JTM Foods CEO Monty Pooley sees green shoots in Q1 2026 and a category that rewards merchandising intensity — not retreat — in noisy conditions.
The first quarter of 2026 brought what Monty Pooley calls “green shoots” to the sweet baked goods category – early indicators that, after a difficult 2025, conditions are improving for retailers willing to stay invested in the aisle.
“What we were seeing in the first quarter of 2026 were some green shoots that were encouraging for us,” said Pooley, CEO and president of JTM Foods LLC, maker of JJ’s Bakery handheld snack pies, Cookies-n-Milk ready-to-eat cookie dough, Cloverhill honey buns and Danish, and Big Texas cinnamon rolls. He cited a category working through retail inflation, GLP-1 headwinds and the disruption created when large players in the space go through transition.
“But as I mentioned, through the first quarter of 2026, we’re starting to see some improvement,” Pooley said.
He acknowledges that the broader economic picture remains uncertain. Fuel prices, packaging input costs and the geopolitical environment could all reshape consumer behavior in the months ahead. But his core message to retailers cuts against the instinct to retreat: this is precisely the moment to commit to the sweet baked goods category, not pull back from it.
“Don’t pull back, but lean into the sweet baked good category,” Pooley said. “Because when it’s merchandised in the right way, it is a category that will continue to deliver profitable sales and unit growth for our retailers.”
Merchandising intensity wins in noisy conditions
The argument for leaning in rests on a fundamental observation about how the category performs at retail. Sweet baked goods, Pooley said, are an impulse category; they convert when consumers encounter them, and they suffer when shoppers don’t.
“When you bump into a secondary [display] on sweet-based goods, you make that sale,” he said. “If you’ve got retail partners who are inclined to pull back from that, those sales just aren’t generated. This is a category that thrives with that type of experience for consumers.”
Pooley was careful to acknowledge that he is not a retailer and that JTM respects its partners’ read of their own marketplaces. But he is firm that the merchandising posture matters, and that pulling back can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Sweet Baked Snacks operate and deliver best when they’re merchandised in front of consumers,” he said.
He calls the underlying consumer behavior “permissible indulgence,” and he is bullish on its durability. “I’ve often said I think we’re good for the next 75 to 100 years when it comes to sweet indulgences!”
Chris Tirone, JTM’s chief marketing and innovation officer, said authenticity is what closes the loop with consumers.
“There’s an authentic experience that, delivered well and properly, provides value for the consumer,” he said. “We’re not walking away from our ingredients, but we’re staying true to things like real fruit, more approachable ingredients.”
The core business gets stronger
While much of the trade conversation in 2026 has focused on emerging formats and channel expansion, JTM’s strategy starts with reinforcing its core: the 4-ounce and 2-ounce handheld snack pies that have anchored the JJ’s Bakery brand for decades.
This year, JTM will remove all artificial colors and flavors across its portfolio, this will be supported by refreshed packaging designs and communication strategies both at shelf and digitally to get the word out. Pooley said consumer research on the updated JJ’s Snack Pie packaging that will hit the shelves this summer showed significant lifts in both overall liking and intent to buy.
“What our customers will see is a refreshed package on an important part of our portfolio that doesn’t alienate our loyalists but also communicates a slightly more evolved feel for new consumers,” Pooley said. “We believe – actually we know, just looking at how the research came out – it’s going to be a significant positive impact on the brand and therefore a benefit for retailers when they have that product in-store.”
In the 2-ounce mini segment, the company recently launched its first duo-flavor product under the JJ’s brand — a Boston cream variety now on shelves at Jewel in Chicago.
A four-part innovation lens
Pooley described JTM’s innovation work as organized around four dimensions, each addressing a different way consumers engage with the category:
Flavor – Nostalgic and globally influenced profiles, designed to expand the category beyond traditional taste sets without alienating loyalists. Think of a made with real fruit Key Lime or Strawberry Banana filled snack pies from JJ’s Bakery. Or a Cookies-n-Milk Churro cookie dough, Espresso Chocolate Chip or Caramel with Almond & Sea Salt Protein Bite!
Formulation and Functionality – Cleaner label products through the elimination of artificial colors and flavors, products with improved functionality and positive nutrition stories. In this case JTM has created a decadent 30-day ambient shelf-life brownie and moist, flavorful line of donut holes that claim the same. Protein infusion is also taking off with a new line-up of 4 on-trend flavor profiles of Cookies-n-Milk Protein Bites that boast 25 grams of high-quality protein per cup!
