In today’s functional CPG market, how would you categorize what is (or isn’t) a beverage? There’s a growing format expansion trend within key functional beverage categories that's causing most consumers to provide a widening variance in definitions. But the mainstreaming version of the “beverage identity crisis” was something I started talking more about publicly during the “Great Shutdown” period because there was this perfect storm of converging factors that provided an extra tailwind for this...
Apr 22, 2024•15 min
Will insurgent CPG brands capture an even greater share of category growth as innovation by large companies remains limited and consumers seek meaningful value propositions? While accounting for less than 2% of market share in their respective categories, insurgent CPG brands captured nearly 20% of incremental category growth last year. And you might be asking yourself, what is an insurgent CPG brand anyways? Bain & Company defines them as those that generate more than $25 million of annual ...
Apr 22, 2024•57 sec
Is it time for protein bar brands to party like it’s 2019 again? I was recently asked about shifting convenient nutrition marketplace dynamics…including some questions directed towards delivery formats. And it was the bar delivery format that seemed to draw the most curiosity within that conversation. Maybe it’s because of what happened to the protein bar category because of the “Great Lockdown.” Maybe it’s because out of bars, liquids, and powders…it has the lowest current retail sales growth r...
Apr 15, 2024•15 min
Sharing is caring, right? I believe that commercial-scale precision fermentation facilities will be like data centers, which eventually became ubiquitous. And, like data centers, these commercial-scale precision fermentation facilities could one day be relied upon to make a vast array of vital products. But that future might hinge on how open or closed this food technology eventually becomes. Most precision fermentation startups are heavily funded by tech billionaires and venture capitalists. Wh...
Apr 15, 2024•59 sec
If you were comparing the beverage brand PRIME to a childhood toy franchise, which one do you think would be the best fit (and why)? Prime Hydration grew 510% YoY, reaching just shy of $660 million in U.S. tracked channels. If you combined with non-tracked channels (and international markets), that number would likely be north of $800 million in 2023. Furthermore, it was announced before the end of 2023 that the brand sold its one-billionth bottle in less than two years. PRIME is (or maybe the a...
Apr 12, 2024•14 min
MyProtein is the world's largest online sports nutrition brand. So, you could say that “physical stores” aren’t much of a thing at MyProtein…or at least they weren’t in the past. More recently, MyProtein has invested in retail partnerships where the functional CPG brand places a limited (or exclusive) SKU range as part of bigger demand generation strategy. That could be as simple as offering a larger pack size of Clear Whey at Costco or something more unique like a healthy frozen meals licensing...
Apr 08, 2024•53 sec
Basically with what Quest Nutrition has been able to accomplish, competitors believe "it's basically cheating" at this point. In this latest episode, I'll utilize the Q2 2024 Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ: SMPL) earnings report, earnings call, and supplemental presentations that were filed on 4/4/2024 as the backdrop to provide broad nutritional snacking market insights. In fiscal Q2 2024, both Atkins Nutritionals (aka the Atkins diet) and Quest Nutrition performed well against the categoric...
Apr 05, 2024•15 min
Market growth breeds commercialization activity. This was an idiom I created many years ago to describe the reactive nature of the functional CPG industry. And it would certainly describe what has played out within the hydration and energy categories over the last 5-7 years. These functional CPG segments have both seen an explosion in market growth that drove rapid experimentation and development within an ever-expanding number of usage occasions. Additionally, consider that both the hydration a...
Apr 04, 2024•54 min
FitLife Brands gave more than 25 million reasons why it believes in the MusclePharm turnaround. So, why am I not impressed? 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...
Apr 03, 2024•20 min
GOLI Nutrition announced in mid-March that it would be acquired by a collection of investors that includes its Mexico distributor, a private equity firm, and one of the company's original founders. More interestingly, the transaction, which has the full support of the company's lenders, is part of a pre-packaged bankruptcy process in Canada. Wait…what? You mean the company that introduced the world to apple cider vinegar gummy supplements just filed for bankruptcy? Weren’t they doing like a half...
Apr 02, 2024•18 min
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again...not all indulgent snack brands need a “better for you” makeover! Earlier this year, Pringles launched a new version with blended multigrain and sweet potato ingredients. And I’m not Pringles guy…so I wasn’t ready to die on that hill. But now I’m hearing that PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division is “vowing to increase its use of nutritionally diverse ingredients.” Now…if you want to enrobe Rold Gold pretzels with a sweet protein-rich icing…sounds fun. Maybe use a...
