🏆 The 2025 Shoppers’ Choice Awards: What 6.9M Reviews Reveal About the Best Snacks in America

What makes a snack not just liked, but loved? The answer lies in 6.9 million organic consumer reviews—analyzed, structured, and decoded by Yogi to uncover the most crave-worthy snacks on the market today.

The 2025 Shoppers’ Choice Awards, featured in our latest Sweet & Salty Snack Trends Unwrapped report, go beyond popularity contests. These awards are powered by deep sentiment analysis across reviews from Amazon, Walmart, and Target—offering the industry’s most reliable consumer-backed ranking of top-performing snack brands.

📊 Context: A Benchmark-Shattering Report

Before we reveal the winners, here’s what makes this data so impactful:

• 6.9 million organic reviews analyzed (non-promotional only)
  
• 1,289 snack products from 265 brands
  
• Data collected from 2018 to early 2025 across Amazon, Walmart, and Target
  

These aren’t opinions in a vacuum. This is natural language analysis at scale, identifying sentiment trends, pain points, and emotional resonance—down to the SKU level.

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Chocolate, Candy, Chips, Cookies & More: The Consumer-Backed Champions

🍫 Best Chocolate: Ferrero Rocher Wins on Indulgence

1. #1 Ferrero Rocher Premium Hazelnut Chocolates
2. #2 M&M’S Milk Chocolate
3. #3 Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate Caramel Squares
4. #4 Tony’s Chocolonely 32% Milk Chocolate Bar
5. #5 Lindt Lindor Milk Chocolate Truffles

✨ What made them stand out? Consumers praised the creaminess, richness, and melt-in-your-mouth texture—a trifecta of indulgent satisfaction.

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🍬 Best Candy: Nerds Gummy Clusters and HI-CHEW Delight

1. #1 HI-CHEW Variety Mix
2. #2 Nerds Gummy Clusters – Grape Strawberry Blitz
3. #3 Albanese Gummi Bears
4. #4 Black Forest Organic Gummy Bears
5. #5 Skittles Original
   
   

👀 Nerds Gummy Clusters continue to ride their 2020s boom, thanks to layered textures and intense flavor combos. Albanese dominates in texture sentiment, beating both Haribo and Black Forest.

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🥔 Best Chips & Crisps: Quaker and Popcorners Crack the Code

1. #1 Quaker Caramel Rice Crisps
2. #2 Popcorners Kettle Corn
3. #3 Miss Vickie’s Kettle Cooked Variety
4. #4 Sensible Portions Screamin Hot Veggie Puffs
5. #5 Quest Nutrition BBQ Protein Chips
   

🎯 Key consumer drivers: crunch, sweet-salty balance, and surprise healthfulness. Quest’s BBQ chips, for example, deliver on taste and macros—earning praise for their indistinguishability from traditional chips.

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🍪 Best Cookies: OREO Thins and Tate’s Top the Charts

1. #1 OREO Thins Mint
2. #2 Back to Nature Peanut Butter Creme Cookies
3. #3 Pepperidge Farm Tahoe Macadamia
4. #4 Grandma’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
5. #5 Tate’s Bake Shop Chocolate Chip
   

OREO’s use of individualized packaging didn’t just preserve freshness—it increased review sentiment by creating a better post-purchase experience.

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🥨 Best Pretzels: Dot’s and Pop Daddy Bring the Bold

1. #1 Dot’s Honey Mustard Twists
2. #2 Pop Daddy Hot Sauce Sticks
3. #3 Snyder’s Honey Mustard & Onion
4. #4 Amazon Fresh PB-Filled Pretzels
5. #5 Quinn PB-Filled Nuggets
   

🔥 Trend alert: Flavored pretzels are outperforming plain, with “spicy,” “savory,” and “crunchy” emerging as top descriptors in high-rated reviews.

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🧠 Deeper Insight: These Awards Are Built on More Than Stars

This year’s award winners didn’t just score high—they broke through category-specific ceilings. Consider:

• Cookies and Candy & Chocolate lead with avg. ratings over 4.2 stars
• Chips and Pretzels lag behind at ~3.6, making a 4.0 rating exceptional in those categories
• Sentiment varies dramatically by retailer: Amazon received the lowest freshness scores for popcorn, while Target performed 1.13 stars higher on average

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🧪 What Drives Consumer Love (and Loyalty)?

Yogi’s AI reveals what actually matters to consumers in their own words. In this year’s analysis, five themes stood out:

1. Freshness: Still the #1 pain point. 20.8% of Q3 popcorn reviews mention it.
2. Packaging: Smart designs (like Oreo’s) = higher satisfaction
3. Texture: Especially important in candy and chips
4. Flavor Complexity: Layered, surprising, or nostalgic flavors win big
5. Health Positioning: Guilt-free snacking (SkinnyPop, Quest) builds repeat loyalty

These insights don't just validate products—they de-risk decisions. From innovation to e-commerce optimization, they’re a strategic advantage.

🎯 Recommendations for Snack Brands

If you’re not on this year’s list, don’t panic—use this data as your playbook.

What winning brands are doing right:

• Investing in packaging that actually preserves freshness
• Doubling down on flavor + texture combos consumers crave
• Monitoring sentiment by retailer and season to prevent future issues
  Using review data to inform PDP content and claims
  
  

🚀 From Consumer Voice to Market Victory

The Shoppers’ Choice Awards are more than a trophy—they’re proof that listening at scale leads to better decisions, stronger products, and higher-performing PDPs.

👉 Download the full report

Or  🎯 See Yogi in action to unlock your shopper-powered roadmap.

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