Form – New formats include the 2.75 oz Snack Size Big Texas Cinnamon Roll, that has gained traction at Walmart as the right size for many consumer households. This branded move is a nod to the ‘OG’ 4 oz Big Texas, the premier baked good item in vending machines across the country. Or JTM’s new 2.75 oz Bakery Fresh pie program that delivers a clean label Apple and Cherry pie in a kraft window box made to display in warmers at C-Store, Cinema, Deli’s, or table merchandised ambient across channels.
Format – Channel-appropriate packaging including club packs for warehouse formats and PDQ trays for the dollar channel. JTM is also making further investments in to Grab-n-Go packaging solutions like cups, tubs for Donut Holes, Brownies and more.
The framework, Pooley said, is designed to make sure JTM’s bets are simultaneously about taste, fit, ingredient story and channel-readiness — not any single one of those in isolation.
An emerging cross-channel opportunity
One product that has drawn growing interest across multiple channels is JTM’s 2.75-ounce warmed handheld pie. Packaged in a window-front craft box with cleaner-label formulation and a naturally lighter calorie profile, the pie is positioned as a cross-channel opportunity rather than a single-channel play.
Tirone said roughly 80 percent of convenience stores operate hot warmers, and most of those warmers feature breakfast sandwiches in the morning and chicken sandwiches or sliders by midday — with little or no sweet snack presence. The 2.75-ounce pie is designed to fill that gap.
“QSRs have always been viewed as kind of the leader of the pack, but so many QSRs now are merchandising some type of handheld snack pie as a way to complement a meal,” Pooley said, alluding to the long-running success of the McDonald’s pie. “This is a terrific opportunity for our convenience partners to have a sweet solution to complement what they’re making available to their shoppers.”
The same product has drawn interest from cinema operators. JTM was named one of the top five 2026 launches in the cinema channel at this year’s CinemaCon.
It also has drawn interest from the in-store bakery, where the pie can be merchandised heated or sold for take-home preparation in a microwave or air fryer.
“It’s clean enough for Whole Foods,” Tirone said. “It has so many bells and whistles and, at the same time, we believe it’s great for channel proliferation in many ways.”
Portfolio energy: Clover Hill, Big Texas, and a cultural moment
Fourteen months ago, JTM closed on the acquisition of the Cloverhill facility in Chicago–along with the Big Texas and Cloverhill brands, significantly expanding its sweet baked goods footprint. The company now competes in four of the five major sweet baked goods categories and has reactivated two well-loved brands that had spent recent years in the background.
“Cloverhill is a super brand,” Pooley said. “When we talk with our customers about it, we consistently get the comment, ‘We’d love Cloverhill, it moved such big business for us.'”
Big Texas has had its own resurgence, driven in part by ESPN broadcaster Scott Van Pelt’s affection for the product. Van Pelt’s annual appearance on Barstool Sports’ “Pardon My Take” podcast has repeatedly highlighted Big Texas, generating what Tirone called “a gift of epic proportions” in marketing terms.
JTM has since formalized a partnership with Barstool Sports that includes a long-form video at their Chicago facility along with other custom social content from properties like The Cream Team, The YAK and Eddie’s “Let Me Show you Chicago.” A fully integrated social, digital, and content rollout is running now and throughout the summer. After validating consumer fit through demographic deep dives, Tirone said the team’s confidence was clear: “When you look at JJ’s snack pies, 4-ouncers, when you look at Big Texas, it was like, ‘These are our current and future consumers, it just clicks!'”
The takeaway: lean in, not away
For Pooley, the message to retailers comes back to a simple posture. The macroeconomic noise is real. The category headwinds are real. But the consumer demand for permissible indulgence – and the merchandising playbook that converts that demand – has not changed.
“There’s an inclination to pull back sometimes when there’s a lot of noise in the system,” he said. “We encourage our partners to lean in, and we’re going to do absolutely everything we can from a product standpoint, from a delivery standpoint, and from a promotion and merchandising standpoint to make it worth their while. Programs that deliver efficient and profitable growth to them.”
Pooley added that JTM’s operational tempo is part of the value proposition for retail partners.
“So many of our competitors in the space operate in quarters and years,” he said. “We operate in weeks and months. Staying nimble, flexible, speedy is a big part of what JTM delivers to the industry.”
