Candy Salad Trend: The Sweet Sensation Sweeping the Nation in 2025
If you’ve logged onto any of your favorite social media platforms recently, you’ve probably encountered the new candy salad trend. This sweet and sour viral sensation is shining a fresh and impressive spotlight on new and emerging candy brands and highlighting the unprecedented creativity of contemporary consumers.
What In the World is Candy Salad?
Candy salad is exactly what it sounds like! It’s a crazy, cool mix of different kinds and brands of candy all tossed together in a bowl like a sugary, greens-free version of a salad. Popularized on TikTok and Instagram, this fun, new video trend often features friends, families, or co-workers combining their favorite chewy, crunchy, sour, sweet, and even spicy candies into one big, shareable treat. With Tastewise reporting over an 18% YoY increase in online discussions about candy salads, it’s fair to say these creative combinations are playing a role in their fair share of social gatherings and making a splash on social media feeds around the world.
Why Is Candy Salad So Popular?
Candy salad trends have gained traction at remarkable rates for a wide variety of reasons. Not only are candy salads fully customizable, but the creation of a candy salad offers consumers fun and fresh opportunities to engage with loved ones and global audiences alike. Like other high-impact candy trends, the candy salad trend offers the perfect combination of personalization, indulgence, and fun for consumers and creators of all ages and backgrounds.
It’s also fair to say that the rise of the candy salad speaks to other popular food trends, like:
- Nostalgia Marketing
Brands in industries from food and beverage to entertainment have recently benefited from escalating consumer demand for products that remind them of the simple joys of childhood. Confectionery brands are certainly no exception to this cultural phenomenon, with many childhood indulgences making major comebacks. Candy salads offer consumers of all ages an opportunity to revisit their favorite comforting treats while building community in person and online.
- Customizability
Just like a traditional salad bar, candy salads invite consumers to create their own, unique combinations of confections. This choose-your-own-adventure quality makes candy salads even more enticing to consumers who want more creative control over their sweet treat selections. Candy salads can build on other candy trends, focus on specific themes, or just allow sweet snackers to “go with the flow,” making this viral trend universally appealing to consumers of varied tastes.
- Social Media Appeal
Bright colors and interesting textures make candy salads ultra-shareable. What’s more, the creation of these sweet treats often makes for highly engaging video content that can garner major social media buzz. Each participant’s contributions to a candy salad can speak volumes about their personality and preferences and offer online viewers an inside look at their favorite creators’ go-to indulgences.
- Ease and Accessibility
In addition to being fun and family-friendly, candy salads capitalize on the growing demand for low-effort, no-bake desserts. Candy salads – while not exactly a diet-friendly dessert – are a popular option among consumers of all backgrounds because they’re fun and easy to prepare and can be pulled together quickly and without breaking the bank. A quick trip to the local supermarket or dollar store is all it takes to get the candy salad ball rolling, and the trend is even easier to achieve when the task is turned into a team effort with each participant providing their product of choice.
How to Make a Candy Salad
Creating a candy salad is as simple as it is fun. Here’s a step-by-step overview of how most consumers are crafting theirs:
Step 1: Pick a theme
Whether your candy salad is seasonal, flavor-focused, or color-coded, the theme serves as the basis for participants’ production selections.
Step 2: Choose Your Candy
Most candy salads are created by having multiple participants choose, purchase, and provide their favorite theme-appropriate candies. Once the theme has been chosen, contributors can select and purchase a product that appeals to them and bring it with them on the designated day.
Step 3: Cue the Cameras
If the goal is to use your candy salad as the focus of a TikTok, Instagram Reel, or YouTube video, you’ll want to make sure your audio and video equipment is ready and able to capture the candy chaos. A ring light and tripod might be helpful to have on hand to ensure each member’s contribution to the concoction is captured completely and that the angle and quality of each clip is consistent across your video.
Step 4: Mix It Up
Once the candies are procured, the participants are gathered and the candies are rolling, it’s time for the fun part – the mix-up! Each participant can take a turn pouring their candies into a designated bowl, tub or other receptacle until all candies are added and the mix is well-combined.
