For many who grew up in Canada, reaching for a pack of ketchup chips or Hickory Sticks was a common snack-time occurrence, while chewing on gum that proudly tasted like soap was also nothing unusual. For the sweet of teeth, the treat of choice was probably a Caramilk or perhaps a Coffee Crisp. These brands might spark serious nostalgia in some, but outside of Canada, most people haven't heard of them at all. We look back through the most beloved Canadian food brands, counting down to the most iconic of all.

Click or scroll through our gallery charting the most nostalgic food brands in Canada – how many do you recognize?

If you really want to taste Canadian nostalgia (with more than a hint of soap), reach for a pack of Thrills. The lurid purple chewing gum first hit shelves in the 1940s thanks to London, Ontario–based confectionery company O-Pee-Chee. Originally white and sold in a blue-and-yellow cardboard envelope, the gum was flavoured with rosewater – but the floral taste was often compared to soap. This didn’t seem to put people off, and the candy remained popular when O-Pee-Chee was bought by Nestlé in the late 1980s.

The gum now comes in a blister pack of 10 purple pieces and proudly declares on the packet: ‘It still tastes like soap!’ Who knows if anyone really enjoys chewing Thrills, but that soapy flavour can certainly evoke childhood memories. Perhaps the ingenious rebranding is one of the reasons it's still going strong, sparking a slew of videos on social media showing people trying Thrills for the first time and reacting to that distinct flavour.

Love it or loathe it, this divisive bar has been a part of Canadian chocolate culture since the 1970s, and it shows no signs of going anywhere soon. Straying from regular chocolate bar norms, the Big Turk is made up of a sweet, pink-hued Turkish delight and comes finished with a delicate milk chocolate coating.

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Manufactured in Canada by Nestlé, the bar is easily recognizable thanks to its distinctive red, white and blue striped wrapper. The gummy, chewy centre and the flavours are somewhat unusual together, but some can’t get enough of the bar, and it continues to be a popular choice across the country.  

No Canadian pantry is complete without a box of Windsor salt. This is a brand steeped in history, founded in 1893 when three Canadian Pacific Railway Company employees decided to go into business mining salt in Windsor, Ontario. In addition to selling pouring salt for the table, the company supplies salt for pools and roads throughout Canada. Its headquarters remain in Pointe-Claire, Québec, and mining still takes place in Nova Scotia and Windsor. Vintage advertising from 1908 declared: 'Every successful grocer in Canada sold Windsor Salt.'

The product owes at least some of its success to its iconic box design, created by graphic designer Chris Yaneff in 1962. The minimalist style, originally with orange and blue dots on white packaging, made it a decorative essential in any modern kitchen, and its revolutionary design meant it was ‘storable, pourable and adorable’. After 40 years, Windsor decided to give the box a makeover – but the blue dots still remain to this day.

Tim Hortons might be the Canadian coffee known around the globe, but inside most of the nation's kitchen cupboards you're more likely to find a tin of Nabob. A renowned brand, Nabob Foods was founded by Robert Kelly and Frank Douglas in Vancouver in 1896. The original brass Nabob Coffee spoon, now a collectors’ item, featured a figure of a man wearing a turban for the handle ('Nabob' was a term used to describe a wealthy Eastern person).

Nabob has lasted by moving with the times. By the 1980s, it was established across the country in ‘ready-brew’ instant form. The brand was taken over by Kraft in 1994, and a decade later, it partnered with Tassimo to produce pods for its new coffee maker. Nabob sources its beans from Columbia and has worked to make production environmentally friendly, receiving the Rainforest Alliance Certification seal and winning the Sustainable Standard Setter Award in 2012. 

Canada is the world's biggest producer of maple syrup, with the maple leaf recognized as a symbol of quality around the world. Authentic Québec maple syrup is identifiable by the traditional can, depicting a snow-covered red cabin and bare-branched winter trees. The original design can be traced back to 1952, when it featured a horse-drawn sled transporting freshly collected maple sap. It's usually seen drizzled over pancakes, waffles and more. 

The original artwork was designed by the Dominion & Grimm Company, bearing the white-on-red text above the picture, which reads Pure Maple Syrup, or Sirop D’erable Pur in French. Variations of this design have appeared over the years, but always with the snow-topped log cabin and the red-and-white labels. The brand has now been adopted by the Decacer company, founded by the Levasseur brothers in 2000 in Degelis, Québec.

