Utz Brands Showcase Seasonal Snack Collections, Innovations at 2025 Sweets & Snacks Expo
Utz Brands showcases seasonal snack collections and innovations at the 2025 Sweets & Snacks Expo. Source: Utz Brands, Inc.
Utz, Zapp's, Boulder Canyon and On The Border present bold new flavors and beloved brand classics at premier industry event
HANOVER, Pa., May 07, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Utz Brands, Inc.®, a leading U.S. manufacturer of branded salty snacks for more than 100 years, will showcase its Utz®, Zapp's®, Boulder Canyon® and On The Border® Chips & Dips fan-favorite products and new flavor innovations in booth #2714 at the 2025 Sweets & Snacks Expo, held May 13-15 in Indianapolis.
This year at the Sweets & Snacks Expo, Utz Brands will showcase its extensive year-round seasonal collections, featuring specially crafted snacks for Valentine's Day, Easter, sports seasons, Halloween and winter holidays.
"Our expanded portfolio, from bold flavor collaborations to seasonal offerings, represents our commitment to providing the right snack for every occasion, all year round," said Stacey Schultz, senior vice president of marketing at Utz Quality Foods, LLC, a subsidiary of Utz Brands, Inc. "We're meeting consumers at the intersection of tradition and innovation, while maintaining the quality our customers know and love."
Available for a limited time only this summer, Utz's summer seasonal potato chip is a lemonade-flavored potato chip created as a collaboration between Utz and Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, the largest independent childhood cancer charity in the U.S. The unique new Utz Lemonade Potato Chips combine the tangy sweetness of lemonade with the classic salty crunch of Utz potato chips, delivering a bold, unique flavor experience. Utz will donate a portion of the sales of the chips, up to $25,000, to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, funding critical research and support for children battling cancer.
As spicy snacks continue to drive category growth, Utz Brands has once again partnered with Mike's Hot Honey®, a leading brand of hot honey that originated in a Brooklyn pizza parlor, on two exciting limited-time offerings:
Utz Cheese Pizza Mike's Hot Honey flavored Cheese Balls® that combine the taste of pizza with a sweet-and-spicy kick in America's #1 cheese ball.
Available through October 2025, while supplies last.
Boulder Canyon, the No. 1 potato chip brand in the natural channel1 and experiencing rapid growth across other retail channels, introduces Mike's Hot Honey ® flavored kettle-cooked chips made with avocado oil.
Available through March 2026.
The Utz Brands portfolio will also highlight additional innovative products in the trending flavored pretzel category, including:
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Politico
11 hours ago
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13 hours ago
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Melissa Fernandez, 36, started working in the electronics area and then the wireless services department of the Walmart in North Bergen, New Jersey, before she transferred to the deli area in search of better pay. But Fernandez had her eye on a cake decorating job and after spending two months getting trained by a store colleague, she picked up a piping bag full-time in 2021. 'I love baking at home. I love painting,' Fernandez said. 'I love doing anything artistic, and I just always wanted to be a part of it.' After 11 years with Walmart, she said she now makes about $24.40 an hour. Despite their elite status within Walmart, the retailer's cake decorators have attracted detractors on social media. The company promotes its personalized baked goods on TikTok and encourages the workers behind such creations to do the same. Critics have accused Walmart decorators of stealing ideas and undercutting the work of professional cake artists with their low-priced products. After TikTok videos praising Walmart's $25 heart-shaped cakes with borders that resemble vintage lace cropped up before Valentine's Day this year, a few bakers produced their own videos explaining why their cakes cost so much more and critiquing Walmart's. Debates ensued in the comments sections over whether Walmart represented evils of capitalism or served the needs of the masses. A customized sheet cake that can be sliced to serve 96 people costs $59 at Walmart, about one-third to half the price that a nationwide sample of independent bakeries list online for similarly sized cakes. For $5.20 more, Walmart customers can add strawberry or 'Bavarian creme" fillings, which like the bare cakes, are vendor-supplied. The slice of the celebratory occasion cake market Walmart holds appears vast based on company-supplied figures. One out of four cakes sold in the U.S. comes from Walmart, and its employees will collectively decorate more than 1 million cakes during May and June, according to a company spokesperson. The number of cakes decorated each day at the location where Fernandez works nearly doubles to 50-60 when school graduations come around, compared to 30-35 a day during the rest of the year, said Michael DeMarco, the manager of the store's fresh food department. He credits the decorators' talent and promotional efforts on TikTok. "We're getting a lot of repeat customers. We're doing a lot more business because of just the viral sensations,' DeMarco said. A TikTok video that showed Fernandez designing a $24 version of a customized bouquet cake — 12 cupcakes that are individually decorated and arranged to look like a bunch of flowers — received nearly a half-million views. The bouquet design was one of the North Bergen store's most popular cakes last month, a company spokesperson said. The dressy heart-shaped cakes, as well as cakes that resemble meals like sushi or a pile of spaghetti and meatballs, are popular too, she said. Fernandez also has created 'burn away' cakes: an iced cake topped with an image printed on paper, which is set ablaze to reveal a different image underneath. 'TikTok helps me stay up to date,' she said. 'A lot of trends that I see on there, within that week or within that month, customers will come asking about it. And we're pretty up to date as well.' Jazzing up a cake by hand requires skill, whether or not someone else did the baking, she said. Funneling buttercream frosting through a bag and various sized piping tips to yield the desired design without misplaced blobs is not the same as drawing or painting, Fernandez explained. 'There's a lot of pressure points that you have to practice in order to get the borders correct and the right thickness or the right texture,' she said. Tiffany Witzke, who has been a Walmart cake decorator since July 2016 and works at a store in Springfield, Missouri, has more than 912,000 followers on TikTok. The job attracts people who "can be extremely skilled and talented,' Witzke said, adding that customers want increasingly complicated designs. 'When I first started, it was basically just borders and writing," she said. 'Now, everybody wants more and more and more on their cake.' Liz Berman, owner of The Sleepy Baker, in Natick, Massachusetts, said she's not worried about losing customers to Walmart because of her attention to detail and the premium ingredients she uses. She charges $205 and up for a half-sized sheet cake, the bouquets made up of two dozen miniature cupcakes cost $110. All the cakes are made from scratch, and Berman said she designs everything herself. 'It's just a totally different business model," she said. 'Everything I do is custom.' For Walmart, the cake decorating business delivers higher profit margins than some other areas, such as groceries and electronics, according to Marshal Cohen, chief retail advisor at market research firm Circana. But it's also resonating with shoppers looking for affordable luxuries. 'We've gone into a period where the consumer is saying, 'This is good enough,'" Cohen said. Customers interviewed at the North Bergen store on a recent weekday seemed to be satisfied. George Arango, 34, picked up two customized cakes, one to celebrate a co-worker's retirement and the other for a colleague getting another job. After researching prices on various store websites, he decided to give Walmart a try. 'The price is fantastic," he said. "I'm walking out with two cakes for $40.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
