It was two years ago when protein input prices got WHEY out of control, but as Justin Timberlake once said, "what goes around, goes around, goes around...comes all the way back around." But back in April of this year…I shared this funny meme on Instagram that provided a cryptic message to supplement brand owners that sell "whey protein" products. And I was trying to warn them that this “grossly underreported food supply story” would most-likely impact dry whey commodity pricing…even if USDA mana...
Sep 13, 2024•12 min
Even after shining a spotlight on arguably one of the largest “blue oceans” just over two years ago, it seems inattentional blindness continues to plague most supplement brands. But within the supplement industry…maybe the phenomenon of missing something so obvious could be attributed to being distracted by the same old way or even disbelief that there’s a simpler opportunity. The “sports nutrition” niche of the supplement industry is a graveyard of once-buzzy brands that abruptly stopped growin...
Sep 10, 2024•18 min
Even though my son Axton is only four months old, I can already see the “like father, like son” idiom playing out. Any parent knows that our children will mimic us…the good stuff, the bad stuff, and even all those autopiloted daily consumption decisions. But what happens when it’s recommended that kids under 12 shouldn’t drink something that 73% of American adults drink daily? Well…a 7-year-old noticed this market opportunity and launched Kiid Coffee, betting that there are more kids out there (...
Sep 09, 2024•54 sec
Can “radical transparency” be an effective strategy within the supplement industry? While this subject matter exploration began almost a decade ago through various strategic management consulting projects, it has also found its way into many of my past content pieces. But the inspiration behind this current radical transparency content has roots in what first motivated me to investigate the management philosophy. A few weeks ago, I’m scrolling LinkedIn and see this business story shared that had...
Sep 03, 2024•17 min
More than 40,000 convenience store owners have spoken, and they shared some interesting takes surrounding the growing energy drinks category. And even if you aren’t familiar with every insight regarding this beverage category, I’m sure you intuitively recognize that convenience is the most important sales channels for energy drinks in the U.S. market. But here are my top 3 biggest “categorical” takeaways from the recent Goldman Sachs Beverage Bytes survey. The first is a market reaction to decel...
Sep 02, 2024•53 sec
If you’ve spent any time recently perusing the grocery shelves, it’s likely that you noticed that high-protein claims are penetrating more diverse food and beverage categories. In addition to the ubiquitous protein bars, protein powders, and protein shakes...you can now buy items such as protein pasta, protein bagels, protein waffles, protein chips, protein coffee, and even protein-boosted versions of dairy items like milk and yogurt. Consumers can’t seem to get enough protein. In fact, Google T...
Aug 29, 2024•12 min
As my deep domain expertise has digitally disseminated, it’s provided immense opportunities to connect with likeminded individuals across the entire health and wellness CPG ecosystem. And that includes the “investment and financial services layer,” which shouldn’t be surprising to regular audience members…as my content has always been heavy-handed in that general area. So, with the emerging and intersecting categories of functional foods, functional beverages, and dietary supplements becoming in...
Aug 26, 2024•52 min
71% of you have snacked in the past 24 hours. But despite the frequency of snacking occasions remaining stable over the past decade, the consumer has evolved. Today, snacking goes far beyond “filler” between meals or mindless munching…they’re often an expression of personal goals and values in our fast-paced, health-conscious world. 36% of all snacking occasions involve some need for “Optimization,” which is up 5 percentage points since 2020. This supports the notion that consumers are looking f...
Aug 26, 2024•53 sec
Over its first 3.5 years in market, the only constant at ZOA Energy seems to be change. So, I'll start this content off by reconciling some of my original thoughts around ZOA Energy (from a content piece I created a month before the energy drink even launched), with the drastic changes ZOA made in January 2023. This includes product enhancements, flavor adjustments, and shifts to the visual identity (and brand strategy). Yet, that original brand strategy and associated packaging design felt very...
Aug 22, 2024•21 min
At one time or another, we’ve all been asked the common question, “what’s one thing you wish you could tell a younger version of yourself?” While “Marty McFly” is the only person I know that’s successfully gone “Back to the Future,” my conversation with Blodin Ukella (Founder and CEO of The RYL Company) provided me a closely similar opportunity. And that’s because a decade earlier, I was that same ambitious CPG industry “young buck,” leaving a strategy leadership position at a hyper-growth activ...
