Nonchocolate Confectionery Manufacturing (U.S.) — NAICS 31134

An investor's primer at the NAICS-industry (5-digit) level. This is a short rollup page: this level contains one child industry and is effectively identical to it. For full detail, read the child primer, NAICS 311340.

1. Overview

Nonchocolate confectionery is the business of turning sugar and corn syrup into gummies, hard candy, lollipops, sour candy, licorice, marshmallows, mints, and chewing gum — Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, Haribo Goldbears, Jolly Rancher, Nerds, Peeps, and Dum-Dums. It is the fast-growing half of the U.S. candy aisle: non-chocolate retail sales grew almost 70% (nearly $5 billion) between 2019 and 2024, while chocolate stayed roughly flat.[1] The category's share of total U.S. confectionery rose to 40.9% in 2025, reaching $22.5 billion in retail sales that year (with gum a separate $4.1 billion category).[2]

For an investor this is a defensive, high-repeat-purchase consumer category — a cheap "permissible indulgence" that holds up in downturns, sells on impulse at the checkout, and is protected by decades-old brands that are cheap to make. Margins are healthy, but the industry lives and dies by two commodity inputs (sugar and corn syrup) and a handful of large retail buyers. Because this five-digit level maps one-to-one to its single child, everything below is this level's view; the child primer carries the depth.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS is a nested hierarchy (NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the U.S. government's standard for grouping businesses). A five-digit NAICS industry can contain several six-digit national industries. This one does not:

The five-digit code and the six-digit code share the same name and the same boundary. When the U.S. did not need to split a five-digit industry into narrower national pieces, it created a single six-digit child that is a carbon copy. So 31134 = 311340: the same plants, the same firms, the same shipments. This page exists to give the rolled-up figure and hand you to the child; it does not restate the whole child primer.

For the record, the boundary (set at the child level) is: establishments that manufacture hard candy, jelly and gummy candy, lollipops, licorice, marshmallows, marzipan, toffee, candied fruit, non-medicated mints, and chewing gum.[3] Chocolate made from cacao beans (NAICS 311351) and candy made from purchased chocolate (NAICS 311352) sit in separate codes — the dividing line is the ingredient, not the company.[3]

3. How big it is (this level's rollup)

Because the level has one child, its totals are the child's totals. These are our ground-truth federal figures for NAICS 31134:

That is roughly $62,000 in average annual payroll per worker — a mid-wage manufacturing base.[6] (SBA = U.S. Small Business Administration, which sets the employee threshold below which a firm counts as "small" for federal programs.)

Undercount / scope caveat. The $11.5 billion is factory-gate value from U.S. plants classified here — much smaller than what shoppers spend, for three reasons: (1) retail sales are far larger (the National Confectioners Association put U.S. non-chocolate candy at $22.5 billion and gum at $4.1 billion in 2025, the gap being distributor and retail markup);[2] (2) a large share of U.S. candy is imported and never enters the Census factory figure (Haribo opened its first American plant only in 2023);[8] and (3) big diversified owners split output across many establishments and NAICS codes, so their non-chocolate volume is only partly captured. This is not a government- or micro-operator-dominated industry, so the establishment counts are reliable — the caveat is factory value versus true category size.

4. Investable universe — where value concentrates

With a single child, there is no "which sub-industry" question: all the value sits in this one pool, and it is dominated by a few multinational brand owners on top of a long tail of regional private makers.

The public routes are thin. Only one U.S.-listed company, Tootsie Roll Industries (NYSE: TR), is essentially a pure non-chocolate maker, and it is small and family-controlled (~$725M FY2025 revenue, ~$3.3B market cap).[9][10][11] Broader, diluted exposure comes through Hershey (NYSE: HSY, owner of Twizzlers and Jolly Rancher) and Mondelez International (NASDAQ: MDLZ, owner of Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish, Halls) — both mostly chocolate and snacks.[12][13] Most of the category — Mars, Ferrero/Ferrara, Perfetti Van Melle, Haribo, Just Born, Spangler — is privately owned.[14][15] Ferrara alone claims about 20% of U.S. non-chocolate retail share.[15] Mars completed its acquisition of Kellanova in December 2025, removing another adjacent public-market route.[16] So public-market investors get one small pure play and two diluted proxies; the real depth is private. See the child primer for the full company-by-company map.

