How do you figure out if a new snack product will actually sell?

Honestly, skip straight concept testing and do both in sequence — a quick online concept test (even 200-300 respondents on Lucid or Pollfish is fine) before you spend on a pilot. Look for purchase intent scores above 60% 'definitely/probably would buy' as a rough green light. That way you're not burning pilot budget on something that fails for fixable reasons like price or flavor framing.