If you remember from about two weeks ago…within the opening portion of another content piece about the specialty retail brand, I stated that “while we patiently wait for the approved chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring proposal involving Franchise Group, which is the portfolio company that owns The Vitamin Shoppe.” And I recognized that a big announcement would be coming soon because I've closely watched the court proceedings, which was a promise I made to my audience within that original Franch...
Apr 22, 2025•17 min
What do you call the beverage category that includes Olipop and Poppi? Gut health beverages, prebiotic drinks, functional soda, or do you have something more creative? To be completely honest, that lack of naming clarity might be the biggest problem this beverage category is experiencing right now…which means life is pretty darn good (especially for those beforementioned market share leaders that are still doubling retail sales YoY). But who do you call when you have a problem [clip]? No, not th...
Apr 21, 2025•1 min
I’ve highlighted countless shockingly awesome “marketing stunts” created by CPG brands in the past, but what 5-Hour Energy recently did honestly had me questioning reality. And that’s because everyone already knows that portability is the biggest value proposition that small format energy shots have over their energy drink categorical counterparts. But what about in those rare “formal” occasions when it would be uncouth to put a 5-Hour Energy shot in your pocket? And that’s why the brand partner...
Apr 14, 2025•59 sec
Quest Chips are getting called up to the Big League…and that should make established players like Doritos nervous! In this latest episode, I'll utilize the Q2 2025 Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ: SMPL) earnings report, earnings call, and supplemental presentations that were filed on 4/9/2025 as the backdrop to provide broad nutritional snacking market insights. In fiscal Q2 2025, Atkins Nutritionals brand dragged down the overall portfolio performance, as Quest Nutrition beat categorical comp...
Apr 10, 2025•15 min
Is the “Age of Ozempic” reshaping The Vitamin Shoppe? In May 2024, The Vitamin Shoppe introduced a telehealth service called Whole Health Rx by The Vitamin Shoppe that safely and seamlessly connects patients with licensed healthcare providers in real time…streamlining access to GLP-1 agonist medications, both branded and compounded versions (that is until the FDA recently updated its drug supply shortage list, making compounding a FD&C Act volitation). Moreover, these telehealth services are...
Apr 08, 2025•13 min
We’ve all gotten to know Alexa and Siri quite well over the last decade, but are you interested in making a new friend? PepsiCo recently debuted its Gatorade AI Hydration Coach, Anna, that can provide consumers with personalized hydration advice based on 40 years of Gatorade Sports Science Institute expertise. While this AI chatbot is still being tested with broader availability coming later in 2025, the technology appears to be linked with Gatorade GX sweat patches. After finishing a workout se...
Apr 07, 2025•55 sec
I don’t need to explain to you how biologically imperative it is to stay hydrated, but despite that undeniable fact…us older generations somehow managed to not only survive but thrive without our beloved “emotional support water bottles.” But these reusable water bottles are more than a creature comfort…becoming a canvas for self-expression and personal statements of style among the newest generations. Though, like other status symbols…water bottles come with trends that fluctuate, with a new co...
Apr 04, 2025•9 min
An almost billion-dollar supplement brand portfolio (you’ve likely never heard of before) just turned CBUM into a corporate sellout. So, let’s talk about it! And even if this deal announcement was released publicly on April 1st…I guarantee there’s nothing foolish about this M&A activity. But before I give you the legitimate “insider” deep dive insights I can guarantee won’t be found anywhere else on the internet…it would be prudent of me to start by covering key press release details from th...
Apr 01, 2025•12 min
Within my last quarterly content piece on FitLife Brands, I outlined my utter shock around leadership’s inability to learn from past MusclePharm experiences and how “becoming a victim of product line extension creep” became a major underlying driver of its failure. Though, the strategic decision by FitLife Brands…pandering to a retailer request for this (or that) exclusive MusclePharm line extension, is an immaterially small mistake compared to launching MusclePharm Combat Ready ready-to-drink p...
Mar 31, 2025•13 min
A famous comedian once said, “God has a sense of humor. If you don't believe me, tomorrow go to Walmart and just look at people.” And if you think that’s harsh…you’ve probably never been lucky enough to experience the hilarious blog “People of Walmart.” But what if I told you that grim picture of the Walmart customer base isn’t exactly true any longer? Yes, U.S. households making less than $50,000 annually still account for the largest share of Walmart’s average monthly active users. But accordi...