5. How the money works

The economics are those of a commodity-input, brand-output manufacturer — food processing, not retail or tech. Fixed-asset plants (cookers, extruders, starch-molding lines) reward running full, so capacity utilization and throughput drive unit costs; seasonal peaks (Halloween, winter) force a big second-half inventory and working-capital build. The swing factor is input cost: sugar and corn syrup are the largest ingredients, and U.S. makers pay a structural penalty because the federal sugar program keeps domestic sugar near double the world price (see §7).[17][18] The moat is brand plus distribution and checkout placement — candy is an impulse buy, and private label is a smaller threat here than in most grocery categories, which protects branded margins. Recent years show the classic trade-off: price increases lifted dollar sales while unit volumes fell in 2024, and Tootsie Roll's revenue slipped ~6% as buyers reacted to earlier hikes — demand is only moderately, not perfectly, inelastic.[19][20] Scale plants depend heavily on a few large buyers; Tootsie Roll disclosed that McLane, Walmart, and Dollar Tree together represented approximately 36% of its 2025 product sales.[9]

6. Demand drivers

• Seasons and gifting. The "big four" candy seasons — Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, and winter holidays — made up 63% of all confectionery sales in 2025, winter alone ~$7.5 billion.[2]
• Affordable indulgence. A cheap pick-me-up that consumers keep buying when they trade down from bigger purchases.
• Innovation and virality. Gummy, sour, and novelty formats are the growth engine — freeze-dried candy, licensing tie-ins, and TikTok trends drive bursts of demand; Jolly Rancher's move into gummies hit ~$400M in 2024, up 25%.[21]
• The GLP-1 counter-current (forward-looking). Weight-loss drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro; GLP-1 = glucagon-like peptide-1, the hormone pathway they act on), used by an estimated 8–10% of U.S. adults, suppress appetite and impulse snacking. So far this has slowed but not reversed non-chocolate growth, and is spurring functional gummies, mints, and reduced-sugar lines.[22][23]

7. Regulation

• Food labeling (FDA). Standard Nutrition Facts rules, including the mandatory added-sugars line and allergen disclosure. (FDA = U.S. Food and Drug Administration.)
• Color additives. The FDA revoked authorization for Red Dye No. 3 in January 2025, with reformulation required by January 15, 2027; California's 2023 Food Safety Act (AB 418) separately bans Red 3 and three other additives effective January 1, 2027, and a broad push against synthetic dyes is driving early reformulation.[24][25]
• Food traceability. Products containing ingredients on FDA's Food Traceability List may trigger enhanced lot-level records under the FSMA traceability rule; enforcement is currently deferred until July 20, 2028.[26]
• The U.S. Sugar Program (USDA). Marketing allotments, tariff-rate quotas, and high out-of-quota tariffs support domestic sugar prices, leaving U.S. buyers paying roughly twice the world price — advocacy estimates put the cost at $2.4–$4 billion a year. This is the single most important regulatory fact for U.S. non-chocolate economics.[17][18] (USDA = U.S. Department of Agriculture.)
• Trade and tariffs. The category is import-exposed, so tariffs and sugar quotas shape the make-versus-import decision that led Haribo to build in Wisconsin.[8]

8. Consolidation

Because 31134 has one child, its structure is the child's: fragmented manufacturing, concentrated brands. At the plant level the top four firms hold about 33% of shipments, the top eight ~44.6%, the top twenty ~68.2%, across 534 firms, with a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI — a standard 0–10,000 concentration measure; higher means more concentrated) of just 433.6, well below the ~1,500 "moderately concentrated" antitrust line.[4] But the brand landscape is dominated by a few multinationals, because Census counts U.S. establishments while brand share is measured at retail. The dominant strategic story is roll-up: Ferrero's Ferrara (2017) → Nestlé's U.S. confectionery (2018) → Jelly Belly (2023); Perfetti Van Melle buying Mondelez's developed-market gum for $1.35B in 2023; Mars completing its acquisition of Kellanova in December 2025; and Haribo reshoring production with its first U.S. plant.[8][13][15][16][27]

