200 Road Trip Snack Ideas: The Ultimate Travel Snack Guide

When you are planning a road trip, snacks are a pillar in the planning. I asked a group of road trip lovers what their favorite snacks are and the results were amazing.

769 votes for 222 individual snack choices, some of the choices were way out there and some overall favorites emerged.

Most Popular Road Trip Snacks

The absolute favorite, time honored road trip snacks are:

Beef Jerky

Trail Mix

Twizzlers

Nuts

Apples

These snacks are great because they don’t leave crumbs, keep you full and keep you awake!

These snacks got almost a quarter of all the votes for snacks!

200 Road Trip Snack Ideas: The Ultimate Travel Snack Guide - Mom Van Up (1)

Other Popular Snacks:

These snacks also got quite a few votes:

6. Fruit	10. Popcorn	14. Chips
7. Sunflower Seeds	11. Water	15. Peanuts
8. String Cheese	12. Cheese and Crackers	16.Pringles
9. Grapes	13. Coffee

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Sometimes you just need some snack inspiration, so here is a monster list of snacks for your next trip.

Once you have shopped all the snacks, time to organize it all for the trip.

How to Organize Road Trip Snacks

The van can get messy so fast on a road trip, but there are a few tips that work for me to keep the snacks organized and the car a bit cleaner.

Buy Enough

Plan to have two stocks of road trip snacks, one for the trip there and one for the way back.

I usually just buy doubles of our snacks and pack one away in a paper grocery bag. I try to keep it out of sight of everyone so it does not get opened before we need it.

Use a Cooler

A traditional cooler is great for keeping some drinks cold and allow you to pack things like lunch meat and cheese.

We have this Igloo cooler, it fits in our van well, has wheels and keeps things cold for quite a long time. This is an affiliate link, if you choose to purchase after you click the link I will receive a commission at no cost to you.

I keep the cooler organized by adding drinks on one side and food on the other, I keep a shoebox sized tupperware in the cooler to help ensure that my lunchmeat and cheese do not get wet.

This works well for us and makes it easy to grab out exactly what we need when it is time to make sandwiches.

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Plan Your Meals

I know, its vacation and you just want to relax, but having a plan will make it simple to put together meals.

Planning meals does not mean you cannot eat out or stop at cool local stops, but you can have some options planned.

You can use this printable road trip meal planner if you want to make sure you have all the bases covered.

I think it is important to plan some fun meals as well, those can be planned and packed or purchased on the road. We have a large family, so sometimes we buy a main like a big box of chicken nuggets, then eat chips on the side to save money.

You can read a few more large family fast food hacks in the linked post.

Backseat Trash

When you pass back snacks to your kids, do not pass back anything that can turn into little pieces. Styrofoam is banned from the backseat in my car. We get the kids milks or juice boxes because it is just going to be picked into tiny pieces.

Be careful not to pass back any trash unless you have a trash can in the back seat. Consider getting food baskets, like these on Amazon (affiliate link), and line them with a napkin to pass back food.

We put a basket between the car seats and line it with a grocery bag so that there is a place to put the trash.

Types of Road Trip Snacks

Remember the golden rule of road trip snacks:

No matter how old you get, buying snacks for a road trip should look like an unsupervised 9 year old was given $100.

In my survey 97 votes went to candy, and over 50% of the road trip favorites included gas station snacks.

Well, you may be a crazed 9 year old snacker, or a high protein low carb, unprocessed, vegan or gluten free road trip snacker and if you are you will find inspiration in the list that came from the survey.

Here is the oddly specific list of snacks recommended by real road trip fans. (You can find the printable version here.)

Sweet

Fudge Rounds

Lemon Drops

Cinnamon Raisin Bagels

Dried Mango

Raisins

Cereal Bars

Applesauce Pouches

Purines

Dried Cherries

Chocolate Covered Almonds

Mint Extra Gum

Jelly Bellys

Craisins

Golden Oreos

Watermelon Sour Patch Kids

Strawberry Lifesavers

Charleston Chew

Muddy Buddies

Sour Patch Kids

Mounds

Rice Krispy Treats

Black Licorice

FIreballs

Strawberry Licorice

Swedish Fish

Nilla Wafers

Red Hots

Watermelon

Brownie Brittle

Reeses PB Cups

Yogurt Covered Raisins

PB and Fluff Sandwich

Runts

Snickers

Kettle Corn

Teddy Grahams

Pecan Log Roll

Mini Cupcakes

Pop Tarts

Sour Gummy Worms

Starbursts

Fig Newtons

Dry Honey Nut Cheerios

Kind Bars

Tootsie Pops

Strawberries

Mixed Berry Skittles

Mandarins

Nutter Butters

Little Debbie Cakes

Bananas

Chocolate

M&Ms

Grapes

Twizzlers

Apples

Peanut M&Ms

Salty

Peanuts

Cherry Turkey Jerky

Pumpkin Seeds

Olives

Cheese Curds

Beef and Cheese Sticks

Lime and Jalapeno Chips

Sun Chips

Pea Crisps

Costco Korean Pork Jerky

Pepperoni

Road Trip Charcuterie Box

Roasted Vegetables

Fritos

PB Crackers

Rolled Lunchmeat

Cheese Whisps

200 Road Trip Snack Ideas: The Ultimate Travel Snack Guide - Mom Van Up (2024)