Expo West is somehow already only 4 months away (!!!), and there’s one major thing to start planning now if you want to make an impact this year… and it’s not your booth.

We’re talking MERCH. Let’s face it: when you come home from Expo, every sample you tried is one tummyache blur. But merch is what actually lives on. It’s the conversation piece at the airport, the tote that becomes your grocery run go-to, and the reason you remember a brand among 3,000 exhibitors.

If you’re doing merch, though, you can’t just slap your logo on a tote. Every year, brands have upped the ante on merch and showed us what it means to stand out, from Belgian Boys’ pink puffer tote in 2025 to wildwonder’s fruit bag last year.

That’s where Tart Merch comes in. Tart Merch (the designers behind Expo merch/uniforms for brands like Oats Overnight and wildwonder), builds everything from scratch with its factories instead of pulling from a catalog, with low minimums and pricing in line with standard swag suppliers. Here’s a peek into everything Tart offers!

We’re working with Dasha at Tart Merch to do Express Checkout’s first merch drop (eep!), including a custom tote, sweatshirt, t-shirt, and snack pouch… and we’re obsessed with every piece. Throughout the design process, Dasha was incredibly thoughtful in incorporating Express Checkout’s story into every item—not just our “vibe” or “aesthetic.” It was fully customized every step of the way, and the pieces came out better than we could’ve imagined (can’t wait to show you!).

Fully custom merch takes 6-12 weeks to move through design, sampling, production, and shipping, so NOW is the time to hit up Dasha for your Expo West merch or uniform needs!!!

First 10 readers to book a call get two FREE custom merch concepts!

Brainstorm the next viral Expo merch!

And with that, let’s get into our picks of the week →

Jenna’s Pickup:

Unwind - Sparkling Calm Beverage

I have been, for lack of a better term, incredibly hopped-up as of late.

The past three weeks have been pretty overwhelming—featuring our major acquisition announcement, two trips, onboarding, and a new (hefty) commute. While it’s all been SO exciting, I have sent at least seven texts in the last 15 days featuring some rendition of “my brain is on fire.” I’ve been waking up at random hours of the night out of pure, heart-racing eagerness. I could not get myself to calm down… which is why Unwind’s recent launch couldn’t have been more perfect timing.

Unwind is a new functional beverage brand by the founders of THC bev Nowadays. It’s one of the many pivots we’ve been seeing as THC brand builders navigate the looming federal hemp ban: Cann launched a 0mg line—which also includes magnesium and L-theanine—and Cantrip’s makers launched On the Brightside, a soda made with kanna extract (we had the founder on a pod, where he explained the ban SO well).

Nowadays is a really successful THC bev, so I had high hopes for their next endeavor. Needless to say, it did not disappoint.

• Quick facts: A sparkling functional beverage in fun fruit flavors, made to help you relax, featuring magnesium L-threonate, L-theanine, and chamomile.

• Reasons to love:

  • It actually works. If you’re a long-time reader, you know I’m a functional bev + supplement skeptic, but this functional drink is actually functional. It was thoughtfully crafted with two forms of magnesium: Magtein, a clinically-studied form of magnesium L-threonate designed to cross the blood-brain barrier and elevate magnesium levels directly in the brain, and magnesium bisglycinate, which is gentle on the stomach and great for physical relaxation. The addition of L-theanine offers a calm focus that slows some of my racing thoughts (a challenging task indeed!). This specific, intentional blend of ingredients allows Unwind to offer a mind-and-body relaxation effect, without causing any digestive upset often triggered by cheaper forms of magnesium.
    
    For me, the effect was noticeable nearly immediately. I can drink just half of one of these cans, and quickly feel like I have fully exhaled, like the thoughts running around in my brain can finally sit down, maybe even put their feet up. The most significant shift I’ve noticed is in my sleep—after having half an Unwind a bit before bed, I fall asleep and stay asleep, avoiding that 4 AM wake-up that results in an hour of tossing and turning. For someone who is often plagued by middle-of-the-night rumination, this actually feels like a miracle.
    
    Disclaimer: Of course, all bodies are different!!! I don’t know how this will impact you, dear reader, but I can only hope you can sip into a semblance of the calm I’ve felt upon consuming these.

  • Fruity and light. In an industry bombarded with new functional sodas, I actually appreciate that Unwind isn’t a soda, but a light sparkling bev with a juicy, just-sweet-enough fruit flavor. The cherry is by far my favorite; it tastes like real cherry juice, not that artificial, cough-syrupy flavor I associate with most cherry bevs. At only 25 calories and 4g of sugar, it’s a light beverage that you can feel good about sipping before bed, no impending sugar crash or funky fiber emergency to stall your sleep.

Where to buy: Walmart and TikTok Shop!