Mar 31, 2025•58 sec
If you’re a daily coffee drinker, it’s difficult to overlook that the price of your preferred source of caffeine keeps grinding higher. In fact, the global price of arabica coffee has more than doubled over the past year...with a sharp upward price movement (since the start of 2025) pushing commodity prices of the cash crop to an all-time high price of more than four dollars a pound last month. So, what’s going on? While the famous cartoon character Yogi Bear would say that I’m “smarter than the...
Mar 25, 2025•12 min
Which of these numbers is larger…the total contract value recently given to Juan Soto by the New York Mets or the total aggregate net income generated by CELSIUS energy drinks since launching 20 years ago? And if you thought that was a dig on Celsius Holdings (think again)! Instead, those remarks were pointed straight towards the sheer ridiculousness of today’s Major League Baseball contracts. But regardless…I have to take my cap off to the CELSIUS marketing team for the perfect timing around le...
Mar 24, 2025•53 sec
What does a term initially used 170 years ago in one of the most influential and compelling books in American literature have to do with the cognitive health category? And what was the term that Henry David Thoreau used his 1854 non-fiction book Walden to criticize society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas in favor of simple ones…seeing this as indicative of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort? Brain Rot. But that term has taken on new significance in the digital age, especiall...
Mar 19, 2025•13 min
Did you know that about one in five U.S. children are obese…a number that’s nearly four times the rate in the 1970s? So, what has changed in the last 50 years? The finger is usually pointed towards the proliferation of ultra-processed and/or hyperpalatable foods. Seeking to solve this growing problem…the FDA has been exploring a front-of-package nutrition labeling strategy that lists Saturated Fat, Sodium, and Sugar on every package with each nutrient being accompanied by a traffic light color s...
Mar 17, 2025•53 sec
Can you name the health and wellness retailer that generates between four to five times more revenue selling categorical products online than the combined efforts of GNC and The Vitamin Shoppe? And here’s a hint for you…it’s not Amazon! Since the bulk of my audience is located within the United States, I’m going to assume that iHerb probably wasn’t the first health and wellness online retailer that popped into your head. So, despite its massive multibillion-dollar success…iHerb isn’t widely know...
Mar 13, 2025•8 min
Life can be A LOT like driving on an interstate highway. It’s important to stay in your lane, only glance backwards if you’re planning to make a change…and always watch out for David Beckham because he might swerve bend that corner woah! So, when it was officially announced in September 2021 that Prenetics (NASDAQ: PRE), a diagnostic and genetic testing company based in Hong Kong, was going public through a SPAC merger…I fully admit not even spending one iota of energy on the financial news head...
Mar 11, 2025•15 min
Dry January 2025 has commenced, but how measurable were effects on beer sales across grocery retailers? According to NielsenIQ sales data, non-alcoholic beer scored a record-high 4.2% share of all beer sold through grocery retailers in January. Moreover, non-alcoholic beer saw slightly more than 20 percent YoY volume growth last month…compared to the six percent YoY decline seen by the traditional beer category. Over the past three years, Dry January non-alcoholic beer sales across grocery retai...
Mar 10, 2025•59 sec
It has been a decade since Eight Sleep became the world’s first sleep fitness company…but I assure you it still retained some “magic in the moonlight” after all these years! But for those unfamiliar with Eight Sleep, it’s a sleep technology company that focused on reimagining what a mattress can do by asking “what if it could help you sleep better, recover faster, and even improve your health?” Eight Sleep essentially started as a consumer hardware company, selling “high-end sleep systems” that ...
Mar 05, 2025•10 min
Keurig Dr Pepper (NASDAQ: KDP) basically went from getting its categorical ass whipped to being the most interesting energy drinks portfolio in just two short years by acquiring a large stake in Nutrabolt (owner of C4 Energy), strategically partnering with Black Rifle Coffee Company to distribute its new energy drink, acquiring GHOST Lifestyle, and adding Bloom Energy to its national DSD system. But what if KDP was making all these strategic moves to simply hedge against a growing risk on its mu...
