Pumpkin spice season is getting a sweet-and-salty twist this fall as Flipz and Dunkin' launch a limited-time collaboration: Flipz Pumpkin Spice Donut-Flavored Covered Pretzels. The product, available at major retailers nationwide through October, translates the flavor profile of Dunkin's Pumpkin Cake Donut into a chocolate-covered pretzel format, targeting snack aisles at CVS, Kroger, Albertsons, Wakefern, Stop & Shop, Dollar General, and Five Below.
The Flavor Strategy
Each pretzel is coated with pumpkin, warming spices, and cake donut flavor — a deliberate effort to connect Dunkin's seasonal QSR offering to the impulse-snack category. For foodservice operators and retail buyers, the move illustrates a broader licensing trend: established restaurant brands extending their most traffic-driving seasonal flavors into packaged goods to capture off-premise revenue. Dunkin', which operates more than 14,200 restaurants across nearly 40 global markets, has made pumpkin a cornerstone of its fall menu calendar, and this retail partnership stretches that equity well beyond the drive-through window.
"Dunkin' fans look forward to pumpkin season every year, and we're excited to bring the taste of our Pumpkin Cake Donut to the snack aisle through this collaboration with Flipz," said Brian Gilbert, Vice President of Retail Business Development at Inspire Brands. The collaboration is a textbook example of restaurant IP monetization — a strategy our restaurant industry trend coverage has tracked accelerating across major QSR chains in recent years.
What Operators Should Watch
For hospitality and foodservice professionals, the Flipz-Dunkin' pairing offers a useful lens on cross-category brand licensing during high-traffic seasonal windows. Pumpkin spice, long the hallmark of fall beverage menus, has become a full-spectrum flavor platform spanning coffee, baked goods, and now branded snack retail. "Pumpkin spice has evolved from a seasonal trend to a cultural phenomenon," said Shivani Arora, Marketing Director at pladis Americas, Flipz's parent company. "By partnering with Dunkin', we're bringing together two fan-favorite brands to give consumers a new way to enjoy one of fall's most celebratory flavors."
Pladis — the global snacking company behind McVitie's, GODIVA, and Ülker in addition to Flipz — brings significant manufacturing and retail distribution scale to the partnership. That infrastructure allows a limited-time product to reach a geographically broad retail footprint almost immediately, a capability that gives licensed restaurant-brand products genuine seasonal punch rather than a soft regional rollout. Buyers and category managers monitoring beverage and snack industry trends will recognize this as part of a wider push by QSR brands to generate licensing revenue from seasonal flavor assets without adding operational complexity inside their restaurant kitchens.
The product is on shelf now through October at select retailers nationwide.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