Nate’s Pickup:

Gnü bone broth chews (for dogs)

As much as I love a treat for myself, I LOVE getting a treat for my dog even more, because she is my world and she deserves everything good in life (especially if I can get her healthier, better-for-you treats). She doesn’t know any better. She’s just a little girl. She’s a little 3-year-old Jack Russell Chihuahua mix (hi Ginger) who doesn’t know any better, and I’m here on this earth to take care of her. And thank god we got served an ad for this brand, because there’s so much I love about Gnü, so let’s get into it.

• Quick Facts: Gnü makes a long-lasting dog chew where the primary ingredient is slow-simmered bone broth, solidified into a stick that softens as the dog chews. hey come in six flavors (Beef Bone Broth, Chicken Chamomile, Beef & Bison, Maple Bacon, Beef & Berry, Peanut Butter & Pumpkin) and are made in New Hampshire.

• Reasons to love:

  • Ginger adores this. If I’ve learned one thing having a dog, it’s that they absolutely have preferences for their food and their treats. They might try to eat a lot of things, but there’s always one thing they like more than the others. She was almost immediately obsessed with these bone broth sticks. You could see it in her eyes how excited she got about them. When I tried to take one away from her, she would run away with it…very fast. She never did that with any of the bully sticks we’ve gotten her, and we have tried a lot of different brands. It lasted longer than a bully stick too, and she was never not interested in it. The brand says their small chew keeps the founder’s 25-pound terrier mix busy for two to three days, which from what I saw for my 12-pound little girl tracks.

  • Built different. This isn’t some half-assed, half-baked treat. Developing it apparently took 15 months of R&D, more than 1,200 formulation batches, a team of three food scientists, and PhD materials scientists from MIT. Exactly the kinds of nerds I want making food! The ingredient list is bone broth, collagen peptides, a touch of gelatin, natural flavor, and sea salt, and that’s it. Each chew is also up to 82% protein, low fat, ~100 calories, and packs 28 grams of broad spectrum collagen. The texture is also really impressive. It’s firm enough to last a while but softens on contact with saliva and re-firms when she puts it down, so it doesn’t splinter or fracture the way bully sticks can. I’m less worried about her chocking on it. They put the same effort into this that somebody would put into human food, and I think it shows.

  • Nothing goes to waste. This part I thought was very very clever. So when a chew gets down to a nub, you can bake it and it puffs up into a whole new treat. So the entire stick gets used, just in different forms along the way, so there’s no sad little end piece getting thrown out or (worse) swallowed whole.

    

Where to buy: online

In case you missed it… 🎧

This week, we’re back after a little hiatus, and we’ve got an extra fun episode for you in our fancy new Morning Brew studio!!!

We’re kicking things off with Coke and Pepsi’s latest functional soda wars and the booming “hard sports drink” category. Then, we’re diving into the Whole Foods 2027 Trends Report (check out the full report here)—what we loved (Beautrition, Dish Reinvention, Yoshoku Effect, The Bean Boom), what missed the mark (Ingredient Minimalism, Zero Waste 2.0, Terroir’s New Territory), and the two massive trends Whole Foods left out entirely. 👀

Catch the full episode below 👇

This week, we're back after a little hiatus (news alert: we got acquired by Morning Brew!), and we've got an extra fun episode for you in our fancy new studio.

We're kicking things off with Coke and Pepsi's latest functional soda wars and the booming "hard sports drink" category. Then, we're diving into the Whole Foods 2027 Trends Report (check out the full report here)—what we loved (Beautrition, Dish Reinvention, Yoshoku Effect, The Bean Boom), what missed the mark (Ingredient Minimalism, Zero Waste 2.0, Terroir's New Territory), and the two massive trends Whole Foods left out entirely. 👀

Let's get into it →

The Breakdown:

0:00 - Intro and why things look/sound different...

1:46 - Our fave finds of the week

4:53 - The new Coke vs. Pepsi battle

12:44 - The "hard sports drink" boom

16:12 - Whole Foods 2027 Trends Report: The four trends that we liked (Beautrition, Dish Reinvention, Yosoku Effect, and The Bean Boom)

33:28 - Trends that missed the mark for us... (Ingredient Minimalism, Zero Waste 2.0, Terroir's New Territory, Bitter Done Better)

40:42 - The trends we'd add to the list

🎧 Love the show? Subscribe to the Express Checkout podcast wherever you get your podcasts! New episodes drop weekly.

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If you’re a CPG founder or brand operator in SF, or know someone who is, request to join here.

