The Most Popular Pickle Brand In The US Isn't Grillo's Or Claussen

While dogs are a man's best friend, pickles may come in a close second place. Almost any produce item can be pickled, and standard pickles are the perfect complement to almost any drink, snack, or meal. With the rise of online grocery shopping, stocking your pantry with pickles has become both easy and popular, and Instacart has noticed the trend. Instacart found that, despite the abundance of beloved pickle brands like Grillo's or Claussen, the always dependable Mt. Olive Pickle Company is the most favored brand by their U.S. shoppers.

Formally established in 1926 by Lebanese immigrant Shikrey Baddour in Mount Olive, North Carolina, Mt. Olive carries a variety of pickle flavors: classic bread and butter, zesty garden salad, fiery buffalo kosher dill, and even rich maple bourbon bread and butter, just to name a few. Mt. Olive has revolutionized pickle production by creating several firsts in the industry, such as the single-serve picklePAK line in 2007 and the Munchies Resealable Pickle Pouches in 2019. Today, Mt. Olive's various pickles are consumed by many, especially in the Southeast and northern New England.

Pickles are adaptable to many cuisines and cooking styles — if you haven't tried grilling your pickles, now's a time to start — and the internet has derived creative methods of consuming them. 

Leave it to TikTok to come up with the most unique food creations. Users on the platform gush over the Chamoy Pickle trend. While companies sell a complete kit for the concoction, many users have taken the DIY route to make their own. To make the Chamoy Pickle, all that's needed is a seemingly large whole pickle wrapped in a fruit roll-up, stuffed with Takis and sour gummy candy, sprinkled with candy powder and Tajin, and doused in Chamoy. The trend has received high acclaim overall, yet some users disparage the craze. One TikTok user even said, "It's not even a pickle" after taking a bite of the fully-formed treat.

One of the most appealing pickle trends on TikTok is the Pickle Sandwich, which replaces bread with baked pickles. In one TikTok video, a user sprinkles two beds of shredded cheese on an oven sheet, places several sandwich pickles in a row on top of the cheese, and sprinkles more cheese over that before placing it in the oven. This binds the pickles to the cheese, creating a consistent and sturdy sandwich base, and adds additional flavor to each bite. This trend has a wide appeal because it allows for substantial personalization, permitting people to fill the sandwich with any ingredients of their choosing. After all, who doesn't love customizing their food?