Honey Maid, Nilla Wafers and other smaller cookie brands with nostalgic roots have become a big success for owner Mondelēz International despite years without meaningful innovation.
For a snacking giant best known for Oreo and Chips Ahoy!, Mondelēz is experiencing surging demand for its smaller cookie brands that have long been reliable, slow-growing performers, said Caroline Suppiger, brand manager of Mondelēz’s specialty cookie portfolio.
Mondelēz’s so-called Americana brands segment, with more than $1 billion in annual sales, is having a “breakout year” after two years of declines, Suppiger said. The segment includes Nutter Butter, Barnum's Animals Crackers, Teddy Grahams, Mallomars, Nilla Wafers and the largest brand, Honey Maid Graham Crackers.
“Our Americana brands have been performing really well this year, and historically they've always been stable or growing very slowly,” Suppiger noted. “Mondelēz is kind of going back to the basics a little bit and highlighting some brands that haven't historically been highlighted.”
Sales in Mondelēz's specialty cookie segment are up 4% this year through Sept. 12 compared to the same period in 2025.
The growth comes as the broader cookie category experiences flat sales, making Mondelēz’s success with its smaller decades-old standbys even more impressive. Even two of the company’s signature brands, Oreo and Chips Ahoy!, which have $2.1 billion and close to $1 billion in annual sales in the U.S., respectively, have seen the growth of their core offerings slow.
Much of Oreo's and Chips Ahoy!'s growth has come from innovative new products. But many of the specialty cookies have a small portfolio that hasn’t seen meaningful innovation in years.
Nilla, for example, has about five SKUs, while Honey Maid has nine, and Nutter Butter has 10. By contrast, Oreo has roughly 120 SKUs in the U.S. alone, and releases about a dozen specialty flavors each year.
Mondelēz’s specialty cookie portfolio is benefiting from festivities tied to America’s 250th birthday celebration and the growing interest in nostalgia as consumers turn to brands that remind them of their childhoods, Suppiger said. This has led to an uptick in consumers using Graham Crackers and Nilla Wafers for baking or as a vessel for dips — categories where some brands like Chips Ahoy! typically don’t participate.
“There's just been a lot of consumers enjoying what they know,” Suppiger said.
For years, the specialty brands “nurtured themselves,” with the exception of routine “maintenance” like a change to an ingredient or packaging, she said. Mondelēz is now aiming to tap into the recent surge in demand by marketing the brands more aggressively beyond their core occasions.
The company wants to take Honey Maid beyond s’mores into holidays such as Easter, and promote Nilla for more than just banana pudding. Mondelēz chefs, for example, recently tested the wafer in a tiramisu as part of an effort to expand the brand into other holidays and desserts.
“This is the first time we've left this maintenance phase [to] ... let's actually think a little bit larger with some consumer-facing marketing,” Suppiger said.
