How meat-snack marketers are meeting the moment

Give Grogu a meat jerky snack, and you get a meat-cute for the ages.

In a recent 30-second spot for Archer Jerky and The Mandalorian and Grogu, Disney’s latest feature film installment in the Star Wars franchise, Baby Yoda’s penchant for snacking powers the marketing message for the individually packaged jerky. It’s part of a larger campaign from the meat-stick brand that also includes special packaging, Fandango rewards to help pay for a ticket, and sweepstakes that offer participants a chance to win a trip to the film’s LA premiere.

For Archer, it’s the biggest partnership the brand has secured to date, and for meatheads everywhere, it’s part of a larger meat-stick growth spurt. The “meat snacks” category saw 6.6% growth in 2025, according to Bank of America Global Research data cited by Fortune, and is forecast to reach more than $22 billion in market size in 2026, according to data from Mordor Intelligence.

“As we’ve started to bring grass-fed beef [and] really premium products…it really has created a sea change within the category where a lot of these consumers have rediscovered meat snacks and said, ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t my father’s meat-snacks category,’” Andrew Thomas, SVP of marketing at Archer, told Marketing Brew. “That’s what’s been a big driver for the dynamic category of growth that you’ve seen now, which has resulted in, of course, a million brands trying to get into the space.”

From newer players like Archer to legacy brands like Slim Jim and Jack Link’s Protein Snacks, meat is having a moment—online, in stores, and in culture. So how do marketers, well, meet it?

Meat-ing point

For Thomas, having Disney reach out to partner was “a life goal bucket-list sort of thing,” which he said came about after a Disney rep saw an Archer ad during a Dodgers game. In other words, becoming the official meat snack of the Dodgers in 2025 has had its benefits.

Archer isn’t the only meat-snack brand enjoying a surge in attention. Category mainstays like Slim Jim and Jack Link’s have also noted an increase in consumer interest. There are a few reasons why, including increased health consciousness across the board, increased GLP-1 usage driving interest in protein and fiber, and new government messaging around nutrition.

“There’s a couple things going on. The first one is the food pyramid: they turned it upside down,” Holly LaVallie, SVP of marketing at Jack Link’s, told us. “Then there’s microdiets that are happening out there. So whether it was Atkins a few years ago, or keto, or carnivore diets today that are a little bit more on the fringe, or things like GLP-1s that are mainstreaming, it just naturally causes a surge in protein messaging.”

According to KFF survey data from late last year, nearly 1 in 5 Americans have tried a GLP-1 to lose weight, with usage rates highest among people ages 50–64. Marketing to GLP-1 users looks different across meat-snack brands: some brands, like Jack Link’s, are targeting potential customers with tailored messaging, while others, like Archer, have avoided directly referencing GLP-1s in order to avoid potential changing tides.

“We’re not doing any content related [to] or specifically about GLP-1s, even though meat snacks is one of the three categories that sees an uptick in purchase after a household has adopted GLP-1s,” Thomas said. “We could cite that stat, and we could talk about it. We’re not going to, because you don’t know when people are going to stop talking about it.”

While GLP-1 usage is highest among older consumers, meat snacks seem to be popular with a younger set online, and brands like Chomps have struck partnership deals with lifestyle creators like Mada Graviet and family vloggers like Mike and Carly Walton in an effort to reach them. At Slim Jim, building a strong online community has been core to the brand’s strategy since the 2010s, and the current fervor for meat snacks is only reinforcing that, Brand Director Matthew Brown told us.

The community-centric strategy “speaks to Slim Jim’s ability to be broadly appealing, but it’s focusing on connection with our fans, and we do it in a witty, authentic, and uplifting way,” Brown said, later adding that the goal of the efforts is “making sure Slim Jim is top of mind for folks, even if they are not actively seeking meat snacks.”

Making ends meat

Proteinmaxxing and upside-down food pyramids may not always be in fashion, which meat-snack brands are well aware of. According to Lavallie, though, protein itself will never go out of style.

“The good news is that protein, whether it’s hot or slightly hot, I’ve never seen it, in the last 10 years, be less than slightly hot,” she said.

To craft a marketing plan that works beyond the moment, LaVallie relies on an education arm, which, yes, focuses on protein, but also highlights other nutrition perks and eating habits, including emphasizing the perceived benefits of consuming different types of proteins, real meat, and avoiding ultra-processed foods.

“Historically, we’ve been trying to drive people to the category through the benefits of protein,” she told us. “Now we get to educate the consumers more, because protein is naturally part of the discussion.”

Continuing with relevant partnerships and online strategies is also key for Slim Jim and Archer, especially ones that drive innovation, awareness, and creativity. Because while meat snacks are sexy right now, there’s still room for more people to get excited.

“The meat-snack category is really under-penetrated versus other snacking categories,” Thomas said. “I think there’s still a lot of people who don’t even know what aisle meat snacks are in.”