Better Sour - Gummy Candy - Taste The World!
For Semira and Isabella, childhood tasted like tangy dried fruits, punchy tropical flavors, and that unmistakable zing that makes your mouth water in delight. Born from a friendship rooted in shared memories and a craving for the flavors of their heritage, Better Sour isn’t just a candy brand—it’s a love letter to the sour snacks that shaped their upbringing in Hawaiʻi and their cultural ties to the Iranian diaspora. In an industry that often plays it safe with sugar, Better Sour is rewriting the rules of the candy aisle. Their mission? To elevate sour beyond the artificial and the ordinary, celebrating the global punch of fruits like calamansi, pomegranate, and guava in chewy, snackable gummy form. It’s nostalgia, culture, and craftsmanship—wrapped in a bite-sized burst of bold. Delivery Rank sat down with the self-proclaimed “Sour Seekers” to talk about building a brand with flavor at its core, reclaiming sour as a cultural connector, and how two best friends turned a childhood craving into a mission to bring better, bolder, and more meaningful candy to the world.
“Life is better sour” is such a bold brand mantra—what does that phrase mean to you personally, beyond just flavor?
It really is about living with joy, adventure, a commitment to being unabashedly yourself and original, always. For Semira and I, it’s manifested in starting a sour gummy candy co inspired by our shared heritage as daughters of Iranian immigrants who were born and raised in the Hawaiian Islands, grew up in multicultural environments and as adults traveled the world and are foodies who truly love all things bold, tart and tangy.
You and Semira are not only co-founders but lifelong best friends—how has that deep relationship shaped the way you run Better Sour together?
It’s instilled at the foundation just so much trust and that’s the perfect base for a strong business relationship. We’re more than friends — when you know someone this long, literally meeting at one year old via a small diaspora community in Honolulu as babies, you truly are family.
This trust also means we have a great deal of respect and awareness of each other’s strengths and let each of us “live in our lanes” and “run with” various tasks that are our respective strengths without a lot go “checking in,” and enables us to run quicker, smoother and I think, more effectively.
Our lifelong friendship also means SO much fun and laughter, Better Sour is really a brand reverberating joy 24/7, that’s just the energy BFFs have!
Better Sour introduces flavors like pomegranate, guava, and calamansi—how do you go about deciding which global tastes make it into your candy lineup?
We have far too many ideas and flavors than we have out in the market, so it comes down to what flavors our food scientist team “get right” first and just our instinct as to what we think will do well in the market. So far we’ve been right!
Sour has deep roots in both Iranian and Hawaiian culinary traditions—how do you see Better Sour as a bridge between those two worlds?
Our brand is a reflection of our own multicultural heritage and the tart fruit flavors of being Iranian-Americans born and raised in the Hawaiian Islands where a lot of the culinary traditions and flavors are inspired by the Asia Pacific. It’s a bit of a maximalist story, but we think at the core, our story and what we’re sharing is pretty simple: connecting people and especially foodies through tart fruit flavors from around the world in fun, gummy candy form!
Our heritage-rich story and global flavors are also aligned with dining and snacking trends you’re seeing from chefs to other CPG companies sharing global flavors in other categories like Fly by Jing, Siete, Fila Manila, Afia and more who all have bold, heritage - rich stories with global flavors.
What’s next for Better Sour—are you eyeing new regions, partnerships, or perhaps even expanding beyond gummies?
We just launched into select Fred Meyer stores, Harris Teeter chain-wide, will be launching on Thrive at the end of May and have a new flavor coming out at the end of the year! We’ve got so much innovation coming out just in the gummy set so staying focused on what we do best — we recently updated our formula and rolling out this summer our gummies are about 20% more sour and extra bouncy with our vegan, low sugar sour gummy stars.
To read more about Better Sour, please visit https://bettersour.com/