Now, onto the news of the week →

CPG & Consumer Goods

• Pepsi is having a no-good, very bad week:

  • Poppi is going flat. PepsiCo marked down what it expects to owe Poppi’s founders after a $1.95B buyout. The earnout, once promised at $300M if Poppi hit certain growth targets by Q3 2027, is now valued at $12M, down from $117M in June and $278M in December. 😱

    • According to Pepsi, Poppi’s volume is still growing (double digits last quarter). But that growth isn’t close to what the brand was seeing pre-acquisition.

    • There are many factors at play here, but one of them is simply that the category may be peaking. Coke has Simply Pop (and now, is playing with its prebiotic versions of its OG brands), Pepsi has two prebiotic sodas, and the shelf is crowded. Mintel’s analyst said as early as this spring that prebiotic soda growth could be close to topping out, since most people still drink soda for a familiar, indulgent taste. Olipop is slowing down too, so this isn’t only a Poppi problem.

    • Though it’s worth noting: earnouts are mostly IOUs anyway. 🤷‍♀️ Drew Fallon points out that earnouts rarely pay in strategic CPG deals. In his analysis of 100+ M&A deals from the past few years, only about 12% of total earnout value was ever paid.

  • Meanwhile, KFC gives Pepsi the boot. KFC announced it’s ending a 40-year exclusive Pepsi partnership in the U.S. The switch starts in January 2027 and covers roughly 3,700 U.S. restaurants by spring. This one especially stings, because Pepsi used to own KFC. PepsiCo bought the chain in 1986 and spun it off in 1997, and KFC and Yum stayed with Pepsi anyway. The WSJ reports KFC was one of Pepsi’s biggest U.S. restaurant sellers!!

    • A moment of silence for Mountain Dew Sweet Lightning, the KFC-exclusive peach-honey soda, which will be phased out of KFC locations in spring 2027. May we all pray that Taco Bell’s Baja Blast doesn’t see the same fate.

  • And then Gatorade got recalled. PepsiCo pulled 122,021 cases of Gatorade Lemon Lime, Lemon Lime Zero, Orange, and Orange Zero across 37 states (objectively the worst flavors, but I digress), because the bottles contained Yellow No. 5 and/or Yellow No. 6 that weren’t on the label.

    • The extra awkward part is that those are the exact flavors Pepsi promised would go dye-free. This fall, fruit punch, lemon lime, and orange Thirst Quencher and Zero were set to switch to colors from fruits and vegetables only. Pepsi hasn’t said what went wrong, but synthetic dyes missing from the label—in the flavors you’re actively marketing as moving off dyes—is a rough look.

• A big week for the future of caffeination:

  • Never enough (clean) caffeine. Just Ice Tea launched Awaken Cold Brew Tea, bringing 120mg of caffeine from yerba mate, green tea, and white tea to a 12-ounce can. It comes in Strawberry Spark, Tropical Takeoff, and Honeydew Lime Lift, with 17g of sugar and 80 calories.

    • This feels like a natural next step for Just Ice Tea: take a familiar brand, and move into a new, but complementary, occasion. Plus, energy drinks are seriously growing in popularity: US energy drink spending has grown 8% annually since 2019, with better-for-you options bringing more people into the category. Just look a Bloom’s Sparkling Energy Drink brand; since launching 2 years ago, they’ve already surpassed 500 million cans sold!

    • Our thesis is that Just Ice Tea doesn’t need to convince, say, a Celsius or Alani Nu consumer to convert. It’s there to bring the “not really an energy drink person” crowd something they’re more comfortable trying—something organic, without all the bright branding and candy-adjacent flavors, that offers a more premium aesthetic and more approachable caffeine content than the other brands in its category.

    • We can’t not point out the sugar content here. This bev, which boasts being “Just Sweet Enough®” has a whopping 17g of added sugar, which certainly makes it stand out among the category’s fastest-growing brands (many of which have 0g sugar). The source is Organic Cane Sugar, which presents an interesting question for natural shoppers: do they care more about organic, natural ingredients and a “clean” sugar source, or grams of sugar?

  • RTDs, watch out. There’s a new format on the block. C4, Bucked Up, and Rockstar unveiled nicotine-free caffeine pouches at NACS, joining the growing crowd of brands offering an energy boost you tuck under your lip instead of a drink from a can.

    • With the rise of ZYN, it was only a matter of time before other brands started using the pouch format to deliver something besides nicotine. And there are so many now: Ultra, Sesh, WIP, Mojo, Nectr… even the founders of Starface got into it with Blip (which did happen to shut down less than two months after launching its functional pouches). Same thing happens anytime a format is “proven.” See: gummies.

    • One thing these pouch brands seem to understand, though, is who they’re talking to. There’s an obvious overlap with the consumer who already reached for a ZYN—largely young men and in finance and tech. They’re discreet, easy to use at your desk or the gym, and already part of the routine for many of these consumers. The bet is that people like the pouch format itself, not just the nicotine or whatever functional ingredients are in there.

