Chew on this: Gum is being pitched to relieve stress

Candy companies want to know: What will make Americans start chewing gum again?

Gum’s bubble burst during the COVID-19 pandemic, when masks and social distancing made bad breath less of a worry, and fewer people spent on impulse buys. The number of packages of gum sold dropped by nearly a third in the United States in 2020, according to Circana, a market research firm.

Consumer demand has picked up only slightly since then. Last year, U.S. chewing gum sales rose less than 1% to 1.2 billion units, which was still 32% fewer than in 2018.

It’s a similar story globally. Worldwide gum sales rose 5% last year to more than $16 billion, according to market researcher Euromonitor. That still was 10% below the 2018 sales figure.

While some manufacturers are responding by cutting slow-selling brands or leaving the market altogether, Mars Inc., which owns the 133-year-old Wrigley brand, thinks it may have an answer: repositioning gum as an instant stress reliever rather than an occasional breath freshener. In January, the company launched a global ad campaign promoting its top-selling Orbit, Extra, Freedent and Yida brands as tools for mental well-being.

Alyona Fedorchenko, vice president for global gum and mints in Mars’ snacking division, said the idea stuck in the summer of 2020, when the company was frantically researching ways to revive sales.

Fedorchenko remembered talking to a nurse in a hospital COVID-19 ward who chewed gum to calm herself even though she always wore a mask. The nurse’s habit meshed with studies by Mars that showed half of chewers reached for gum to relieve stress or boost concentration.

“That, for us, was the big ‘Aha!’ ” Fedorchenko said. “We’ve had a century of legacy of fresh breath, and that is still very important. Don’t get me wrong. But there is so much more this category can be.”