Hershey’s Jolly Rancher isn’t afraid to show its true colors when it comes to innovation.
The snacking giant best known for Reese's and Hershey’s Kisses is seeing sales of Jolly Rancher soar after bringing the colorful candy into new categories such as gummies. Jolly Rancher sales alone totaled $400 million in 2024, up 25% from the prior year.
“Within the non-chocolate or sweets business, Jolly Rancher stands apart,” Allen Dark, director of Hershey’s sweets portfolio, said in an interview.
The 76-year-old Jolly Rancher brand is best known for its bold fruit flavors, such as watermelon and blue raspberry, Hershey said. That's provided more opportunities for the Pennsylvania company to bring the popular flavors into other textures.
Hershey devoted more attention to innovating Jolly Rancher starting in 2020 when it relaunched Gummies with new shapes, flavors and packs.
Last year, Hershey launched Jolly Rancher Ropes, which included a chewy outer layer and a soft, fruit-flavored filling. Each rope featured two flavors: green apple and watermelon, or blue raspberry and cherry. And in 2025, Hershey launched Jolly Rancher Freeze Dried, providing consumers with a more poppable offering with a unique, airy texture.
The wave of innovation has reduced Jolly Rancher’s dependence on its iconic hard candy. While the segment is still growing — with sales up more than $50 million since the end of 2020 — less than half of the brand's sales today come from hard candy, down from about 80% a decade ago.
“We have a lot of permission [from the consumer] with Jolly Rancher to do things in different forms, but maintain our flavors,” Dark said.
Dark said Jolly Rancher’s ability to play across multiple sweets categories is “both freeing and challenging," allowing the brand to quickly enter a hot new trend or roll out a seasonal offering. At the same time, it forces executives to “exercise a little bit of restraint because every possible form is available to you,” he said.
So far, Jolly Rancher’s innovation strategy is paying off. Ranked No. 11 among non-chocolate sweets just three years ago, the brand has climbed to the No. 5 spot today, according to Hershey.
As demand surges, Hershey is holding off on expanding the Jolly Rancher brand into new categories to focus on growing its existing offerings. Ropes have “a long runway ahead of them,” Dark said, while Hershey can “barely keep up with the demand” for Freeze-Dried.
“That’s enough to keep us busy,” Dark confessed.
