One of the joys of the modern era is that, thanks to the internet, people we admire from afar are tantalizingly within reach. I’ve been on both sides of the equation. My community often reaches out about wanting to connect, and I’ve done my share of approaching people I admire. In my case of meeting Doug Miller, who is the founder (or co-owner) of supplement brands (e.g. Core Nutritionals, 'Merica Labz, Arms Race Nutrition, Unmatched, and Myoblox) and the specialty supplement retail chain The Nu...
Jul 08, 2024•54 min
Morgan Wallen obviously had one too many drinks before he tossed that chair from the Nashville rooftop bar…but my inside sources are telling me those cups were filled Ryl Tea. It’s unlikely the upstart “tea plus” brand will use that fake information for its next advertising campaign, but it does seem the country singer turned functional beverage investor is all-in from being involved in buyer meetings to creating behind-the-scenes business content. And that high level of involvement is essential...
Jul 08, 2024•50 sec
With great power comes great responsibility, right? But does the “Peter Parker principle” still apply when you are the undisputed king of the entire vitamins, minerals, and supplements (VMS) market? Even before the “Great Shutdown” period, “household, health, and baby care” was the largest consumable category on the Amazon marketplace…of which “vitamins, supplements, and sports nutrition” was the biggest subcategory. But the 2020s has seen Amazon’s power within the supplement industry become eve...
Jul 01, 2024•15 min
Have you heard something from a trusted source that was so wild it still required additional research before you’d believe it? Well…have you heard the story of how McDonald’s did an “extreme makeover” on a vegetable that would make not only Ty Pennington jealous, but also Willy Wonka. During a private event in November 2014, the CEO was asked a question regarding what the company was doing to get kids to eat healthier. He stated that McDonald’s had successfully developed broccoli that tasted lik...
Jul 01, 2024•53 sec
With OWYN in the mix, will Simply Good Foods need to make some tough decisions soon, as it now needs to spread resources and budget dollars across three portfolio brands? In this latest episode, I'll utilize the Q3 2024 Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ: SMPL) earnings report, earnings call, and supplemental presentations that were filed on 6/27/2024 as the backdrop to provide broad nutritional snacking market insights. In fiscal Q3 2024, Atkins Nutritionals brand dragged down portfolio performa...
Jun 30, 2024•12 min
Consumers have already begun re-evaluating their relationship with alcohol, which has me contemplating if another mainstream euphoric is next. Caffeine consumption has deeply integrated into our daily lives. Caffeine is cited as the most widely used psychoactive drug in the world…becoming such a socially accepted ingrained practice that we seldom question its long-term effects on our health. I don’t believe caffeine itself is inherently good or bad…rather a person’s relationship with it determin...
Jun 25, 2024•15 min
What historical significance does Ohio’s 55th-largest city hold within the CPG industry? The small town of Troy was the location where the first UPC was scanned at checkout. But the Final Jeopardy level question surrounds which product was the first to be scanned 50 years ago? Legend has it that Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum was selected because nobody had been sure that a bar code could be printed on something that small. But the theorical conceptualization of this grocery technology might ...
Jun 24, 2024•59 sec
Sometimes if your patient enough, the world’s largest (and most diversified) food, beverage, and nutritional supplements company, will eventually “remix” one of your worst predictions into a real possibility again! If you’ve followed my content for long enough, you’ve seen me publicly take countless “victory laps” that essentially patted myself proudly on the back for making correct marketplace predictions. At this point, the strategy and M&A leadership at many mega CPG companies are just fo...
Jun 19, 2024•11 min
Nookie-flavored cookies that you stuck up your YEAH…to my knowledge never became a thing, but that doesn’t mean the late-90s/early-00s alternative metal band Limp Bizkit wasn’t still destined to be a CPG product inventor. Fred Durst and the guys were visionaries, but they needed a big-time partner to make it a reality…and those types of sales cycles take a long time. What am I talking about? 7-Eleven recently unveiled Big Bite Hot Dog Sparkling Water…about 24 years after Limp Bizkit launched its...
Jun 17, 2024•54 sec
If you needed to grab something fast at the convenience store, to help energize you through a busy day, what is your energy beverage selection? Since we live in the “Age of the Endless Aisle,” there are more options in every CPG category than during any other point in our history. Even within the smallest retail channel (in terms of average square footage), convenience stores will undoubtedly have coolers filled with RTD coffee beverages and energy drinks, hot or frozen foodservice varieties of ...
