vi•sion•ary adj \’vi-zhe-,ner-ē\

having or marked by foresight and imagination. A person with original and radical ideas about what the future will or could be like.

Visionary Brands is a niche food innovation company specializing in proprietary product development for the confection, snack, energy, and supplement industries. As a market leader, we are chosen by our clients to ideate and develop exclusively licensed original products with a focus on superior quality, taste, presentation, price and marketability.

Innovation and forward thinking are at the core of our DNA. With over 40 years combined product development expertise, every waking and dreaming moment at Visionary Brands is spent on the focused obsession to create one-of-a-kind products for our valued customers. Our vast strategic global network of cutting edge factory partners provides us with the unmatched ability to achieve any R&D objective. Often times with skilled & collaborative execution Visionary can complete a project faster and more cost effectively than our clients would be able to with their internal resources.

Throughout the years, we have partnered with many companies, ranging from small and medium size businesses to multi-national food, drug, and beverage conglomerates. We manage every step of the product development lifecycle, leveraging our manufacturing, product innovation, and marketing acumen to guarantee delivery of the most ground-breaking, cost competitive, highest quality consumable products available in the market.

Welcome to the unique innovations of today and beyond.

Welcome to Visionary Brands!

Visionary Brands, Inc. | Leaders in candy, snack, energy and supplement innovation

About VBI

Welcome to Visionary Brands, your global innovation laboratory. With factory partners around the world, we can efficiently and effectively execute a product from concept to market at warp speed. We pride ourselves on delivering quality snacks, supplements, and confections loaded with all the good stuff. You name it, we can develop it. If it has a Health & Wellness fortification, we're all for it (fiber, yogurt, protein, vitamins, branch chain amino acids...). No matter what the innovation is, it's got to taste great, or it's a no go. At Visionary Brands we don't do "me too", we don't do commodity, we don't do unpleasant aftertaste. We only do cutting edge delicious one-of-a-kind products. That is why with over 40 years of combined experience in the confectionary and snack food industries, Randy and Glenn Schneider, founders of Visionary Brands, have been the trusted strategic partners of many organizations, ranging from small and medium size firms, to Fortune 500 companies.

Based in New York, NY, Visionary Brands brings an unparalleled breadth and depth of knowledge to help their clients ideate, create, and bring to market unique and original products. Throughout the years, Randy and Glenn have dedicated their careers to creating exciting product developments in the confectionary and snack food industries. The Ultimate Brownie marked the company's first groundbreaking product development innovation, utilizing a proprietary baking process that made it possible to bake a brownie with "whole Fun Size" candy bars infused into the core of the product while maintaining the candy's original shape, taste, texture, and quality. This revolutionary invention led the Ultimate Brownie to be the first brand to ever receive licensing rights from confectionary giants, and . Ultimate Brownie utilized candies such as , , , , and . Yes, that is why all these iconic brands are shown behind our story. With this landmark achievement, the Ultimate Brownie was sold in over 30,000 retail locations nationwide over a period of many years.

Building upon their passion for market altering products, Glenn and Randy followed the success of the Ultimate Brownie with the concept of a Peanut Butter Cup topped with 3 different candies & cookies, the immensely popular OverLoad brand. The OverLoad brand was "overloaded" with quality products and leading category brands. OverLoad was made from 100% Brand Peanut Butter purchased directly from Unilever, another industry first for an independent confectionary company. The OverLoad brand was the first Peanut Butter Cup to have , , , and cookies robotically & precisely dropped onto each cup during mass production. OverLoad was sold in over 55,000 retail locations nationwide, including retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, 7-Eleven, Circle K, CVS, Walgreen's, and many more over a 10-year period.

Visionary Brands was founded in 2010, when Glenn and Randy decided to focus exclusively on creating & licensing our product innovations. We develop a diverse range of unique confectionary, snack, energy, and supplement products unlike the world has ever seen. Visionary Brands has created new products across many categories from Energy licorice, infused taffy, immune support gummies, BCAA carbonated crystals (Pop-Rocks), fortified lollipops (filled and flat), 3D chocolates, candy rice krispies treats (all natural & high fiber treats), cookies, and dissolvable Energy film strips to name but a few. There is really no limit to what we can achieve with our scope of resources. At Visionary Brands, we stand behind every product we design by aligning our success with the success our clients experience in the marketplace. We believe that anything is possible, and guarantee that every product we present to our clients meets our extremely high standards for not only quality and taste, but marketability and cost.

