Beef jerky sales are tumbling as consumers struggle to fill their gas tanks, according to a Wall Street analyst.

Convenience stores are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to salty and sweet snack sales including beef jerky brands like Slim Jim, because as fuel prices rise, Americans are less likely to hit the highway and make pit stops at convenience stores along the way.

“Rising gasoline prices appear to be weighing on packaged snack food sales in the [convenience] store channel,” wrote Goldman Sachs analyst Bonnie Herzog in a research note this week.

“This is evidenced by the slowing volume trend seen across most major snack food categories and outright volume declines for single-serve chocolate and jerky meat.”

As the busy summer travel season approaches and gas prices remain on average at $4-plus a gallon, fewer people are expected to venture out on vacation, experts say. 

Even as gas prices have come down in recent weeks, paying more than $4 per gallon is straining low-income consumer budgets.

What’s more, there are already signs that “gasoline demand and miles driven data have moved lower in recent weeks,” Herzog wrote.

About 83% of convenience stores purchases are for impulse buys, which are typically the first thing to go when inflation increases, according to the trade group the Association for Convenience and Fuel Retailing.

“Anytime you sell immediate consumption and people’s pocketbooks are pinched, you could lose sales,” Jeff Lenard, vice president of strategic industry initiatives at the National Association of Convenience Stores, told CNN, which first reported on the snack sales decline.

Low-income consumers are on track to deplete their savings built up during COVID due to overall inflation — which reached 8.5% in March. 

The average US household spent an extra $327 in March due to inflation, according to Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics. That’s up from roughly $297 per household in February, when the Consumer Price Index jumped 7.9%.

And that means less to spend on discretionary items like snacks at the gas station.

“We believe it is prudent to expect volume trends in [convenience stores] to erode further as pent-up savings during COVID are depleted, tax returns fade away, inflation pressure broadly continues to mount and gas prices remain relatively high through the key driving season,” Herzog wrote.