Hershey doubles down on s’mores as a seasonal growth engine with caramel innovation and retail partnerships

Hershey has long dominated the nearly $250 million annual s’mores business, but this year the confectionery giant took the iconic combination of toasted marshmallows, slightly melted chocolate and crispy graham crackers to new levels with limited-edition product and packaging innovations, stepped-up merchandising in-stores and online and cross-category collaborations. “Hershey’s milk chocolate is associated with special, nostalgic events and celebrating special moments and special times together. And if you think about summer and campfires and what consumers love this time of year: S’mores is just one of them,” said Tiffany Menyhart, chief sales officer at The Hershey Company. “And so,” she added, “it was a natural fit for Hershey to own s’mores,” and make the dessert “its own season.” Menyhart acknowledged that over the years competitors have “tried to get in on the event and get in on the whole season, but we continue to have strong partnerships with merchandising, with digital and with social as well,” she explained. For example, since 2007, The Hershey Company has formally partnered with Honey Maid graham cracker maker Mondelēz and Jet-Puffed marshmallow maker Kraft Heinz to bring the three essential ingredients of s’mores together in engaging end-caps and retail displays in-stores and on retailers’ ecommerce platforms as well as through marketing, she said. While the trio’s retail displays historically featured only Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars, this year the company added a new limited-edition offering that helped turbocharge sales: Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Caramel. According to The Hershey Company, sales grew on average 1.3% form 2020 to 2024 and its largest growth season so far was 6.8% in 2023, but it says it is on track to surpass that growth in 2025 due to the caramel bar launch and strong core in the second half of the season. “The caramel bar was a great addition to our s’mores program for 2025,” Menyhart said, adding: “The sell-through on the caramel bar was tremendous. We were almost completely sold-through the entire production run before July 4,” and had to add production runs to meet demand even after July 4. So, what makes Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Caramel bar so special? According to Menyhart, part of the bar’s outsized impact comes from it being perfectly portioned for s’mores. “It is the perfect size to fit on top of the graham cracker with the marshmallow and other graham cracker,” she said. It’s success also can be attributed to the company listening carefully to what consumers want, she said. “We heard very clearly that caramel ranked very high with consumer preferences and it actually increased the indulgent nature of having a s’more. Think about the drippy chocolate caramel coming off your graham cracker,” she said. While the caramel-filled bar played a starring role in this year’s s’mores season it was not the only innovation that helped boost sales of the classic dessert’s components. The Hershey Company also worked with Mondelēz and Kraft Heinz to create several s’mores kits that included everything consumers need – and more. For example, The Hershey’s s’mores kit flavor combos not only included traditional graham crackers, marshmallows and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars, they also had Reese’s peanut butter cups and, of course, the milk chocolate caramel bar. According to The Hershey Company, the s’mores kits are 6.4 times as productive as select private label s’mores kits and many retailers sold through their kits quickly – underscoring the “tremendous success” of Hershey’s ownership of the s’mores season. Given the success of the LTO milk chocolate caramel bar the kits more broadly, Menyhart suggested that while this was the first year Hershey offered a filled bar as part of its s’mores season it likely won’t be the last. “We are evaluating a comeback for 2026 and we have a lot of great data to support it, but I can’t spill everything, yet,” she said. “But,” she reiterated, “we’re definitely thinking about how we can make Hershey Caramel have a second appearance in 2026 because the consumer sentiment was overwhelmingly positive for the addition to the program.”