Aug 20, 2024•45 min
What keeps the CEOs of beverage conglomerates like The Coca-Cola Company, Pepsico, and Anheuser-Busch up at night worrying? I’d guess you initially considered the normal propaganda that “sugar is bad” or “alcohol is terrible,” but there might be a bubblier culprit that ends up creating the most discomfort. Today, around two-thirds of adults experience regular digestive symptoms like gas, bloating, and abdominal pain. Specifically, the most noticeable rise is in patients experiencing irritable bo...
Aug 19, 2024•55 sec
Is FitLife Brands “the little supplement brand portfolio” that could? For those unaware, the supplement brands that are within the FitLife Brands portfolio are now categorized in three segments: Legacy FitLife Brands, which is broken into two sub-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), and then Mimi’s Rock Corporation Products (which are a collectio...
Aug 16, 2024•11 min
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But if it’s REALLY broke…follow what Glanbia always does and just send it off to the island of the misfit toys! Glanbia Performance Nutrition is one of two divisions 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 call, and associated news to update you on h...
Aug 15, 2024•14 min
Did Mondelez International “swallow a grenade” 3.5 years ago…or has its most significant UK investment since the hostile takeover of Cadbury seen explosively positive results? Being a protein bar company in the summer of 2019 was arguably one of the most valuable things you could be in the growing functional food space…and Mondelez got the party started by announcing it was purchasing a majority stake in refrigerated protein bar brand Perfect Bar in June 2019. Then, two months later…The Simply G...
Aug 13, 2024•20 min
The other day I got called a CPG industry B2B influencer. I didn’t know that was even a thing, but more importantly…I’m just infinitely curious and someone that prefers to tell the story behind data with B2B actionable insights and/or thought starters. But I was shocked recently when I learned the largest beverage manufacturer and distributor in the world, The Coca-Cola Company, was my newest competition. 73% of B2B buyers consider thought leadership to be a more trustworthy basis for judging co...
Aug 12, 2024•53 sec
Is Bang Energy back baby…or is Monster Beverage CEO Rodney Sacks still dialing 1-900-Mix-A-Lot a year later looking for turnaround answers for the energy drink brand? Sticking with the recent theme from my previous Monster Beverage Corporation (NASDAQ: MNST) quarterly content, I’m going to focus a bulk of insights towards reconciling previous forward-looking statements that I’ve made about the Bang Energy turnaround strategy. But since Monster Beverage did just release their 2024 Q2 earnings rep...
Aug 09, 2024•14 min
According to Celsius Holdings CEO John Fieldly, the company is looking at expanding into “adjacent categories." I don’t know about you…but doesn’t that sound like something I predicted in November 2023? Celsius Holdings (NASDAQ: CELH) had quarterly revenue of $402 million, which was up 23% YoY. During the trailing twelve months, Celsius Holdings smashed through the billion-dollar mark…with the energy drink brand generating $1.49 billion in revenues over that period. According to Circana last 13-...
Aug 07, 2024•15 min
Premier Protein remains the “gold standard” in convenient nutrition, but slowdowns in its brand portfolio counterpart (Dymatize Nutrition) should be concerning. Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested…so let them not "play Koia" and be idle for much longer. 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 i...
Aug 06, 2024•15 min
I’ve been a part of hundreds of new product development and innovation sprints throughout my career. Whenever any CPG industry colleagues ask me about my personal flavor preference…I always say citrus. And that makes A LOT of sense when you realize that my favorite childhood pop growing up was Squirt or Sprite…and that I probably ate my weight in orange and lemon Starburst. Even as an adult kid…my go-to powdered supplements, hydration beverages, or energy drinks usually center around citrus flav...
Aug 05, 2024•45 min
Fashion collaborations remain a go-to way for CPG marketers to build lifestyle brands by merging culture and commerce. The same younger consumers that hate traditional advertising will have no problem wearing branded merchandise if it says something about who they are. So, maybe the ultimate test of CPG brand equity is not if they know you and ingest your products…but if they would wear you! Then, who’s better to rank the top recent CPG fashion mashups than an industry strategist that dresses in...