About VBI

VBI Services

At Visionary Brands, the sky is the limit when it comes to creating & developing new confectionary, snack, energy, and supplement products. We are your complete source at every stage of the product development process. You may have your own partial or complete idea for a new product and need to source the finest and most qualified manufacturer, or maybe you are just interested in evaluating the wide range of new products we have created. Here at Visionary Brands, we have all the expertise and resources required to get the ultimate product into the marketplace.

Visionary Brands specializes in 360-degree product development services, including ideation, research and development, manufacturer sourcing, marketing, packaging design, and cost analyses / negotiations. Our fees are royalty-based, determined on a project by project basis.

We are able to produce almost every type of confectionary or snack food product through our global network of factory partners. We also ensure that each manufacturer meets the highest standards for quality, R&D competency, capacity, QC credentials, cost competitiveness, packaging requirements, reputation, and on time shipments. Each factory has passed our rigorous evaluation process; every factory in our network is monitored regularly to guarantee they meet or exceed our standards.

Visionary Brands is constantly developing new innovative products internally for presentation to qualified candidates. We recommend that current clients and prospective customers check in with us regularly to see what we have in our R&D pipeline.

To further explore the vision of possibilities and learn more about how we can help your business, please feel free to contact us. At Visionary Brands, imagination can become reality.

VBI Services

VBI Innovations

Visionary Brands is always pushing the envelope of unique food development. Whether conceiving a product internally or at the request of one of our clients, we are continually creating new product concepts.

Our never ending drive for innovation has led to the development of a wide range of highly successful market altering product lines, including "candy cane" filled licorice (coming Oct 2012!), taffy, gummies, pretzel style M&M's®, "energy pop shots" (coming Oct 2012!), already dipped chips, greek yogurt snacks, health & wellness rice krispies treats (chocolate & black + white treats coming Nov 2012!), character cookies, immune support lollipops and so much more.

Please note the majority of our products in the market or under development are under strict client confidentiality agreements. Unfortunately we are not able to showcase many of our products. However, below you will find a sample of some of the products we've developed and brought to market.

Fresh, crisp Kellogg's® rice smothered in rich creamy butter and mouth watering marshmallow utilizing first in industry proprietary rotary cutting technology and coloring capabilities to bring to market rice krispies treats in seasonal shapes with matching character candies sprinkled on top.

Two luscious Smarties® brand taffy bars in Strawberry & Blue Raspberry containing extreme quantities of real Smarties® Candy pieces in every bite! We developed a series of proprietary technologies that enable us to incorporate Smarties® without impacting the quality and authenticity of the candy. Look out for new & exciting Smarties® coming soon.

Two exciting Dairy Queen Blizzard® Rice Krispies Treats, DQ® Cookie Dough and DQ Oreo®. Our Dairy Queen Blizzard® Rice Krispies Treats contain a whopping 20% of Oreo® Cookies & 20% Cookie Dough Bites®. Our bars also incorporate two varieties of Cookie Dough, Chocolate Chip & Brownie in each Treat! Our dynamic Kellogg's® quality brand crisped rice Treats also feature two varieties of marshmallows, creamy & dehydrated chunks. Finally each bar is topped off with our decadent vanilla drizzle.

A delicious line of fruit filled licorice with combo flavors and colors in every Twist. Available in an exciting range of pack sizes, our portfolio of fruit flavors include Green Apple, Strawberry, Watermelon and Blue Raspberry.

We encourage you to check back to this page often, or better yet reach out to us directly, as we are constantly updating our product portfolio.

VBI Innovations

Energy + Supplements

Visionary Brands is the industry leader of niche confectionary and snack fortification. We specialize in developing proprietary energy supplements, immune support, fiber, protein, yogurt, branch chain amino acids, and a wide range of additional supplements to meet the growing consumer demand in the market for functional innovations. Our company partners with Fortune 500 companies such as Pepsi and other food, drug and beverage industry titans (confidentiality agreements do not permit us to disclose most clients) to develop cutting edge products that combine complex supplement fortification (non-liquid) into unique delivery platforms.