One of the country’s favourite sweet treat companies, Chapman’s Ice Cream has been lining the grocery freezer aisles since 1973. Five decades later, the brand is the largest independent ice cream manufacturer in Canada. Set up by husband-and-wife duo David and Penny Chapman, the pair moved into an apartment above an old creamery in Markdale, Ontario and started selling ice cream to locals from two old trucks. 

In 2009, Chapman’s Ice Cream nearly lost everything after a welder’s spark started a fire during the expansion of the company’s new freezing tunnel system. Instead of giving in, the family-run business rebuilt from scratch and has gone on to launch over 280 frozen treats in a range of delicious flavour combinations. Vanilla Honey is a firm Canadian favourite, though you can’t go wrong with any of the tubs or lollies.  

A popular choice since 1930, the Crispy Crunch is a tasty hard chocolate bar complete with a crunchy peanut butter centre. Originally produced by Neilson’s, the bar was the brainchild of a young boy and candy roller Harold Oswin, who won a contest for his tantalizingly tasty creation. Neilson’s eventually sold its chocolate brands, including Crispy Crunch, to Cadbury in 1996.  

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The recipe has changed slightly since Cadbury took over, swapping its distinct saltiness for a sweeter finish, and eventually replacing its renowned red packaging to align with Cadbury’s purple style in 2025. Proving such a hit in Canada, the Crispy Crunch bar attempted to cross the border to the US in the early 1990s with very little success. Regardless, it’s still one of Canada’s top chocolate picks. 

When it comes to comfort food, there's nothing like a warm, rich plate full of poutine to make you feel at home. The traditional Québec dish of fries laced with cheese curds and smothered in gravy became a popular snack in the 1950s. While everyone has their favourite places to go for poutine, St-Hubert Original Poutine Gravy, launched in 1965, made it easier to make it at home.

St-Hubert was founded as a family rotisserie chicken restaurant in Montreal in 1951, before becoming a nationwide chain and even opening a location in Florida. The gravy came later, sold in supermarkets across Québec, and bearing the smiley face of the St-Hubert chicken on the can. The brand also has a range of ready meals.

These smoky, salty stick-shaped potato snacks were introduced in the 1970s by potato chip company Hostess and soon became loved by many. As the jingle trilled: 'Cause when you've got the munchies, nothing else will do.' The words accompanied a 1980s TV ad with cute munchies monsters.

Hostess was founded in 1935 in Ontario by Edward Snyder, who started out using his mother’s stove to bake chips at home. The company went on to become Canada's main producer of potato chips, with a variety of brands and flavours, until it partnered with FritoLay in 1987. The brand now only sells Hickory Sticks, introducing a salt and vinegar flavour in 2021.

Irresistibly crispy and downright delicious, Cheezies are a crunchy cornmeal snack made with real Cheddar cheese. The savoury treat was created by two men, W.T. Hawkins and Jim Marker in 1949. The pair didn’t advertise the product, relying solely on local interest, but before long, the product became incredibly popular, gaining a loyal following who loved Cheezies’ strong cheesy flavour.  

Despite appearing alongside chips with huge marketing campaigns and bright packaging, Cheezies still sticks out with its red-and-white stripes and distinct orange-hued colour peeking through the clear packet. Its disinterest in advertising continues today, with the brand remaining off social media, but despite this, it’s still one of the country’s most-loved snacks.  

Canadians will probably remember Premium Plus crackers as the plain, salty biscuits they were given to eat as children when they weren't feeling well. Similar to a Ritz or Graham cracker, these have been a store cupboard staple in family homes since 1876, launched by Christies. William Christie, known as Mr Christie, started as a baker in Toronto, before focusing on biscuit manufacturing. 

Christies was bought by US biscuit company Nabisco in 1928, so they'll be familiar to American shoppers, too. However, while they're sold in a white box under the name Premium in the US, in Canada the box is red, and they're still called Premium Plus. Whether crumbled into meatloaf, dipped in soup or simply topped with cheese for a classic snack, there's no doubt this is the Canadian cracker of choice.

President's Choice, a line of deluxe products from Loblaw supermarkets, launched in 1984 – but it's The Decadent range, released four years later to take store cupboard staples to new levels, that most Canadian kids of the 1980s are more likely to remember. The chocolate chip cookies, in particular, were generous in size and in chocolate content, making them just the thing to pester parents to buy.

