I don’t know if you know this, but being a man is in right now.
Sure, you may read about the women’s rights movement, and new wave feminism, and the end of our cisgendered way of society, but fuck all that noise. Being a man is and forever will be the shit.
Men love being men. Women love men who are men. Brands loving selling to men (see: Old Spice) and basically men men men.
Men.
Which is why beef jerky, the manliest of snacks, is booming right now. Hershey’s, the candy company, just purchased jerky company Krave, which makes a high-end jerky, for freaking $300 million.
That’s a shit ton of jerky. But it’s also a safe bet. The company, which is only five years old, just had $36 million in sales. That’s because everyone wants jerky.
The market for jerky has ballooned into a nearly $1.5 billion industry in the United States. Sales are up by 13 percent since 2013, and by 46 percent since 2009, according to data from market research firm IRI. Jack Link’s, the largest jerky maker in America, now sells more than $1 billion in meat snacks each year.
Meat meat jerky jerky man man. That’s because it’s low in fat, high in protein and tasty in delicious. And us men are all about the PROTEIN.
But jerky’s popularity also owes a great deal to this country’s obsession with protein. More than half of Americans say they want more of it in their diet, and they have proven that the talk isn’t cheap. The protein shake business has become a behemoth. So too has the protein bar market, which was already worth more than $500 million in 2013. Sales of health and wellness bars, which often dangle high protein content, are growing more than twice as fast as the overall food industry.
Beef jerky, which is high in protein, low in calories, highly portable, and can last for a long time, has benefited greatly from its ability to double as both a practical and healthy snack.
Jerky’s beating the shit out of pita chips, beause fuck pita chips. Carbs and bullshit, that’s what pita chips are. But it speaks to another trend. Snacking is fetch right now.
The rise of dried meat is in part the result of a general uptick in snacking among Americans. The U.S. snacks business, which includes not only jerky, but also chips, bars, nuts, and other fare, is now a $120 billion behemoth. Pepsi now relies on snacks—not soda—for growth. And it’s easy to see why. A recent survey by Nielsen found that one in ten people in this country say they eat snacks instead of meals, a number which the research company expects will increase.
Americans are all about that snack life.