Apr 01, 2024•50 sec
O-H-I-O! Other than that kind of annoying chant, what’s the easiest way to know that someone is from Ohio? They will usually tell you! As an Ohioan myself (see what I did there?), I’ll admit we don’t have special water that allegedly pumps through New York pipes that make their bagels and pizza so great. We also don’t have much sunshine like Florida, but there’s always one interesting insight I share with my startup CPG entrepreneurs about Ohio. Throughout much of the last few decades, Columbus ...
Mar 25, 2024•49 sec
It’s no secret that A LOT of social situations are still very much centered around drinking alcohol (and specifically beer). But how does that tradition potentially shift against the backdrop of more people becoming conscious of their physical and mental health? Drinking a non-alcoholic beer was considered somewhat embarrassing and even stigmatized within the U.S. market, but the beverage category has gone through a renaissance of late. In fact, over the last handful of years, I’d argue there’s ...
Mar 25, 2024•45 min
Short-term arbitrage or long-term strategy? Either way…is it time for supplement brands to start hedging those TikTok Shop bets? It shouldn’t be news to anyone at this point, but the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill last week that would give ByteDance about six months to divest the U.S. assets of TikTok or face a ban. If that desired result sounds familiar, it’s because the idea of a TikTok ban has roots in the Trump administration. In fact, a deal was even worked out w...
Mar 22, 2024•24 min
I grew up the typical Rust Belt kid eating mostly a hodgepodge of way-too-sweet, packaged foods and beverages. I’d like to think my “white trash palate” has evolved in the last few decades, but some things are harder to kill than 50 Cent. And you might be asking yourself…what does this have to do with your conversation with the founder of the energy drink brand Gorgie, Michelle Cordeiro Grant? Well…at this past year’s NACS Show, this recovering artificially flavored and sweetened Energy+ drink e...
Mar 19, 2024•43 min
Maybe making beer that uses vaginal yeast as one of its key ingredients isn’t going to take off anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean sex no longer sells within the CPG industry. We’ve come a long way from gas station boner pills, as the once-taboo sexual wellness space is booming…with the category now widely available at mainstream retailers. From a CPG strategist point-of-view, this is the time for entrepreneurs to remix sexual wellness products that do not meet modern-day consumers’ expectation...
Mar 18, 2024•55 sec
CELSIUS and PepsiCo. Nutrabolt and Keurig Dr Pepper. Bloom and Nutrabolt. NOBULL and TB12. What do these deals have in common (besides the fact that you’ve seen me break each of them down in content on my channel)? The only law firm in the world dedicated exclusively to the CPG community, Giannuzzi Lewendon. While insights from those massive deals are weaved into our conversation, I took the law firm’s partner Ryan Lewendon through my gauntlet of A to Z “CPG land” impactful topics. To be complet...
Mar 11, 2024•54 min
During marathon sessions, gamers are only interested in unhealthy snacks and caffeinated drinks. I mean that was the long-held stereotype, right? Hey…don’t snipe the messenger though, I’m simply attempting to triangulate what the heck Bodybuilding.com is thinking with its recent move! Most functional CPG products do not arrive out of nowhere; they’re remixes of existing ones. And in a few rare cases, remixed CPG product innovations don’t have “easy to understand lineages.” Like when Bodybuilding...
Mar 11, 2024•56 sec
Within trendspotting content (when I first started YouTube in 2018), I mentioned how the growing energy drinks market (with all those jolts of stimulation) would eventually lead to a state of overstimulation where consumers would increasingly start shifting more attention towards relaxation. Admittedly, A LOT of my mindshare given to that hypothesis was likely directed towards leveraging a particular trending agricultural ingredient. And this is where synchronicity between Ben Witte (Founder/CEO...
Mar 07, 2024•46 min
Many years ago, when I started proclaiming that the best and brightest sports nutrition brands could compete against any large CPG incumbent when it comes to functional food and beverage…oldhead CPG industry folk (especially beverage people) thought I was crazy. But at this point…I can just let that one super important beverage category retail sales scan data do most the talking for me. Energy drink brands that have roots in the supplement industry now account for over $3 billion in retail sales...