We have dedicated our business to creating the best tasting, most innovative energy and supplement products available on the market today (and tomorrow). Our experience and expertise in the confectionary and snack innovation industries have helped us become the pioneers of energy and supplement fortification for categories ranging from licorice, gummies, carbonated crystals (AKA Pop Rocks), lollipops (filled and flat), rice krispies treats, and dissolvable film strips. We thrive on developing hybrid products, so we are up for creating anything from conception to commercialization.

Utilizing our focused food science expertise, we have developed proprietary processes and technologies that allow us to fortify energy, immune support, vitamins, minerals, and a large portfolio of supplements into our diverse range of both traditional energy (Red Bull like), to All Natural Health & Wellness products. Our primary focus, however, is to make certain the consumer truly enjoys the taste of the product. Through rigorous research and development, we have created proprietary masking agents, devised exclusive ingredient disbursement techniques, and developed unique supplement cooking controls to guarantee that our client's potent target fortification levels are met without ever sacrificing flavor profile.

We thrive on transforming vision into reality, and we make it happen fast! (time is money). By combining our proprietary technologies, formulas and processes with an unmatched global network of the highest quality factory partners, we remove the burden of coordinating additional machinery, production, maintenance, research and development, personnel, regulations and liability insurance. Some of our customers in fact, prefer to utilize Visionary Brands for our extensive factory sourcing capabilities, and handle the R&D in house.

As our name implies, our strength is in our ability to anticipate trends and innovate new product categories in the constantly evolving marketplace. By blending our keen market awareness with our proprietary processes, formulas, technologies, and manufacturing network, we are ideally suited to meet your needs for flavor, quality, performance and price. So go ahead, think outside the bottle.

Energy + Supplements

Contact VBI

This is it.
This is what matters.
The experience of a product.
How it makes someone feel.
When you start by imagining
What that might be like,
You step back.
You think.

Will it make life better?
Does this deserve to exist?
If you are busy creating everything,
How can you perfect anything?

We don’t believe in coincidence.
Or dumb luck.
We spend a lot of time
On a few great things.
Until every idea we touch
Enhances each client it touches.

We’re artists and engineers.
Craftsmen and inventors.
We sign our work.
This is our signature.
And it means everything.

Corporate Office:

Visionary Brands, Inc.
502 Park Avenue, Suite #15F
New York, NY 10022

For Innovation Inquiries Please Contact:

Randy Schneider, CEO
Phone: 212.682.4611
E-mail: rs@visionaryb.com

Corporate Office:

Visionary Brands, Inc.
502 Park Avenue, Suite #15F
New York, NY 10022

For Innovation Inquiries Please Contact:

Randy Schneider, CEO
Phone: 212.682.4611
E-mail: rs@visionaryb.com

This is it.
This is what matters.
The experience of a product.
How it makes someone feel.
When you start by imagining
What that might be like,
You step back.
You think.

Will it make life better?
Does this deserve to exist?
If you are busy creating everything,
How can you perfect anything?

We don’t believe in coincidence.
Or dumb luck.
We spend a lot of time
On a few great things.
Until every idea we touch
Enhances each client it touches.

We’re artists and engineers.
Craftsmen and inventors.
We sign our work.
This is our signature.
And it means everything.

Contact VBI

New VBI Innovations

Visionary Brands is always pushing the envelope of unique food development. Whether conceiving a product internally or at the request of one of our clients, we are continually creating new product concepts.

Please note the majority of our products in the market or under development are under strict client confidentiality agreements. Unfortunately we are not able to showcase many of our products. However, below you will find a sample of some of the the most recent products we've developed and brought to market.

NERDS + Popping Candy: What happens when your client has the license to the world’s most popular online game (no joke 190 million users), and your direct orders are to match that soaring level of imagination & excitement with an equally XTREME confection. Simple, you create ECRM 2014 award winning SUGAR CRUSH. Visionary Brands dynamic combination of delicious tiny, tangy, crunchy WILLY WONKA NERDS blended with mouth watering Watermelon & Strawberry Popping Candy (AKA carbonated crystals) for a revolutionary POPTASTIC snack sensation.

Jelly Beans. We are proud to introduce our dazzling line of Jelly Beans (JB for short). Did you know most every (on the QT “CHEAP”) Jelly Bean is only flavored on the inside, not our premium bad ass JB’S. Our pure fruit juice flavors flow from the very inner core all the way through to the max flavored exterior shell. 6 awesome JB flavors (Mixed Berry, Cherry, Peach, Pear, Buttered Popcorn, and Cotton Candy) in every bag, but, yet still this was not enough. We just had to have the super cool CANDY CRUSH logo printed on every JB (take that Jelly Belly), so we developed our proprietary JB printing technology to top off this Visionary candy creation.

