Mars Snacking is rolling out Cheez-It and Club crackers in resealable canisters for the first time, adding a portable grab-and-go format to two of its highest-velocity cracker brands. The canisters carry a suggested retail price of $2.69 and are available at select retailers nationwide beginning this month.
The Format Play
The launch covers three SKUs: Cheez-It Original, Cheez-It Grooves Minis Sharp White Cheddar — described as a brand-new mini iteration of the ridged Grooves line — and Club Minis Original. The resealable lid is positioned as a freshness and portability differentiator, keeping crackers crunchy through multiple snacking occasions rather than a single sitting. For foodservice-adjacent retail channels such as convenience, travel, and club-store snack sets, resealable canisters have proven a durable incremental placement alongside existing bag and box formats.
The move fits a broader snacking industry pattern: CPG manufacturers have increasingly pursued format diversification to capture impulse and on-the-go dayparts without cannibalizing core shelf sets. Canister packaging — long dominant in the potato-chip segment via brands like Pringles, also now part of the Mars portfolio following the Kellanova acquisition — offers a familiar, stackable footprint that translates well into grab-and-go cooler adjacencies and vending adjacencies in noncommercial foodservice environments.
Mars Snacking's Portfolio Scale
The launch comes as Mars integrates the former Kellanova snacking portfolio into a combined business that reported $65 billion-plus in net sales based on 2025 figures. That scale gives Mars Snacking significant leverage with retail buyers when negotiating shelf placement for format extensions like the new canisters. Nicole Sorensen, VP of Marketing, Crackers at Mars Snacking, framed the canister as a direct response to consumer demand: "Easy, on-the-go snacking is a top need for our fans. By bringing these popular Cheez-It and Club crackers to this grab-and-go format, we're giving people a simple way to enjoy their favorites anywhere, anytime."
For operators and buyers tracking better-for-you and snacking trends, the cracker canister segment has historically outperformed flat-bag crackers in convenience and travel retail channels, where shelf stability and resealability command a modest price premium. The $2.69 price point positions the new canisters competitively within the single-serve and small-format snack set, below most premium protein-snack canister formats but above standard single-serve cracker packs.
Distribution details beyond "select retailers nationwide" were not disclosed, but the national rollout language and Mars's existing retail relationships suggest broad chain-grocery and mass-channel availability. Buyers and category managers tracking snack innovation should expect the format to compete directly for impulse snack placement alongside chip canisters and single-serve nut tins.
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.
