Expo East: Sour Candy Rides New Innovation Wave

If you’ve been waiting for a better-for-you sour candy, this may be your moment.

As seen on the trade show floor at Expo East in Philadelphia last week, a new wave of CPG entrepreneurs and brands have set their sights on capturing the nostalgia of sucking on a handful of Warheads. Clean ingredients and reduced sugar are table stakes when it comes to natural sweets, but sustainability claims, strange shapes and bold flavors were just some of the unique ways we saw a rising subset of sour candy makers distinguish themselves amidst the growing field.

New candy brand Blobs was the first one we spotted at Natural Products Expo East. The company launched its gummy candies in May with three SKUs: Pomegranate Apple, Orange Peach and Passionfruit Pineapple. Though Blobs is only playing in the sweet space at the moment, the better-for-you brand is prioritizing a quick expansion with a new sour candy line coming in November, said founder Mike Schanbacher.

Blobs aims to set itself apart by its ambiguous shapes and chewy, but not sticky, mouthfeel. The product is sweetened with Allulose and made with tapioca starch fiber, a conscious choice that Schanbacher claims makes Blobs one of the only low-FODMAP clean-label candies on the market. The brand also sources wind-energy throughout its supply chain and is aiming to reach carbon neutrality by 2025.

While it spent the past year working through numerous product iterations and sorting out co-manufacturing capabilities, Blobs has operated on a lean budget and has raised a pre-seed round fund its growth thus far. The company is looking to begin a formal raise as it ramps up retail distribution, starting with its launch at Pop Up Grocer’s flagship NYC store this month. It has also secured shelf space at independent stores in the Philadelphia area and will soon launch on GoPuff.

While gummy candy broadly seems to be in the midst of a better-for-you renaissance, we spotted numerous brands on the show floor with new takes strictly in the sour set.

Better Sour, which was launched by Shaka Tea founder Bella Hughes in May, exhibited its line of sour candies for the first time at this year’s show. The brand aims to differentiate based on flavor – which includes Pomegranate, Apricot, Plum, Guava, Calamansi and Ume – as well as its low sugar content. The products are sweetened with a combination of Allulose and fruit juice and are currently on-shelf at Erewhon, Pop Up Grocer and Foxtrot.

Better Sour draws flavor and branding inspiration from Hughes’ and her co-founder Semira Nikou’s shared Iranian heritage as well as their home state of Hawaii; its distinct sun shaped candies are inspired by a major motif in Iranian culture, Mithra.

Elsewhere, Michael Fisher, founder and CEO of new California-based candy brand Rotten, was walking the show floor with word that his new product – which has been in the works for two years – will finally launch on Wednesday. Rotten began with a Kickstarter campaign in 2021 and Fisher began testing a range of product formulations soon after among a select 500 person group of early backers.

“The R&D process and upfront investment to bring a food product to market can be so large,” said Fisher, while noting his background in the tech industry inspired a different approach. “I am used to launching a product, iterating, getting something out there and getting feedback, [but] with food products, that’s harder to do and gummies in particular, are not easily made at home and iterated on.”

Fisher’s go-to-market approach – which took nearly two years of conducting consumer testing, focus groups and sampling initial products – has resulted in a two-SKU gummy worm line in Original and Sour flavors. Rotten is made from a cocktail of allulose, glucose syrup, sugar and modified corn starch and despite that sugary concoction, the brand claims to contain 60% less sugar than leading products and calls out its lack of sugar alcohols or artificial sweeteners right on the front of pack.

Rotten has officially launched online Wednesday in fully compostable packages for $28 per 8-pack on a subscription basis or $3.50 per 1.8 oz. bag. Fisher said he is prioritizing reducing waste in the brand’s supply chain as much as possible so, in addition to the compostable packages, all shipping materials are paper-based and made from recycled materials when possible.

While cane sugar and corn syrup have long been the hallmarks of a good gummy, there is also a novel yet niche group that are aiming to make sour cranberries a new candy category staple.

Patience Fruit & Co. has been selling its sour coated dried cranberries in Canada for the past three years and when its parent company, Fruit D’Or, acquired Massachusetts-based Decas Cranberries in 2021, the company made initial moves to bring Sour Crans to the U.S. The product rolled out in both natural and conventional retail in the U.S. last Fall, but has since been pulled and new distribution has halted as the team reassessed the product’s positioning.

Come January 2024, Patience Fruit & Co will become simply “Patience” and the Sour Crans line will start reentering stores with a new packaging design intended to position the product as a healthier alternative to Mondelēz’s mega-brand Sour Patch Kids.

Keith Benoit, Fruit d’Or’s VP of USA Sales, said retail buyers have affirmed the product will still be slotted into dried fruit sets during discussions about the relaunch, underscoring the challenges in positioning fruit as a direct candy competitor. But Benoit doesn’t see that as too much of a hurdle and believes Patience can still achieve its candy-like aspirations for Sour Crans once consumers begin to purchase, taste and understand the product.

And while Patience Fruit & Co was the only sour cran we saw on the show floor, it may have some help elsewhere in convincing consumers that cranberries can be candy too. Earlier this month Science Inc., the CPG investment and brand development firm behind water brand Liquid Death, launched Final Boss Sours, a new line of gaming-themed sour snacks made from dried cranberries.

The company launched with three varieties offering different levels of sourness and managing director James Hicks told NOSH at the time that Final Boss plans to bring additional sour SKUs made from different dried fruits in the future.