Mar 05, 2024•51 min
CELSIUS and Ferrari. Monster Energy and was Mercedes-AMG for many years but is now with McLaren. And you can’t overlook the current top Formula 1 team…Red Bull. It’s probably hard to imagine now, but there was a time in the early 1990s when there weren’t any energy drinks sponsoring F1 racing teams. Similarly, it’s probably hard to imagine now…but in next thirty years we might be saying the same thing about supplement brands. Now…I’m sure every F1 racing team has some type of product allocation ...
Mar 04, 2024•58 sec
Billion-Dollar Vibes Only. But does CELSIUS have what it takes to jump either Red Bull or Monster Energy in the next several years? Celsius has now been fully integrated within the PepsiCo distribution system now for the last year and also fully integrated into PepsiCo’s annual planning cycle. Celsius Holdings (NASDAQ: CELH) had quarterly revenue of $347 million, which was up 95% YoY. More importantly, Celsius Holdings smashed through the billion-dollar mark in its full-year revenue numbers. In ...
Mar 03, 2024•14 min
Sometimes when you’re looking for billion-dollar opportunities…you can easily overlook those little details that can change everything. In last quarter’s Glanbia content, you might have noticed my irritation growing because over the inability of Optimum Nutrition to have a protein RTD offering that’s competing closely with the likes of market leaders…Premier Protein, Fairlife/Core Power, and Muscle Milk. But maybe I was looking at this problem from the wrong angle…maybe the answer to competing i...
Mar 01, 2024•15 min
While “gut health” has transitioned from just another trending topic to an important aspect of health that impacts everything from energy levels to immunity…it also brought with it tons of new market growth and product development within the food, beverage, and supplement CPG categories. Because of this…there’s little doubt in my mind that consumers are certainly more aware and educated than ever about gut health. But even someone that’s been increasingly fascinated (for most of his career) with...
Feb 28, 2024•57 min
While it doesn’t happen often, duality can be a powerful force when considering the impact of a CPG industry trend. As an example, the decline in brain function is most often associated with the final third of your life. So, that’s why you typically see cognitive health supplement commercials featuring testimonials from older consumers. But spin around and you’ll see the other market opportunity. Purchase intent for cognitive health supplements is nearly the same between Millennial consumers and...
Feb 26, 2024•54 sec
You’ll hear me lovingly describe Caroline Levy as someone that confidently dances to the beat of their own drum, but what I was referring to was my belief that the most successful people in business have conviction when others don't. Because don’t get it twisted…building conviction isn’t for the faint of heart. Yet, those courageous enough to go through the journey will find that if it’s coupled with passion…the result is electrifying. That statement I think perfectly quantifies Caroline Levy’s ...
Feb 22, 2024•38 min
Amazon continues to expand its market leadership as the number one retailer of supplements ahead of even physical retail chains like Walmart. In the last year, Amazon has generated about $13 billion in categorical sales…up around 15% YoY. But the word "Amazon" also has created such a visceral reaction amongst much of the legacy supplement industry ecosystem. Depending on the person’s perspective you’re asking, you’ll get a slightly different reason for why they blame Amazon for the demise of the...
Feb 20, 2024•41 min
14 months after co-founding the private equity firm Skky Partners, Kim Kardashian finally took a bit of her own advice to "get your f*cking azz up and work." It was recently announced that the first capital investment for Skky Partners will be to acquire a “significant minority stake” in truffle-infused hot sauce and condiment brand TRUFF. Now…stick with me here for a moment because I’m going to connect some dots that will lead to a future Kim K investment. Skky Partners notes that food and beve...
Feb 19, 2024•58 sec
In my world, hearing about (this or that) successful brand or person launching a new energy drink has become an almost weekly occurrence. I could understand how a casual market observer could easily get desensitized to it…or maybe even a bit dismissive like some pundits seem to have gotten about the trending functional beverage category. But I’ve tried to pride myself on deciphering what’s noise from who’s actually making music. When the energy drink brand Juvee launched in October 2022, I could...
Feb 15, 2024•44 min
Goodbye activewear brands just selling apparel and/or footwear. Hello activewear brands that are no longer constrained by their original categorical boundaries. From Nike to lululemon to Alo, these activewear brands aren’t just selling apparel…they’re selling a lifestyle. But I’ve started to pay closer attention to the strategic decisions at Alo of late because the brand keeps moving further into my domain…which is the emerging and intersecting categories of functional food, beverage, and nutrit...
Feb 13, 2024•10 min
