Over the past few months, as I went through the process of developing SF&WB’s annual “Top 50 Snack & Bakery Companies” list, I felt a renewed sense of admiration for the inherent power of merging true nutrition with indulgence. Such R&D gambits are a strategic balancing act, seeking to capitalize on the best of both worlds, a meeting of two wonderful minds that yields something greater than the sum of its parts: long-term brand loyalists.
Snack and nutrition bars are a study in healthy meets sweet, and leading snack bar producer KIND does a great job with this balancing act. While bars as a whole have not fared as well as some other snack and bakery products during the pandemic—primarily due to the loss of “grab-and-go” foods as vast swaths of the population work from home—KIND saw over $554 million in U.S. retail bar sales for the year, as measured by our data partner, IRI.