Mar 03, 2025•56 sec
Trump is back…but should stakeholders operating within the intersecting CPG categories of functional foods, functional beverages, and nutritional supplements be cheerful about his return to the oval office? This will certainly not sound like a “hot take” or anything, but the second Trump presidential term will undoubtedly offer a mixture of risk and reward…ushering in a new era of market volatility. As press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently pointed out, "there has never been a president who c...
Feb 27, 2025•17 min
It was basically six years ago when I asked Glanbia to consider something completely foreign to their longstanding business culture, but today’s the day my dreams became reality (well sort of)! 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, earn...
Feb 26, 2025•13 min
Did we just experience the defining moment within the better-for-you, functional lifestyle products movement? Celsius Holdings (NASDAQ: CELH) had quarterly revenue of $332.2 million, which was down 4% YoY. And while that now marks the second straight quarter of YoY revenues losses…sequential QoQ revenue activity increased sharply at 25%. According to Circana last 52-week data, CELSIUS accounted for 30.3% of all energy drink category growth YoY. In addition, Celsius sustained its market share of ...
Feb 24, 2025•20 min
There’s SO MANY business lessons from the “rise and fall” of Bang Energy, some of which are still emerging years later. In October 2022, I stated within my original bankruptcy content that “it’s hard to separate Bang Energy the brand (and product) from its founder…which will arguably become its biggest Catch-22 challenge.” And that statement personifies the legal battle over the personal social media accounts of Jack Owoc. The court ruling stated that “ownership of accounts is based on the exist...
Feb 24, 2025•55 sec
Applied Nutrition might be growing above its previous IPO expectations, but can the company derive enough freshness from strategic partnerships to generate the type of consistent returns needed to win the hearts of external market stakeholders? Applied Nutrition Plc (LSE: APN) is a leading sports nutrition, health and wellness brand, which formulates and creates nutrition products targeted at a wide range of consumers and sold in over 80 countries worldwide. There are several product ranges unde...
Feb 20, 2025•9 min
When JD Vance used “drinking Diet Mountain Dew” to joke about how liberals are too easily offended and quick to point out what they perceive to be racist behavior, the large campaign event crowd barely applauded. But it wasn’t because JD Vance is weird (and clearly not a comedian), the joke went straight over the head of mostly everyone because it was packed with multilayered symbolism. Regardless, it got me thinking about how politics and consumer packaged goods oftentimes get mixed together kn...
Feb 17, 2025•52 sec
Trump is back…but should stakeholders operating within the intersecting CPG categories of functional foods, functional beverages, and nutritional supplements be cheerful about his return to the oval office? This will certainly not sound like a “hot take” or anything, but the second Trump presidential term will undoubtedly offer a mixture of risk and reward…ushering in a new era of market volatility. As press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently pointed out, "there has never been a president who c...
Feb 14, 2025•22 min
Trump is back…but should stakeholders operating within the intersecting CPG categories of functional foods, functional beverages, and nutritional supplements be cheerful about his return to the oval office? This will certainly not sound like a “hot take” or anything, but the second Trump presidential term will undoubtedly offer a mixture of risk and reward…ushering in a new era of market volatility. As press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently pointed out, "there has never been a president who c...
Feb 10, 2025•13 min
Have you seen the prices of whey protein isolate lately? Explaining the multitude of factors causing record high commodity inflation would take longer than the allowable video length, but maybe I have a better solution for our current broken food system. Plantible uses proprietary technology to grow duckweed on aqua farms in West Texas that’s efficiently extracted into a complete protein called “Rubi Protein.” According to the food technology startup, Rubi Protein has diverse functional CPG appl...
Feb 10, 2025•54 sec
If there was a Super Bowl for convenient nutrition brands…Premier Protein would be considered the Kansas City Chiefs of the functional CPG category. 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 rate...
Feb 05, 2025•18 min
Whether dumping Tapatio into its whey protein or getting the most famous British girl group to become advisors is the ultimate answer…THG Nutrition must do something to “spice up” its strategy! THG (aka the company formerly known as The Hut Group) recently updated the public markets by releasing its 2024 Q4 interim 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 ...
Feb 03, 2025•13 min
