Snacks are a major part of many Zimbabweans’ lives, despite their age. Usually, when I am working I like to have snacks nearby – they are handy most of the time. Snacks serve several purposes chief being controlling one’s eating habits. The idea is that if you eat snacks in between meals you will most likely feel less inclined to eat much during meals. Anyways, my focus in this article is different since I want to look at popular snacks in Zimbabwe. These are snacks that already are or are becoming popular in Zimbabwe. By the way, a snack is an item of food eaten between meals.

Corn-Based Or Potato-Based Chips

There are so many of these that you find every vendor selling. Some of the common brands are Jumbo and Hello, amongst many others. There is also a wide variety of chips made out of potato chips. These sell quite well and are so popular. Chips in Zimbabwe are so popular that they are synonymous with the word snack itself.

Roasted Grains Or Nuts

They are now commonly sold as a combo of maize and nuts that are roasted. They have always been a delicacy amongst our Shona culture. Some people are now getting creative by adding spices. What I have noticed has become a hit amongst many are small-sized packets that cost just a few cents. This one is a relatively easy venture to start since you just need maize and nuts and simple packaging material.

Confectionery

Confectionery is just a fancy word that refers to sugar-based foods often used for desserts and snacks. So for example, chewing gums, sweets, chocolates, jelly, and marshmallows fall under this category. I have seen that sweets and chocolates sell quite well in any location. You will find that almost every vendor sells confectionery items.

Baked Items

Here I am referring to stuff like cookies, biscuits, crackers, cakes, buns, scones, pies, and so on. These are common amongst many with the average person eating at least one baked item a day. As much as these are snacks, some end up even having them for breakfast, tea or lunch.

Fruits And Vegetables

We cannot talk about snacks without mentioning fruits and vegetables. Common examples are oranges, apples, bananas, cucumbers, and watermelons, just to mention a few. You will find that the average working Zimbabwean will eat at least one of these.

Drinks

Then we have drinks which are an obvious part of this list. The list of drinks is infinite because we are talking of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic ones. We are looking at tea, coffee, soft drinks, smoothies, beers, milk, juices, energy drinks, and more.

Frozen Snacks

These come in many forms and are highly sought after during hot weather. In Zimbabwe, it has been extremely hot lately with record high temperatures. Some of the most selling frozen snacks are ice creams, ice pops (commonly known as ice lolo), and milkshakes.

Savoury Snacks

Savoury snacks are food items that are salty and/or spicy but not sweet per se. So these are things like French fries (your potato chips), noodles, yoghurts, granola, sandwiches, croissants, pasta, cheese, chips (or crisps), dried meats (chimukuyu), many more.

Now that you know, what are you going to do with this information? Well, there are two things you can do, amongst possible others of course. One, you can start working on sourcing and selling these snacks as a business. Two, you can focus on the manufacturing of these snacks. The latter can be most enterprising as it would also afford you the leeway to do wholesale and retail as well. With snacks, you will never go wrong especially if you do thorough market research prior.