Conagra Brands is bringing its full $3.3 billion snacks portfolio to the National Confectioners Association's 2026 Sweets & Snacks Expo, running May 19–21 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The lineup spans meat snacks, seeds, and sweet-and-salty hybrids — categories that have held consistent velocity in convenience, grocery, and foodservice channels. For operators and buyers attending the show, the Conagra floor presence is a signal of where the company is placing trade-marketing weight heading into the back half of 2026.
Conagra's snack segment, at $3.3 billion, is one of the larger dedicated snack portfolios among North American CPG companies. The emphasis on meat snacks is notable: the protein-forward snacking segment has outpaced traditional salty snacks in velocity at convenience and club channels over the past two years, and several of Conagra's brands hold leading share positions. The sweet-and-salty crossover items reflect a broader formulation trend that buyers across retail and hospitality are actively sourcing — grab-and-go amenity programs, lobby retail, and minibar resets are all pulling from this space.
For foodservice and hospitality procurement teams, trade shows like Sweets & Snacks are increasingly the first place new SKUs surface before they reach distributor catalogs. Operators who engage directly at the booth level — rather than waiting for rep visits — typically get earlier access to promotional pricing windows, limited-distribution pilots, and co-branded sampling programs. If your property or group runs a retail grab-and-go program, a convenience store partnership, or a catered snack amenity offering, Conagra's 2026 Expo presence is worth a scheduled walkthrough. The brand-launch intelligence on emerging snack formats published earlier this quarter is useful context before you walk the floor.
The broader signal here is that major CPG suppliers are re-prioritizing in-person trade exposure after several years of compressed event calendars. Conagra's commitment to a full multi-category presence — rather than a single hero brand activation — suggests the company is using the Expo to move distribution conversations across its entire snack division simultaneously. Procurement teams and category managers should treat that as leverage: when a supplier wants to place multiple SKUs, there is negotiating room on slotting terms, sampling support, and co-marketing budgets. Operators who understand how to read CPG trade-show strategy for procurement advantage will be better positioned in Q3 distributor negotiations.
For operators not attending in person, the actionable move is to brief your broadline or specialty distributor rep this week and ask what Conagra is presenting — and what promotional programs attach to new placements coming out of the show.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
