Dubai Chocolate Bleeds Into New Formats At Summer Fancy Food Show

Is Dubai chocolate the new freeze-dried candy? The Middle Eastern confection, featuring a milk chocolate bar filled with pistachio cream and kadayif, has exploded in popularity as the combination went viral on TikTok in late 2024. Now CPG brands are iterating on the flavor combination, bringing it to single-serve formats as well as new, inspired innovations.

Indulgent snack maker Just The Fun Part showcased its new Dubai Cones, a bite-sized take on the trend with milk chocolate, pistachio cream and crispy kadaifi, a form of shredded phyllo dough, tucked inside a mini waffle cone. The bite-sized snacks come in a 4.23 oz bag, offering 100 calories and 8 grams of sugar per 2-piece serving.

The brand also showcased two sizes, 7.05 oz and 3.53 oz, of a classic chocolate bar flavored in the Dubai-style and made with the same ingredients, with the exception of the mini waffle cone. Confection brands such as Leonessa and Nuts Factory also showed off Dubai Chocolate-style waffle cone snacks and for the latter, an assortment of chocolate bars pairing flavors such as S’mores with the classic pistachio and kadayif combination.

Elsewhere, mother-daughter founded snack company Rolling Pin also showed off its take on the trend. The Brooklyn-based business is putting all of its focus behind a new bulk-sized 8.8 oz pack of single-serve Dubai-style chocolates, a brand spokesperson told Nosh, noting the item is now available at select Costco stores. The company sells a variety of snack items into the club chain including freeze-dried candy, crunchy corn, pretzel bites and cookie bark.

But brands are taking various cracks at the Dubai chocolate trend and bringing it beyond bar-like formats. At the show, dessert topping brand Whipnotic previewed a forthcoming Dubai Chocolate seasonal offering, featuring chocolate flavored whipped cream with a pistachio flavor swirl.

Several chocolate makers – including Royale Chocolatier and Hernàn – displayed Dubai chocolate bars alongside an emerging iteration that is quickly gaining traction on social media. Dubai Angel Hair Chocolate features pink chocolate stuffed with pistachio cream and cotton candy.

The pistachio market is experiencing “phenomenal momentum,” according to executives at Setton Farms, one the nation’s largest growers and processors of the nut. The company this week announced the opening of a new pistachio processing facility in Zamora, Calif., as well as the acquisition of a pistachio processing facility in Terra Bella, Calif., and the expansion of a plant in Brooklyn, N.Y. These investments increase Setton Farms’ capacity to more than 100 million pounds of additional volume.