6 Color Licorice: Talk about a “colorful” challenge, not only was our mission to develop the most scrumptious filled licorice in this world (and beyond), but get this, it MUST contain all 6 CANDY CRUSH game colors on the outside! After we said are you ………..nuts, our candy lab stayed open 24/7 (free Red Bulls for everyone). 437 days, 3 hours, 52 minutes, and 11 seconds later, mission accomplished. Introducing Visionary Brands 1&Only 6 color multi-flavor licorice bites. Enjoy our luscious Watermelon + Strawberry and Lemonade + Blue Raspberry licorice bites.

The gang were “hunting” (pardon the pun) for a unique candy, shaped exactly like a Duck of course. Visionary Brands innovation team went to work and created scrumptious Fruit Punch flavored Gummy Ducks. These are not your everyday ho hum Gummies, these Yellow Duck Dynasty Ducks are bursting with real fruit juice in every DUCKALICIOUS bite.

We encourage you to check back to this page often, or better yet reach out to us directly, as we are constantly updating our product portfolio.

New VBI Innovations

Newest VBI Innovations

It only took 120 years (that's 12 decades) until the team at GOETZE'S® came across a snack innovation that was sooo shall we say "visionary" it was worthy of the famous GOETZE'S® COW TALES® & CARAMEL CREAMS® brand names.

Rice Krispies Treats (America's favorite snack) combined with GOETZE'S® caramels are a true match made in snack heaven (take that peanut butter & chocolate). But nothing truly amazing comes easy. You see our problem was COW TALES® & CARAMEL CREAMS® were much too large and thick to work as inclusions in mass produced bars.

After months of comprehensive testing, tinkering, tweaking (no twerking) + equipment modifications we successfully created custom mini GOETZE'S® caramels.

Homemade silky smooth marshmallow crème blended with fresh crisp rice, all infused inside & on top with heaps of GOETZE'S® caramels. The final touch, a scrumptious waterfall of white chocolate covering each GOETZE'S® bar.

Here's to 120 years of GOETZE'S® rice crispy bar enjoyment.



SOUR POWER® Straws introduced in 1985 are the true original sour brand before sour was even a category, much less a multi billion dollar category. Now 30 years later SOUR POWER® is the leading sour brand in USA. Sour brands such as SOUR PUNCH (1990), RIPS (2003), and TANGY ZANGY (2007) are all shall we say copycats.

Visionary Brands had to come up with something really revolutionary for SOUR POWER® to branch into another sour category. We were up to the task. Popping candy has been a beloved confection since 1975. But in 40 years it has never experienced a sour boost (ok to be honest explosion) so XTREME your face scrunches with mind numbing fun.

After developing a proprietary sour application process and then testing hundreds of sour levels we got the perfect blend of fruit flavor & sour for 4 delicious flavors of SOUR POWER® popping candy.

But, always a but, the SOUR POWER® folks said great job on the sour & flavor but sorry we need more to launch a new SOUR POWER® line. We had to do something else to make this product line so singularly unique nobody would or could dare to copy SOUR POWER® "again".

So our factory modified our reactor, cooling tubes, steam jacket, and panners (yes all real pieces of equipment) to develop the awesome assortment capability for kids to enjoy 2 to mind blowing 4 flavors & colors in each SOUR POWER® pouch!

Introducing 2 FLAVOR MIX SOUR POWER® Strawberry + Green Apple, 2 FLAVOR MIX SOUR POWER® Strawberry + Blue Raspberry, and QUATTRO SOUR POWER® Strawberry + Green Apple + Blue Raspberry + Tutti Fruity. Now kids of all ages can enjoy SOUR POWER® in 2 SOURTASTIC candy categories.


Say it ain't so, America's hottest toy brand SHOPKINS® is bursting into the candy world! Visionary Brands was assigned the task to design a candy equally exciting & out of the ordinary. Our team of CANDYOLOGISTS (yes that's a made up word) wanted popping action, we wanted crunchy, we wanted tangy, we wanted sour, we wanted tons of colors, this is SHOPKINS® we wanted it all. Many months & exploding experiments later POPTASTIC strawberry & watermelon popping crystals blended together with Original Rainbow NERDS® created 1&ONLY SHOPKINS® POPPIN' CRUNCH.