9. Risks

• Input-cost and sugar-policy risk — volatile sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, packaging, and energy, plus the structural U.S. sugar premium.[17][18]
• Health and regulatory pressure — added-sugar scrutiny, dye bans and reformulation cost, possible sugar taxes.[24][25]
• GLP-1 demand erosion (forward-looking) on impulse snacking.[22][23]
• Volume elasticity — further price hikes risk trade-down and volume declines.[19][20]
• Retail-buyer concentration — a handful of mass/club/dollar retailers hold pricing leverage; Tootsie Roll's top three customers represent ~36% of product sales.[9]
• Seasonality and timing — heavy dependence on four holidays makes calendar and execution errors costly.[2]
• Food safety and traceability — recall, liability, and retailer-delisting risk; enhanced traceability requirements take effect in 2028.[26]
• Investor-specific — the one pure play (Tootsie Roll) is illiquid, family-controlled, and richly valued; Hershey/Mondelez offer only diluted exposure.[11]

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public routes. The cleanest listed exposure is Tootsie Roll (TR) — small, thinly traded, family-controlled, and usually richly valued.[9][11] For liquidity and diversification, Hershey (HSY) and Mondelez (MDLZ) give partial non-chocolate exposure inside larger businesses.[12][13] Kellanova is no longer a public-market route into adjacent bars and snacks following Mars's December 2025 acquisition.[16] There is no pure U.S. non-chocolate exchange-traded fund (ETF — a listed, index-like basket of stocks); broad consumer-staples funds are the practical index route.

Private routes. Because Mars, Ferrero/Ferrara, Perfetti Van Melle, Haribo, Just Born, and Spangler are all private, private-market investors reach the category through direct or private-equity ownership of regional makers, through suppliers and co-manufacturers (ingredients, packaging, contract production), or by underwriting the M&A (mergers and acquisitions) that is the sector's main liquidity event.[14][15]

Outlook (forward-looking). Federal projections point to low-single-digit volume growth for U.S. candy output, within which non-chocolate is expected to keep outgrowing chocolate, led by gummies, sour, and novelty formats and by reduced-sugar and dye-free reformulation.[2][21][28] The swing factors to watch are the cost of sugar, the pace and cost of dye reformulation, tariff/trade policy, and the still-unresolved GLP-1 effect on impulse snacking. A slow-growing, cash-generative, brand-driven category — durable and with pricing power, constrained by commodity costs and a shifting health-and-regulatory backdrop.

For full detail — company-by-company universe, unit economics, and source depth — read the child primer, NAICS 311340.

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Sources

Drawn from the child primer (NAICS 311340). Federal figures for this level are our ingested Census/SBA data for NAICS 31134.

