As most of us prepare to watch Super Bowl LVI this weekend, you may have scribbled down a list of snacks to complement the experience of cheering on your favorite team or most-loved halftime show entertainer.
Chips, dips, wings, and veggie things are the usual suspects. If you have ever wondered what it takes to make your favorite snacks available for the most significant American sporting event of the year, the United States Census Bureau has crunched the numbers for you.
When it comes to the national manufacturing of snacks, different snack factories tend to do some combination of processing and packaging nuts, grains, and seeds, and manufacturing and packaging peanut butter, potato chips, corn chips, popped popcorn, hard pretzels, and pork rinds.
According to the 2019 County Business Patterns (CBP), there were 717 snack food manufacturing establishments in the U.S. Of those, fifty-nine are located in Texas, which ranks second for greatest number of snack manufacturing facilities behind California.
Frozen specialty food such as pizza or microwaveable meals amassed over $19 million in “sales, value of shipments, or revenue” according to 2020 data compiled by the Census Bureau.
Of course, all snacks need something to wash them down with. When it comes to making sure that Americans have enough beer, over $27 million was generated by the process of getting cold ones in hands. Nearly $37 million poured in from soft drink manufacturing within the same year.
Now for chicken wings.
One of the biggest big-game staples is the bird.
In recent years, chicken wings have been victimized by huge national price increases and shortages. Although a wing shortage is not widely reported this Super Bowl year, consumers will nevertheless pay higher prices.
“The cost of our wings has gone up 100%,” Brand CEO of Atomic Wings Zak Omar commented.
“In March [2020], when COVID just started, we were at sixty dollars for a case of wings. Today, we are at $120 for a case of wings.”
The staggering price increase is due to high demand, unprecedented input costs, and labor shortages.
Nevertheless, fans far and near must have wings on the Sunday, February 13 Super Bowl menu.
The National Chicken Council projects Americans will “devour” 1.42 billion chicken wings while watching the Cincinnati Bengals contend with the Los Angeles Rams.