Newest VBI Innovations

Latest & Greatest Innovations #1

Latest & Greatest

Innovations #1

Latest & Greatest Innovations #2

Latest & Greatest

Innovations #2

Latest & Greatest Innovations #3

Latest & Greatest

Innovations #3

SWEETS & SNACKS EXPO 2018

Ferrero, Hershey, Nestle and more: NCA names most innovative new candies and snacks of 2018

By Douglas Yu

24-May-2018 - Last updated on 24-May-2018 at 07:48 GM-

innovative new candies

The National Confectioners Association (NCA) has named the most innovative product award winners of 2018 at the Sweets and Snacks Expo in Chicago (May 22-May 24, 2018).

The winning products were selected from more than 300 new product award entries across nine candy and snack categories: chocolate, non-chocolate, sweet, salty, savory, novelty, seasonal, gourmet/premium, and gum & mints, according to the NCA.

It said the goal is "to bring unique products with a variety of emerging flavor profiles and inspirational packaging to attending buyers looking to drive retailer engagement."

"Product submissions were rated based on four weighted criteria: taste, packaging, innovation and go-to market feasibility, "added the NCA.

Larry Levin, IRI's executive vice president of consumer and shopper marketing, was one of the judges for the award this year. He said: "Historically, innovation has driven about 7% of the growth in confections. New products spark excitement for the consumer and generate more opportunities for treating."

"Small business innovator award," new to this year's expo, was presented to Vosges Haut-Chocolate for its hazelnut cocoa toast flavor. The NCA said the entry was designed to recognize companies with annual net sales under $500,000 among well-established peers.

Additionally, the US candy association awarded Hostess Brands' double chocolate cake delights the "best in show" item, and gave Ruby Chocolate (created by Barry Callebaut) the Inaugural Ruby Award.

The most innovative sweets and snacks are:

Awards Awards Awards

Award Article

Best New Non-Chocolate: Candy Crush Sugar Crush by Healthy Food Brands


kids choice award Candy Crush Sugar Rush kids choice award


Candy Crush is so popular, that pretty much anything donning the game’s logo is bound to sell at least once. The hard part is making something that’s based on the game AND delicious. As the kids can attest, Healthy Food Brands has obviously succeeded.

This newest line extension Candy Crush Sugar Crush combine the best of everyone’s favorite packet candies — a mix of treats inspired by Nerds and Pop Rocks. The confection gives your mouth so much joy, you’ll remember why you started playing the crazy addictive Candy Crush game in the first place — all that candy.

Candy Industry would like to thank all the confectionery companies that participated! The Boys and Girls club thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and as one kid told me, we really do have “the luckiest job ever.” And, congratulations to all the winners!

Be sure to check out our full coverage of the ECRM show in our April issue!

A look at 2014’s Candy Industry and ECRM Kid’s Choice Awards Denver Boys and Girls Club kids pick their three favorite treats

February 26, 2014

By Crystal Lindell

Candy Crush Sugar Rush

Kids are so awesome. Aside from the fact that being around them seems to make everything more fun, they also love sugar almost as much as I do — making them the perfect test audience for all the delightfully delicious confections previewed at the ECRM Candy Planning: Christmas and Halloween in Denver last week.

This marked my third time helping to lead a Kid’s Choice Awards during an ECRM event, and they seriously just keep getting more fun every year.

This year the Denver Boys and Girls Club showed up with about 40 kids age 7-14, and we split them into four groups, each of which got their own circular table in a banquet style dining room.

Candy Crush Sugar Rush

The fantastic Print Cates, v.p. of product management at J. Sosnick & Son, donned a large, royal purple Willy Wonka hat, and explained to the children that they were going to have the chance to be official candy buyers — sampling all the different types of confections just like the professionals do (complete with the sugar highs, sugar lows and post-sugar stomach aches), and then choosing their favorites.

Each kid received an official candy buyer badge, a cup of water and set about the task at hand — eating tons and tons of delicious candy and then picking their favorite chocolate, non-chocolate and novelty treat.

For each category, they were handed a white bag containing one of each item in the running for that particular award, and told to choose their favorite. Once they voted, they got the next bag for the next category.

Then, after all the ballots were collected, and the sugar highs had worn off, we counted the votes and named the winners.

Award Article

Launch