The Decadent range has since expanded beyond cookies, and now includes chocolate cakes, chocolate cream pie and hot chocolate mix. For a brief time in 2013, The Decadent fans were even offered the chance to buy chocolate soda. Some loved the 'carbonated chocolate syrup' drink, while others found it too sweet – and it was eventually discontinued. The Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookies are still considered the best by many.

This tasty chocolate treat dates back to 1932, when French Canadian baker Josef-Arcade Vachon devised the recipe at the family bakery he ran with his wife in Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce, Québec. He named the cake after his sons, Joseph and Louis. The original Jos Louis features red velvet cake, sandwiched around vanilla cream and dipped in chocolate. 

Vachon Inc. was bought by Canada Bread in 2015, and it now sells a range of pastries and cakes, including the Ah Louis, a chocolate sponge topped with vanilla cream and caramel wrapped up in a chocolate shell, and a vanilla sponge version, the May West. If that all sounds too much, you might like the 1/2 Moon: a Jos Louis cut in half, minus the chocolate.

The Coffee Crisp is a hot contender for Canada’s favourite chocolate bar, with more than 153 million produced annually. Its origins lie in the UK, with British sweet manufacturer Rowntree's launching its Wafer Crisp in Canada as the Biscrisp. But it was the coffee-flavoured version, launched in 1938, that was truly embraced by the nation. Nestlé took over the company in 1988, moving production to the Toronto factory where the bar is still made today.

Declared a 'Canadian gem', the chocolate-covered layered wafer is the taste of home many Canadian ex-pats have a craving for. It's sold in some specialist shops in Australia and can be hunted down in US stores close to the border. A petition was launched in 2000, appealing to Nestlé to make the Coffee Crisp available across America. Though victory was claimed in the US in 2006, the petition lives on as hungry Canadians seek to satisfy their sweet teeth around the globe.

Don't be confused by the name – these potato chips are Canadian through and through. Old Dutch Foods takes its name from the windmill in Winnipeg, Manitoba that inspired its logo, and began making potato chips in 1954, using locally sourced spuds. Though not the oldest potato chip brand in Canada, Old Dutch Foods is still fully operational and has branched out into other snack and dip products.

Old Dutch also still produces Canada's favourite flavour of potato chips – ketchup. Ketchup chips were invented by Hostess in the 1970s, and that special taste combination of tomatoes and sugar soon became a hit throughout the country. Old Dutch, FritoLay and British company Walkers have since brought out their own ketchup chip, but ketchup chips remain a Canadian creation.

Never suggest a Caramilk chocolate bar is just a Cadbury’s Caramel in a different wrapper. It's also not to be confused with the Australian, caramel flavoured, white chocolate version. The Canadian Caramilk bar is milk chocolate with a caramel filling – and it is, and always has been, exclusive to Canada. Caramilk bars were created in 1968 under the British Cadbury brand but made exclusively in the Gladstone Chocolate Factory in Toronto.

‘Big, creamy, dreamy’ as the tagline goes, Caramilks are worshipped by chocolate lovers in Canada. The simple wrapper has evolved over the years and now features a lock symbol in the centre of the 'A'. The key to this is the acclaimed Caramilk Secret advertising campaign, which dates back to the 1970s and is still running today. This sweet mystery of life – how do they get the caramel into the chocolate? – has kept Canadians guessing, alluded to in award-winning commercials featuring the Mona Lisa and Kama Sutra.

Aside from maple syrup and Canada Dry ginger ale, Tim Hortons is arguably now one of Canada's most popular food exports. The coffee shop was founded by professional hockey player Tim Horton in 1964 in Hamilton, Ontario. The brand is famed for its Timbits, invented in 1976 – because why not eat the doughnut hole, too? Tim Hortons now has branches around the world, including in China, the Middle East and the UK.

You might be able to get Tim Hortons Timbits in many other countries now, but one tasty treat that's still exclusive to Canada is Timbits cereal. Launched in 2020, the crunchy, miniature versions of chocolate doughnut holes make an indulgent breakfast, even if not the healthiest. And, for special occasions, there's even a Birthday Cake flavour.

Now discover the Canadian foods the world adores

Last updated by Lottie Woodrow.