Jun 12, 2024•12 min
What’s the biggest risk to the insane growth trajectory of GLP-1 pharmaceutical weight loss solutions? Explosive demand in the U.S. market has outstripped supply…causing prolonged shortages of these medications. GLP-1 market leaders, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, have warned supply constraints would likely extend into late-2024. That has unfortunately increased the circulation of counterfeit versions through unregulated outlets that can carry serious health risks. But good news could be on the hor...
Jun 10, 2024•58 sec
Is the “often imitated, never duplicated” influential epicenter of all ingestible CPG categories ready to disrupt its next market? And while the “best and brightest sports nutrition brands are now (or will soon start) competing against large CPG incumbents in every functional food and beverage subcategory over time…this isn’t another content piece about the competitive landscape “changing of the guard” happening within mega functional CPG markets like energy, hydration, or protein. Instead, I wa...
Jun 05, 2024•13 min
Can you influence behavior through taxation? In fact, legislators generally have three goals in mind as they prepare tax laws: raise revenue, create fairness, and ability to influence behavior. Sin taxes, which are used to discourage the purchase and use of products that pose a risk to health, are as old as the original New England colonies. Today, we typically see these sin taxes placed on tobacco products and alcoholic beverages. But the World Health Organization, armed with new data…is callin...
Jun 03, 2024•59 sec
Sometimes a relative stranger, during a small collection of conversations, can make an outsized impact by suddenly awakening a light within you. If you think that sounds like hyperbole…how about I share my recent experience with this phenomenon. In the last several years, I’ve had a handful of beverage industry friends tell me to check out this tea-plus brand named Equitea. Admittedly, in a rushed state…I would glance at the product pages and say something relatively positive about the emerging ...
May 29, 2024•13 min
There’s something extremely admirable about those that “fight for the little guy.” Having worked in large CPG conglomerates like Mars, Daniel Scharff knew the advantages these mega companies have over small brands scratching and crawling for any opportunity. So, in late-2019…he began hosting Bay Area events that gave founders of the smallest emerging CPG brands a chance to demo products and network. But we all know what happened next, though being forced to pivot towards building virtual communi...
May 28, 2024•16 min
Pizza and Beer. We take the pairing for granted…despite it being a must-have at any party and a marriage ingrained in our gastronomic culture. The simple and humble combination of pizza and beer represents more than the sum of its parts…which is especially true when we look at it through a recently announced bold co-branding lens. Nestlé-owned pizza brand Tombstone is teaming up with New Belgium to create pizza-flavored Voodoo Ranger IPA. Without a doubt this product collab is awesome…but how do...
May 27, 2024•52 sec
As the largest proposed supermarket merger in U.S. history remains expectedly tied up because of an ongoing FTC antitrust lawsuit, it’s totally understandable that speculation continues to build around if a combined Kroger-Albertsons will have a significant effect on how CPG brands do business with the new retailer. And while I have a multitude of my own theories of how this mega-merger plays out, worrying about my version of the future isn’t as actionable as hearing today’s reality directly fro...
May 24, 2024•15 min
Ready-to-mix (RTM) powder to ready-to-drink (RTD) liquid format expansion could very well become the dominant build model process amongst functional beverage entrepreneurs…though a recent hydration category example could be elemental in proving my strategic thesis correct. While I might be a bit biased considering my professional background, I believe the sports nutrition space has always been the “often imitated, never duplicated” influential epicenter of all ingestible CPG categories. But many...
May 23, 2024•14 min
Doesn’t it seem every beverage category is not what it used to be…as consumers are drinking up beverages that have benefits beyond just quenching their thirst. Even the largest (most sacred) packaged beverage categories are no longer safe…as carbonated soft drinks volume have been declining for much of the last decade. Consumers continue to move closer towards this four-way intersection of taste, convenience, nutrition, and functionality. And functional sodas…that often have a focus on adding pr...
May 21, 2024•43 min
Over the last dozen years as a CPG industry strategist, I’ve seen A LOT of “trade-in promotions” used across different product categories to meet different business objectives. Maybe a CPG brand wants to support its sustainability credentials through recycling incentives. Or maybe it’s focused around rewarding customer loyalty when exchanging an older product version. Though often it’s utilized when a CPG brand believes it has a superior product to categorical incumbents that’s unnoticed by the ...
May 20, 2024•58 sec
Is there a hidden meaning behind FitLife Brands calling MusclePharm “our most significant organic growth opportunity”? For those unaware, the supplement brands that are within the FitLife Brands portfolio are now categorized in four segments…NDS Products (which are a collection of brands mostly sold in the GNC franchise system), iSatori Products (which are a collection of brands sold through a diversified retail mix), Mimi’s Rock Corporation Products (which are a collection of brands mostly sold...
