American consumers have a growing appetite for what snackers alternately call meat, or snack, sticks, and they’ve never been more spoiled for choice. - Elizabeth Coetzee/WSJ
Most mornings, Greg Brooks wakes up and heads to a 7-Eleven for a meat stick.
He’s promptly bombarded with choices, from the classic Slim Jim to a proliferation of options promising to be healthier and less processed. Brooks, 59, won’t bite. He’s in the meat-stick aisle for quick protein and a flavor hit.
“Delicacy is sort of lost on me,” he said. “I am not that guy out there looking for the latest artisanal, ‘nuns on top of a mountain put together these very special’ meat sticks.”
America loves its meat sticks. They are the fastest-growing category in snacks. That’s good news for Big Meat Stick. But the flood of flavors and high-end options that has come with the snack’s rising popularity has divided fans.
Traditionalists, who prize the snack for its smoky simplicity, have a beef with the onslaught of choice. Other fans are being lured to a new breed of packaged offerings that claim to be sugar-free and use grass-fed meat. Some won’t touch anything that didn’t come from a butcher—and please, whatever you do, don’t call it a meat stick.
Like a lot of people of a certain age, Kyle McCorry, 36, felt the early pull of the Slim Jim.
“I was obsessed with ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage, so of course I was a big Slim Jim fan,” he said, referring to one of World Wrestling Entertainment’s biggest stars starting in the 1980s, who beckoned fans to “snap into a Slim Jim!” before cooing, “Oooohhh yeaaaaah!”
That was elementary school, though. McCorry says his tastes have evolved beyond the coaxing of Macho Man, and these days he roams the meat-stick aisle looking for options that at least seem healthier. He usually goes with Chomps.
“I’m not looking at the ingredient label,” admits McCorry, who works in corporate development at a home-services company in Virginia Beach, Va. “But I wouldn’t grab a Slim Jim or similar options because in my mind they aren’t as healthy.”
Slim Jim maker Conagra Brands, which also owns the Fatty and Duke’s meat snack brands, packs its products with “protein and flavor,” said Ashley Spade, vice president and general manager of the snack business at Conagra.
McCorry’s meat-stick eating usually comes midmorning or early afternoon, with peanuts and a cheese stick. “So, like, a lazy man’s charcuterie board,” he said.
Whether reaching for a quick, easy snack to get through a crazy day or sticking to a high-protein diet, more Americans are turning to meat sticks. Nancy Pelosi bit into one on Jan. 6, 2021, during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Actress Jennifer Lawrence took Slim Jims—hot and mild—to the Oscars in 2014, an emergency nibble for the hourslong ceremony.
Sales of dried meat snacks excluding jerky were up 10.4%, to about $3.29 billion, through Dec. 29, 2024, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to consumer-analytics firm Circana.
The popular treat is part of a snack category that, along with jerky, involves drying, spicing and smoking meat. Snackers who go with sticks over jerky like the convenience of not having to reach into a bag or do so much chewing. Nowadays, they are spoiled for choice.
Sticks come in flavors including jalapeño, taco-seasoned, teriyaki and dill pickle. Meat options range from beef to turkey, chicken and sheep. They can be short or long, fat or slim. Some snap, others have a softer texture.
Newer packaged offerings from brands like Chomps focus on seemingly healthier alternatives, such a grass-fed meat. - Shutterstock
Roughly 41 million households buy meat sticks annually, according to Conagra’s Spade.
The consumer packaged-goods company recently rounded out what executives call the “trifecta smokehouse,” buying the maker of Fatty meat sticks last year. The acquisition beefed up a portfolio that already boasted the Slim Jim and Duke’s brands. Growth, Spade said, has been “explosive.”
Gretchen Gregor said the new offerings sparked her curiosity, and she has dabbled in exotic options made from alligator and kangaroo meat. But the 19-year-old said her decadelong bond to Slim Jim remains strong.
“I’ve known the mild flavor my whole life,” said Gregor, a Virginia native and former haunted-house actor.
Slim Jim loyalists like the texture, the snap of each bite and the variety of flavors. The classic meat stick has itself been swept up in the seasonings storm. Leah A. Walker, 28, refuses to try some of them—especially dill pickle. “I’m scared of that one,” she said.
Walker estimates she’s been eating Slim Jims nearly all of her life. She said her loyal patronage began in childhood during stops at gas stations with her mom.
“Even just seeing the red and yellow packaging is very nostalgic for me,” she said.
These days Walker uses Slim Jims as fuel while she studies to get into law school, and insists the original flavor has unrivaled depth.
With the recent focus on highly processed foods, some meat-stick aficionados and casual snackers are drawing a line between products that include ingredients such as corn syrup, like Slim Jims, and those that don’t. Some look at sodium levels and additives.
Certain purists won’t touch mass-produced options.
Sarah Steele, 48, goes to her local butcher. Steele grew up around butchers—“I was turning a crank on a kielbasa grinder when I was old enough to stand on a chair,” she said—so the state government employee expects the finer things in a snack stick.
To supplement butcher offerings, Steele sometimes makes her own, which she said is doable in most homes.
No meat grinder? No problem. “KitchenAid makes a little meat grinder. It’s the cutest thing ever. It sticks right on the front” of the popular stand mixers, said Steele, who lives in West Lafayette, Ind. She adds spices, throws them in a smoker or grill, and puts them in her purse or gym bag for a protein fix.
Steele prefers her meat sticks to have a kick. And high-quality meat is a must.
“I’m a meat snob, what can I say?” she said. “But I don’t judge—if you enjoy it, eat it.”