1. National Confectioners Association, "State of Treating 2025" / "Confectionery Sales Break Records, Surpass $54 Billion in 2024," 2025. https://candyusa.com/state-of-treating-2025/; https://candyusa.com/cst/confectionery-sales-break-records-surpass-54-billion-in-2024/
2. National Confectioners Association, "State of Treating 2026" / "Confectionery Sales Climb to $55 Billion in 2025," 2026. https://candyusa.com/stateoftreating; https://candyusa.com/news/confectionery-sales-climb-to-55-billion-in-2025/
3. U.S. Census Bureau, NAICS 2022 definition, code 311340 "Nonchocolate Confectionery Manufacturing" (via IBISWorld classification summary), 2022. https://www.ibisworld.com/classifications/naics/311340/nonchocolate-confectionery-manufacturing/
4. U.S. Census Bureau, Economic Census 2022 — Concentration by Largest Firms, NAICS 311340 (receipts $11.5B; 534 firms; CR4 33%, CR8 44.6%, CR20 68.2%, CR50 87.4%; HHI 433.6). [Ingested federal data, NAICS 31134]
5. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Integrated Economic Survey 2023, NAICS 311340 (sales/shipments/revenue $12.733B). https://data.census.gov/table/AIESBASICTIMESERIES.AIES31BASIC01
6. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 311340 (577 establishments; 28,988 employees; annual payroll $1,806,893 thousand; Q1 payroll $427,386 thousand). [Ingested federal data, NAICS 31134]
7. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards, NAICS 311340 (1,000 employees), 2023. [Ingested federal data, NAICS 31134]
8. PR Newswire / Haribo, "HARIBO opens first factory in the U.S. (Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin)," 2023. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/haribo-opens-first-factory-in-us-introduces-new-gummi-innovation-for-summer-wild-berry-goldbears-301887187.html
9. Tootsie Roll Industries, Form 10-K FY2025, SEC, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/98677/000110465926021621/tr-20251231x10k.htm
10. StockAnalysis, "Tootsie Roll Industries (TR) Market Cap," 2026. https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/tr/market-cap/
11. Wikipedia, "Tootsie Roll Industries" (Gordon-family control) and Forbes, "Ellen Gordon," 2025–2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tootsie_Roll_Industries
12. The Hershey Company, Form 10-K FY2024, SEC, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/47111/000004711125000014/hsy-20241231.htm
13. Food Dive / Mondelēz International Investor Relations, "Mondelēz sells developed-market gum business to Perfetti Van Melle for $1.35B," 2022–2023. https://www.fooddive.com/news/mondelez-sells-gum-business-trident-dentyne/639087/
14. Mars, Inc., brand portfolio, 2025. https://www.mars.com/our-brands/all-brands; Wikipedia, "List of Mars Inc. brands." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mars_Inc._brands
15. Ferrara Candy Company, "Ferrara Announces FY 2023 Performance," 2024. https://www.ferrara.com/us/en/ferrarar-candy-company-announces-fy-2023-performance; Ferrara Candy Company, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrara_Candy_Company
16. Mars, Inc., Kellanova acquisition completion, SEC filing, December 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/55067/000119312525315130/d90636dex991.htm
17. USDA Economic Research Service, "Sugar and Sweeteners — Policy," 2024–2025. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/sugar-and-sweeteners/policy; Wikipedia, "U.S. Sugar Program." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Sugar_Program
18. American Enterprise Institute, "Recapping the Effects of the U.S. Sugar Program" (cost $2.4–$4B/yr; 17,000–20,000 job losses), 2022. https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Recapping-the-Effects-of-the-US-Sugar-Program.pdf
19. Tootsie Roll Industries, FY2024 results (Form ARS / 8-K), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/98677/000110465925028780/tm257009d2_ars.pdf
20. NACS / National Confectioners Association, "Candy Dollar Sales Up, Unit Sales Decline in 2024," 2025. https://www.convenience.org/stay-current/news/2025/march/5/1-nca-candy-sales-up-unit-sales-decline_research
21. Food Dive, "Hershey's Jolly Rancher ropes in success with move away from hard candy" (~$400M, +25% in 2024), 2025. https://www.fooddive.com/news/hersheys-jolly-rancher-ropes-in-success-by-sticking-to-its-flavorful-roots/749449/
22. Cornell Chronicle, "Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy," 2025. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/12/ozempic-changing-foods-americans-buy
23. ConfectioneryNews, "GLP-1 drugs reshape confectionery demand — but sales keep growing," 2026. https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2026/06/24/glp-1-drugs-reshape-confectionery-demand-but-sales-keep-growing/
24. FDA / CNN, "FDA revokes authorization for Red Dye No. 3; food reformulation required by January 2027," January 2025. https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-revoke-authorization-use-red-no-3-food-and-ingested-drugs; https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/15/health/red-dye-no-3-ban-fda-wellness/index.html
25. California Legislature, Assembly Bill 418 (California Food Safety Act), 2023. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB418
26. FDA, FSMA Final Rule on Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods (enforcement deferred to July 20, 2028). https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/fsma-final-rule-requirements-additional-traceability-records-certain-foods
27. Britannica Money, "Ferrero Group — History, Brands, Acquisitions & Growth," 2025. https://www.britannica.com/money/Ferrero-Group
28. IndexBox, "United States' Candy, Sweets and Nonchocolate Confectionery Market Overview 2024" (low-single-digit CAGR outlook), 2024. https://www.indexbox.io/blog/candy-sweets-and-nonchocolate-confectionery-united-states-market-overview-2024-1/