Pistachios Are TikTok’s Latest Craze. Producers Are Going Nuts.

Radio Bakery’s pistachio croissant in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Photograph by Nicole Fara Silver)

Tall Poppy has sold pistachio croissants ever since the small-batch bakery in Manhattan opened last September.

“I didn’t necessarily want to open with an almond croissant because I think there’s a lot of them around the city,” Tall Poppy co-founder Nina McGrath told Barron’s. “I wanted to do something different and that’s why we selected pistachio.”

Two months ago, pistachio was rotated out in favor of a summer lineup of flavors that included salted caramel cashew and balsamic strawberry custard. Loyal customers, though, have been asking for pistachio, so the pastry could appear again on the menu for Tall Poppy’s first anniversary, McGrath said. “It’s definitely the most popular of the nut-based croissants.”

Pistachios are popping up everywhere, thanks to a certain chocolate dessert and a social-media platform. The popularity of Dubai chocolate—a confection filled with shredded phyllo dough, pistachio cream and tahini—in the past year and a half propelled demand for the tree nut.

TikTok pushed the craze as users created videos slowly tearing apart the chocolate bar to reveal the crunchy pistachio filling. They have also shared recipes for just about anything that can include pistachio flavoring: butter, cheesecake, brownies, syrup, and milkshakes. Many of the videos have gone viral.

Dubai chocolate—made by Fix Dessert Chocolatier based in the United Arab Emirates—is available at many retailers. Nuts Factory sells two-pack bars of Dubai chocolate online for $49.99. Others are jumping on the bandwagon: Shake Shack offers a Dubai chocolate pistachio milkshake; Lindt sells a chocolate pistachio bar, and Crumbl has a pistachio-filled brownie coming soon.

Behind the crunch and gooey texture lies a crucial ingredient: pistachios. The crop, picked primarily in California, is a relatively recent addition to the nuts industry, with plantings in the state emerging in the 1960s. The U.S. is now the top exporter and producer of pistachios, comprising about 61% of total global production, followed by Iran and Turkey, according to AgWest Farm Credit, an agricultural lending cooperative.

Radio Bakery’s pistachio croissant. Photo: Photograph by Nicole Fara Silver

Before the Dubai chocolate fad, people typically ate pistachios as a snack. The U.S. leads in pistachio consumption, from 41,500 metric tons in 2005 to 225,000 metric tons between 2023 and 2024, according to a report from Rabobank, a financial services firm with a focus on the food and agriculture sector.

In the fields, growers must keep up with demand. Pistachio trees are “alternate bearing,” which means they alternate years when they yield more nuts. They typically bloom in early to mid-April, with the harvest starting in September, once the nuts have matured and the shells have begun to split.

The last time there was a record crop was during the 2023-24 harvest season, which produced 1.49 billion pounds of pistachios, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The 2024-2025 harvest was an off year, bringing in 1.1 billion pounds.

For the 2025-2026 harvest, growers are expecting another record crop, with an estimated 1.6 billion pounds, thanks to more bearing acres—the total area of land with crops mature enough for harvest.

The Dubai chocolate bar is filled with shredded phyllo dough, pistachio cream and tahini. Photo: TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP via Getty Images

Jeffrey Gibbons, grower relations manager at Setton Farms, has been farming and processing pistachios in Terra Bella, Calif. for about 45 years. Now, he works with about 300 growers who bring pistachios into Setton’s processing facilities.

Gibbons said while Setton has always sold both pistachios in shells and the kernels, the Dubai chocolate frenzy swelled demand for kernels, the preferred way to use the nut in products. He called the trend “a fantastic marketing phenomenon.”

To keep up with demand for kernels this season, Gibbons said the Setton team is switching up their sales strategy. “We’ll tell our customers, ‘Hey, if you want pistachio kernels, you need to let us know now so we don’t sell too many pounds of in-shell,’” he told Barron’s.

The industry is shaping up to be mostly a kernel market. Meridian Growers, a sales and marketing company supporting California and Arizona growers, in June reported a 8% year over year increase in kernel shipments, citing the strong demand from the Dubai chocolate trend.

Earlier this year, social media users sparked rumors of a pistachio shortage as Dubai chocolate’s popularity gained steam. Stephen Vasquez, executive director of Administrative Committee for Pistachios, which oversees nut quality in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said it was a false alarm.

“A lot of people have called and said ‘what about the pistachio shortage?’” Vasquez told Barron’s. “There hasn’t really been a pistachio shortage and there’s certainly not a Dubai chocolate shortage.”

The retail price of a one-pound bag of in-shell pistachios has risen by 5.4% since January, according to market research firm Datasembly. But since the harvest is expected to be larger, consumers could see lower prices, David Magaña, senior horticulture analyst at Rabobank, told Barron’s.

“This is going to be a good opportunity for consumers to be buying and eating more pistachios this coming season as promotions are more likely,” Magaña said.

The U.S. is the top producer of pistachios. Photo: JADE GAO / AFP / Getty Images

Cracks beneath the surface, however, could undermine the crop’s future success. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, a California law passed in 2014, restricts the amount of groundwater growers can extract for irrigation, making surface water from mountain snow more scarce and expensive.

To compensate, farmers will have to sink deeper wells, which increases the cost of drilling and electricity for pumping, said Louise Ferguson, a professor in the plant sciences department at University of California, Davis, who studies how climate change affects the crop.

Even though pistachios are relatively drought-resistant, higher temperatures increase water evaporation from the soil, damaging the quality over time, which is why more water is needed.

Magaña said the industry expects the number of bearing acres to flatten out somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 acres by the end of this decade. Some experts believe the California law could push about 100,000 acres out from irrigation because the degraded soil reduces the quality of the land.

“If the water situation gets worse, smaller growers will either pull their orchards or sell them,” Ferguson said.

Production hurdles won’t be the only concern. The industry wonders whether the Dubai chocolate craze can last. “The challenge is to have demand keep up with the increasing volumes that are going to be hitting the market,” Magaña said. “The industry isn’t relying only on Dubai chocolate.”

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