Aug 05, 2024•50 sec
GLP-1 weight loss pharmaceuticals will cause equally pervasive second-order effects to functional CPG categories as AI will trigger regarding business productivity. Despite our collective ambiguity on the true extent, I believe the skyrocketing popularity of weight loss pharmaceuticals has already tangibly disrupted many aspects of the CPG industry. The problem (i.e. obesity epidemic) has reached unprecedented levels...as the most recent CDC statistics show more than 100 million people are consi...
Aug 02, 2024•15 min
Can we blame those “turn ahead the clock” Seattle Mariners uniforms from 1998 for minor league baseball creating a 121st team this year sponsored by Oatly? Because it was that fun (and successful) one-off promotion that led to MLB creating a league-wide version the following year…complete with a corporate advertiser, Century 21, which is why the futuristic uniforms were supposedly based on the year 2021. But the idea behind the Malmö Oat Milkers required a little “outside the carton” thinking fo...
Jul 29, 2024•54 sec
Bloom Nutrition just launched a functional beverage that puts them in direct competition with their largest investor. So, why did Nutrabolt (owner of C4 Energy) not only encourage this Bloom product strategy, but help make their vision a reality? For those that missed the investment deal news from earlier this year in January, Nutrabolt made a significant minority investment into Bloom Nutrition for an ownership stake of approximately 20%. If you remember from my earlier content analyzing that d...
Jul 26, 2024•14 min
You’ve fooled me once, but I’m not letting that happen again…and y’all start calling me a BUM. So, maybe it’s time we talk about an early upstart energy drink brand. Previously, I've mentioned that about five years ago, I underestimated the eventual growth in mainstream appeal of Mr. Olympia winning bodybuilder Chris Bumstead. I correctly acknowledged that he was a beacon of vulnerability and authenticity, but couldn't get past the fact that bodybuilding was this polarizing niche sport that few ...
Jul 23, 2024•15 min
Will Panera Bread’s decision to phase out its controversial Charged Lemonade derail my energy drink “on-premise 2.0” trend prediction from April 2019? With energy drink brands like Celsius paving their own path in the consumer’s mind, beyond the traditional categorical need states, there’s undoubtedly still a long runway of growth opportunities remaining within the foodservice channel. This will prove especially true within quick service restaurants…where energy drinks are starting to take lunch...
Jul 22, 2024•59 sec
Do you remember that “Most Interesting Man in the World” Dos Equis beer advertising campaign that ran most from 2006 to 2018? It seemed like each episode’s montage of experiences layered on more curiosity, which has some similarity to this episode’s guest Samyr Laine. While it wasn’t mentioned in our conversation, his time at Harvard also briefly included being Mark Zuckerberg’s roommate but it then you’ll hear briefly that interesting life included a 2012 Summer Olympics appearance, law school,...
Jul 17, 2024•49 min
It’s commonly said that there are three guarantees in this life…death, taxes, and Bodybuilding.com pretty much annually being involved in M&A activity. Since July 2019, Bodybuilding.com has been involved in four confirmed mergers and acquisitions transactions. The first was a related-party transaction that happened between Liberty Expedia Holdings and Expedia Group. About a year later, Expedia Group faced huge market pressures from the “Great Shutdown” decimating the travel industry and it w...
Jul 15, 2024•14 min
Have you ever noticed how many different shades of grey there are? While collaboration has become extremely popular within today’s global sports nutrition market, most efforts go totally unnoticed because they…well lack color! When conceptualized and deployed correctly, the strategic marketing move can help brands expand their customer base, increase sales, and even penetrate new markets. Alternatively, sometimes these “co-marketing” or “co-branding” ideas could get overly vibrant color-wise, li...
Jul 15, 2024•59 sec
Consumers can’t seem to get enough protein. The focus on high protein diets started in those shadowy niches of sports nutrition and weight management, but now there’s increasingly diverse consumer cohorts that possess a heightened awareness around the value of this essential nutrient. And it’s that demographic diversity, being interested for different reasons, making protein a battleground category as it proliferates across the entire grocery store. So, it’s difficult not being fascinated by the...
Jul 12, 2024•52 min
Be yourself…because everybody else is taken. In low barriers-to-entry CPG categories like sports nutrition, following that advice too often gets overlooked but is paramount to reaching any level of meaningful success! In this content, I’m going to examine the importance of distinctiveness through a variety of popular marketing and branding strategic decisions. While I’ll be using sports nutrition as the categorical lens (mostly because that focus will keep the content concise), these insights ar...
Jul 10, 2024•13 min