Step 5: Dig In
What’s the point of making a candy salad if no one gets to satisfy their sweet tooth? After your salad is mixed and mingled, you can choose to break it up into small servings or keep it in the large container for periodic snacking over time. If you choose to separate the salad into individual servings, get creative! Mason jars, treat bags, and other fun containers can make individual servings of the salad look just as appetizing as the big bowl.
Candy Salad Trends to Watch in 2025
This year, candy salad trends are more diverse than ever. Here are a few variations dominating TikTok and making major impressions on food marketing professionals:
- Sweet, sour, and spicy combos: Unexpected combinations are driving major engagement in the food and beverage space. Candy salad creators can build on funky food and beverage trends by throwing treats like sour worms, chili mango gummies, and tangy gummy ropes to their mixes.
- Pastel aesthetics: Inspired by recent cotton candy trends, pastel salads are an aesthetically pleasing option for candy-oriented content creators. Pastel gummies, white chocolate pretzels and natural-colored dried fruits can build on the public’s proclivity for pastels while making a robust and tasty mix.
- Holiday treats: Candy salads can be a fun holiday activity for families and friends alike. Creators can take advantage of Christmas candy canes trends or heart-shaped Valentine’s Day treats to create season-specific salads that drive engagement during holiday seasons.
- Retro revivals: Creators can capitalize on Gen Z and millennial food trends by creating throwback-themed candy salads that combine nostalgic treats that remind audience members of their favorite childhood indulgences.
- Healthy-ish twists: Candy salads can be more than empty calories. Combining organic gummies with freeze-dried fruits and natural marshmallows can lighten things up while appealing to more health-focused audiences.
Stats and Facts: Are Candy Salads Really That Popular?
Is the candy salad trend a temptation to watch or just a passing fad? According to real-time data from Tastewise and other sources:
- Social engagement around the term “candy salad” is showing YoY growth of more than 18%
- Sweet flavors like honey, chocolate mint, black currant, and berry are trending among likely candy salad consumers
- UK metrics suggest candy salad videos garner as much as 13 million views in a 7-day period
- Related social media sensations like the recent “Girl Dinner” trend are pulling in eye-popping viewcounts and underscoring consumers’ interest in fun, quirky food content
While data around the exact scope of candy salad’s success is still coming into clear view, one thing is certain: This trending topic is building on larger shifts in the food and beverage space and underscoring consumers’ rapidly changing needs and interests.
Candy Salad Challenges: A Mixed Bag
While the candy salad trend is undeniably fun, this meteoric sensation still poses a few challenges. First, the high sugar content of candy salads makes this sweet treat a hard sell for more health-conscious consumers. Mixing in some healthy choices can make candy salads more appealing to broader audiences and send a clear message about the importance of enjoying sweet treats in moderation.
Candy salad also poses some logistical challenges for CPG brands looking to capitalize on the trend. The sheer size and scale of the average candy salad can pose challenges when it comes to packaging, display, and distribution. Additionally, some types of candy have short shelf lives and can get sticky or stale when mixed with other items. Still, with the right framing and a little bit of ingenuity, CPG brands of multiple persuasions can leverage the candy salad trend into viral success.
Future Outlook
Candy salad isn’t just a fleeting TikTok moment, it’s part of a broader movement toward food personalization, playful indulgence, and nostalgia-driven purchasing decisions. In the future, we can likely expect to see brands and creators capitalizing on the candy salad momentum by:
- Offering candy salad kits in grocery stores
- Creating candy salad collaborations with major candy labels
- Brainstorming functional candy salad twists, like candy salads with gummy vitamins or adaptogenic ingredients
- Tailoring candy salad content to specific events, holidays, and even TV and film premieres
For food marketers and manufacturers, this trend offers a low-barrier entry into a high-engagement space while telling a clear and personalized story about your brand and its audience.
FAQs
Candy salads offer creators and consumers a fun, customizable way to enjoy sweets, engaging with friends, loved ones, and audience members.
That’s for you to know and your followers to find out! Part of the fun of the candy salad trend is that each participant gets to pick their own poison. Some popular picks include gummy bears, sour belts, lollipops, marshmallows, licorice, jelly beans, and more.
Holiday-inspired mixes, color-coded combinations, and spicy-sour concoctions are all fun candy salad riffs that can generate tons of buzz online and IRL. You can even put together candy salads inspired by your brand’s logo or company color scheme for an extra customized touch.