The Best Snacks to Smuggle into a Music Festival

Music festivals are, as they say in the biz, “esspensive.” You gotta have tickets, sparkly clothes, and a heaping amount of patience for large quantities of drunk people, and those costs start to add up. And then on top of those hundreds of dollars (and gallons of pure, sweet patience), they make you wait in a three-hour line to pay like $30 for a lettuce leaf and a single whiff of BBQ smoke, and then expect that to keep you full from 12 p.m. to 12 a.m. So if you want to beat the system, you have to come up with some creative ways to smuggle food and drinks across those festival borders, baby, and here are some music festival snacks we think would, a,) smuggle well and, b.) keep you full (or at least keep you from passing out) throughout the day.

Chomps Original Beef Stick

Meat sticks last. Sweltering outside? Your meat stick will be fine. Some water spills in your bag? Your jerky will make it through. Freezing cold out there? This beef cylinder shall remain cylindrical and beefy. Plus, these are so easy to hide in towels, blankets, hats, bras, pants, you name it, you can stash it there. Not only that, but these make great music festival snacks simply because they taste amazing. Danny Palumbo even thought they tasted a bit like a ribeye steak, which is insanely beefy for a beef stick, but take our word for it—Chomps are a festival must.

GoMacro Sunny Uplift (Cherries + Berries)

Need protein? Have vegan friends? Of course you do, you are going to a music festival! And this vegan protein bar is one of the best snacks for a music festival. Why? Because it’s packed with protein, easy to stash on your person, vegan, and, most importantly, it tastes great. Managing editor Gwynedd Stuart noted that this GoMacro bar is “bursting with berry flavor, “ and “full of chewy dried cherries that give it a nice tart flavor.” Go get these, get a fisherman’s vest (or whatever people wear to festivals these days), and go (vegan) ham!

Loose Peanuts in a Scrunchie

I don’t know if this is because I am Gen Z or because the algorithm has picked up on my specific brand of chaos, but you guys. Instagram ads taught me that you can now purchase scrunchies that have a zippered pocket made for stashing stuff. And while you could be boring and put Chapstick in there, I recommend filling the entire compartment up with roasted salted peanuts. Why? Because it’s a great bit, it will keep you fed if you need a protein-y, salty pick-me-up, and if someone accidentally bumps into your ponytail you can yell, “Ow, my nuts!” and that right there is what they call comedy.

Trader Joe’s Apple Mango Crusher

Squeezy applesauce in a tube! The perfect fully sealed, stashable snack sachet if you are looking for music festival snacks that are both drinks and foods (we love a multitalented munch). It also allows you to get some fruit and fiber into your diet even though you are out at a festival—a surprisingly hard thing to do, just like pooping the next day without fiber. But believe us when we tell you that these applesauce packets also taste amazing, with Danny noting that the “flavor of this apple-mango blend has an extra bit of fruity and citrusy sweetness.” Not only that, but ya don’t need a spoon for these! Thanks, squeeze packets!

I mean, granola bars have got to be on the list of best snacks for a music festival. Since the beginning of time (or at least music festivals), Granola bars have been one of the most common sweet, stashable, and delicious music festival snacks out there. Plus this specific almond-y delight of a granola bar is so good senior writer Jordan Myrick called it “the best granola bar [they’ve] ever had in [their] entire life,” and they are a professional taste tester. They’ve had some granola bars. I mean, come on, the coating on the bottom of these bars tastes like frosting! Try some of these at your next fest and you will not be disappointed.

Uncrustables Peanut Butter & Grape Jelly

These are a classic and great if you want a whole-ass meal in a tiny-ass package. I mean seriously, if you can sneaks some Uncrustables into the fest, you’ve got yourself 80% of a picnic lunch, my friend. And you don’t have to worry about that thing where you make a homemade PB&J and all the fillings smush out in the Ziploc bag, because guess what?! Uncrustables are sealed on ALL SIDES, baybee! Truly a win-win, and you don’t even have to sacrifice taste, because these things are genuinely, as Gwynedd put it, “The best of the best. Perfection in a plastic sleeve.” Adults need more Uncrustables in their lives and especially in their music festivals.