May 16, 2024•15 min
Most successful CPG products do not arrive out of nowhere; they’re remixes of existing ones. While most remixed CPG product innovations have “easy to understand lineages,” Pop-Tarts (and its lesser-known competitor) wouldn’t fit that description. See…the food technology advancement that packaged those fruit-filled pastries in Mylar wrappers and made them shelf-stable was remixed from a 1961 product launch called Gaines-Burgers. Well…if we didn’t love dogs enough…you’re about to learn about anoth...
May 13, 2024•58 sec
If you get too close to the sun, you will burn. This is the recent story of Premier Protein. BellRing Brands (NYSE: BRBR) is a portfolio that owns a collection of convenient nutrition brands like Premier Protein and Dymatize Nutrition, which was previously wholly-owned by Post Holdings. A fast-paced and busy lifestyle is pushing consumers to switch to quick and healthy meal options. This has resulted in above average categorical growth rates and increased household penetration of RTD protein sha...
May 09, 2024•14 min
What does a famous scene in Goodfellas and a renegotiation of the PepsiCo and Celsius distribution deal have in common? Celsius Holdings (NASDAQ: CELH) had quarterly revenue of $356 million, which was up 37% YoY. During the trailing twelve months, Celsius Holdings smashed through the billion-dollar mark…with the energy drink brand generating $1.41 billion in revenues over that period. According to Circana last 13-week data, Celsius was the number one brand driver of unit and sales growth in the ...
May 08, 2024•13 min
Maybe it wasn’t the most impressive first official reporting period for Glanbia’s new CEO…though it’s not always about how you start that’s important, but how you finish, right? Glanbia Performance Nutrition is one of two wholly-owned segments of Glanbia plc (LON:GLB), a multibillion-dollar global nutrition company. The brands in the Glanbia Performance Nutrition portfolio include; Optimum Nutrition, BSN, think!, Isopure, Amazing Grass, and SlimFast. I'll use the recent earnings report, earnings...
May 07, 2024•14 min
41 months after I posed the original question, The Simply Good Foods Company has finally given me the answer I’ve been waiting for! So, I’ve been alluding to this “eat or be eaten” phase of The Simply Good Foods Company for the last 3.5 years. But only a few days after posting that January 2021 Simply Good Foods prediction, the company released its first quarter earnings report and then-CEO Joe Scalzo dropped some details on the conference call that I turned into another more detailed prediction...
May 06, 2024•16 min
Who wins in a fight…Travis Scott or Kylie Jenner? No, this isn’t one of those weird man vs. woman fetish wrestling matches…I’m referring to an alcoholic beverage brand fight. It was recently announced that beauty CPG category mogul and “Kardashians” personality Kylie Jenner is launching Sprinter…a canned vodka soda cocktail. But if you remember…Kylie Jenner’s baby daddy (aka the talented rapper and cultural icon) Travis Scott launched agave-based hard seltzer brand Cacti with beverage giant Anhe...
May 06, 2024•59 sec
Does it matter that Liquid Death “swung on and missed” its first attempt at extending its platform beyond the ready-to-drink beverage category? If you checked out my “beverage identity crisis” content from last week, I had originally intended to include these Liquid Death format expansion insights in that piece. But there was a bit too much strategic nuance that I believed would create confusion with the previous content’s central focus. So, instead…I figured I’d give this important recent Liqui...
Apr 29, 2024•14 min
40,000 convenience store owners have spoken, and they had A LOT to say about the growing energy drinks category. And even if you aren’t super familiar with this beverage category’s sales insights, I’m sure you intuitively recognize that convenience stores are the most important in terms of channels for energy drinks in the U.S. market. But here are the top 3 biggest “categorical” takeaways from the recent Goldman Sachs Beverage Bytes survey. The first is a market reaction to what I coined “energ...
Apr 29, 2024•53 sec
I already predicted the massive MyProtein rebrand would face a “no pain, no gain” reality, so what is THG CEO Matthew Moulding all fired up about? THG (aka the company formerly known as The Hut Group) recently updated the public markets by releasing its 2024 Q1 trading statement. I’ll be utilizing that financial information, along with notes I took listening to the earnings conference call, and any relevant publicly disclosed information to obviously update you on the recent performance of THG N...
Apr 24, 2024•14 min
