Meat snacks are now a $4.4 billion business
Meat snack sales grew more than 45 percent in four years to $4.4 billion, according to CoBank. Jack Link's and Chomps are building new plants to make more.
Meat snacks are a $4.4 billion business in American stores, according to a June 2, 2026 report from CoBank Knowledge Exchange. The report, titled "Protein's promise for meat snack growth," works from Circana sales data for the 52 weeks ending January 25, 2026, and says sales grew by more than 45 percent over the previous four years.
CoBank credits Chomps, a meat stick brand, with growing the category's customer base well beyond the young men the aisle was built around. Chomps says 70 percent of the people buying its meat sticks are women.
The people buying the sticks are not always the people eating them. Stacey Hartnett, the marketing chief at Chomps, told Retail Brew in March 2026 that much of what the company sells is bought for the whole household, and that the split among the people who actually eat the sticks is "more 50-50."
The companies in the category are adding capacity. CoBank counts roughly $1 billion of additional meat snack processing investment announced since 2020, and sets that beside $8 billion invested across all animal processing.
Two companies account for much of the new building. Jack Link's announced a $450 million plant in Perry, Georgia, a large share of the category total on its own. Chomps is building two plants, one in Missouri and one in Nebraska, to double the number of meat sticks it can make.
