In late May, my sister and I embarked on an epic road trip from our stomping grounds, Oklahoma City, to the Black Hills, Grand Teton National Park, and Yellowstone National Park, and no road trip is complete without its snacks – and lots of them.
Nostalgia was rampant on the candy aisle, and as the quintessential Millennial, I took the bait and grabbed a bag of Super Sour Gushers, which I hadn’t noticed in convenience stores before. (Full disclosure: I eat very differently on road trips than I do in everyday life, though.)
Apparently, my sour candy obsession actually aligns better with the Gen Z palate, according to the results of a new survey by Kellanova on the snacking preferences of 2,000 U.S. adults who had either gone on a road trip recently or planned to take one soon.
“Gen Z is more likely than any other generation to want adventurous snack flavors, such as sour and bitter along with savory and spicy. Preferring to travel with a group of friends versus solo, they say shareability is essential,” noted the report.
We Millennials, on the other hand, are more likely to choose tangy flavors, with our top choices being salty, sweet, and cheesy flavors. I can confirm that we love our cheesy snacks, as one of my current favorites is the Extra Toasty variety of Cheez-Its – and I’m not an outlier there.
Road Trip Royalty
Americans of all ages ranked Cheez-Its and Pringles as their top favorite snack brands for summer road trips in the survey.
As for the older two generations, Gen X is “up for anything,” including crackers, chips, and protein snacks like beef jerky, but in terms of flavor preferences, they lean toward sweet, salty, and chocolatey flavors – as do the Baby Boomers, who also enjoy throwing nuts, seeds, and salty snack mixes, well, into the mix.
Interestingly yet unsurprisingly, only the wealthiest two generations gravitated toward chocolatey flavors, which makes sense given the volatility of cocoa prices over the last several months. In the first quarter of 2024, Baby Boomers held a whopping 51.8% of the total wealth in the United States, while Gen X accounted for another 25.8%.
As reported by Convenience Store News, nonchocolate candy sales have grown by nearly $5 billion since 2019 – an increase of almost 70% – although chocolate still accounted for a little more than half of all confectionery sales last year.
“In the convenience channel, nonchocolate grew one dollar share point in 2024 vs. 2023. However, overall sales for confections in the convenience channel were down across dollars, units and volume for the category,” said Sally Lyons Wyatt, global EVP and chief advisor, consumer goods and foodservice insights for Circana. “Part of the sales decline was due to the loss of C-store traffic; however, there were pockets of growth across the U.S.”
I’ll admit that I’ve never been that big of a chocolate fan, even before the cocoa crisis began. Although I enjoy it as a supporting actress in my road trip snacks (e.g. a chocolatey peanut butter trail mix) on occasion, it’s never going to be the leading lady if I’m in the driver’s seat – and if the chocolate isn’t paired with salt, I’m definitely not interested.
My sister still teases me for sprinkling salt on top of an already-baked chocolate chip cookie before eating it one time. What can I say? Like Gen Z, I’m a sucker for swalty flavors.
Snacking from Coast to Coast
Kellanova’s Summer Road Trip Snacking Survey also offered snacking insights broken down by U.S. region, which almost read like yearbook superlatives at a first glance:
- The Most Spontaneous: The South stocks up along the journey and prefers salty, sweet, and chocolatey snacks.
- More Cheese, Please: Northeasterners are twice as likely to eat something creamy-flavored compared to Midwesterners. Don’t count them out, though: one out of three Midwesterners rank cheesy-flavored snacks in their top three.
- Almost Anything Goes: Those living in the Mountain West and Pacific Coast usually leave snack planning to others and are happy to eat whatever is available when they’re hungry. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have their favorites, with salty, sweet, and chocolatey flavors in their top three.
Although I’ve spent my entire life in Oklahoma, I’m still not sure which U.S. region we fall into. Some put us in the South or Southwest; others call us Midwesterners. Either way, my flavor preferences are fairly consistent with both of those categories above.
