compound annual growth rate of 6.6% during 2020-25. Over the past three years, it has been the clear leader in the savory club, with popcorn sales plummeting as consumers seek healthier options.
This wave of health awareness has split the market in two, creating a category of “better for you” (BFY) disruptors that are eating away at the market share of traditional giants. Brands such as Chomps, Archer and ConAgra-acquired Fatty are winning markets with a “protein frontier” message. Sales of grass-fed options alone will grow 81% year over year through 2025, according to Circana. This represents a changing of the guard of sorts: Emerging brand Chomps has achieved the largest market share growth over the past three years (up 822 basis points), and roughly 70% of its customer base is female. In contrast, shares of traditional market leader Jack Link’s fell 573 basis points over the same period.
Where Americans shop is changing too
Purchasing channels are also changing rapidly with changing demographics. While sales at convenience stores – the historic home of the beef jerky aisle – are declining, sales at “club” stores, such as costco and online marketplaces such as Amazon. This is consistent with consumer groups who view these products not as impulse buys while filling up the tank, but as pantry staples for health-focused meal prep or as an important part of a new GLP-1 friendly diet.
“One of the things the industry has discovered is that people will say, ‘Oh, I got to the weight I wanted, I feel great, here I go.'” Without GLP-1 support, they are difficult to maintain. So the industry is probably trying to develop a support mechanism that makes a lot of sense,” and that’s where protein comes in. He recalled a recent visit to the International Dairy Forum, where he heard about the huge demand for whey protein and milk protein concentrates: “They just can’t keep up. Because food manufacturers say, hey, I need something with high protein content on the label. Bank of America noted that affordability concerns have made “cost per gram of protein” a key metric for consumers in making purchasing decisions.
Swanson said that working in the field of food economics for decades has taught him something else about American consumption. “It has to fit into the framework of convenience and deliciousness. Americans, it has to be convenient, they don’t want to do a lot of prep work, a lot of cleanup. If it doesn’t taste good, it’s not going to be on the menu.”