  • Going beyond the beyond. Beyond Meat, now branding itself as Beyond the Plant Protein Company, is giving its protein drinks a caffeine kick. The brand launched Beyond Immerse Protein + Energy, a sparkling drink with 20g of plant protein and 160mg of caffeine, in Cherry Berry and Watermelon Strawberry.

    • Beyond is clearly having an identity crisis. This follows September’s trend-stacked Phytosphere lineup—protein powder, jerky, and veggie burgers—which we shared many thoughts on here. We get the impulse to move beyond meat alternatives, but checking every wellness and wellness-adjacent box isn’t really the same as giving shoppers a good reason to choose you.

• Back to ACV? Bragg announced Tropical Zing, a sparkling beverage with one tablespoon of its organic apple cider vinegar (ACV), real fruit juice, 40 calories, and no added sugar per can.

  • It’s interesting to see Bragg launch this now, especially when brands like Olipop and Poppi (which originally launched as an ACV drink) have pivoted away from leading with gut health and toward simply saying “we’re a better-for-you soda.”

  • More broadly, we don’t really hear much about ACV as a wellness ingredient anymore, so maybe this is Bragg trying to bring it back into the zeitgeist. But with fiber getting more popular, gut health is due for another wave of attention—and maybe a classic wellness ingredient like ACV gets to come along for the ride.

• Graza takes another dip. Graza launched Garlic Confit & Chive Hummus at select Costco stores in the Southeast. Made with its extra virgin olive oil, slow-cooked whole garlic cloves, and fresh chives, it comes in a behemoth 22.5-ounce (1.3 POUND) tub suited for its Costco launch.

  

  • Graza has come a long way from putting olive oil in a squeeze bottle. The brand now offers a full line of olive oil potato chips, mayo, and now, hummus. Graza made its name in olive oil, got people to obsess over and trust the brand, and is now bringing that into other products with olive oil at their core. You don’t have to reinvent every aisle you enter. Sometimes making really good food that your existing customers want to try is enough. All while reportedly exploring a $600M sale with Lazard. Hard to deny what they’ve built.

  • What’s especially interesting about this launch is that hummus isn’t new territory for Graza. Its 2025 collab with Ithaca Hummus made its way into Whole Foods, Target, and Costco, and picked up a NOSH Best New Product award. While we don’t know the details of the split, Ithaca now has its own Olive Oil SKU, and Graza has become a shelf-mate at Costco.

    • This whole collab-to-launch pipeline has us thinking: do brands see collabs as soft entries into other categories? The Ithaca collab is looking more like a testing ground than an authentic collab in retrospect…

• The 3-in-1 body wash of booze. Why have separate drinks for the party and the morning after? For everyone who thinks shampoo, conditioner, and body wash belong in one bottle, apparently your booze and morning-after sports drink do, too. White Claw maker Mark Anthony Brands introduced RefreshAde, its take on a hard sports drink. Yes, that’s a sports drink with booze included, and no, that doesn’t make it a hangover cure. It joins Super Lyte and SpikedAde in this growing hard sports drink category.

  • We went from drinking Gatorade the day after a night out, to chugging a Liquid IV while leaving the function, to putting the sports drink and the booze in the same can. The low-calorie, low-sugar pitch that helped sell the first wave of hard seltzer apparently isn’t enough anymore. Today, consumers are looking for added function, not just a lack of the “bad” stuff.

  

  • And the category is booming. Super Lyte, a vodka + electrolytes RTD from the company behind Surfside, moved 120,000 cases in its first five weeks after launching in March and is now projecting 4 million cases by end of 2026. Last month, Boston Beer incubated Rally Dog Vodka Ade, another “vodka ade” made with real vodka and a hint of sea salt for electrolytes. And just last week, Constellation Brands acquired SpikedAde for $75 million, with up to another $278 million tied to performance. These are pretty big bets on sports-drink-inspired booze. With that kind of traction, it’s not surprising the company behind White Claw wants in on the category too.

• Target may be the next Whole Foods, but Walmart is becoming the next Target. We’ve spoken ad nauseam about Target’s new focus on better-for-you groceries and wellness, and now, we’re seeing Walmart take on a similar thesis:

  • This week, Reprise Health, a brand that brings traditional Eastern herbal remedies into convenient, tasty gummy formats, has expanded into 470+ Walmart stores nationwide through the retailer’s new Trending in Wellness set. This is Reprise’s first entry into mass retail after launches at Whole Foods, Sprouts, and The Vitamin Shoppe.

    • Reprise Health is one of my favorite supplement brands! The founders both grew up with Eastern herbal remedies, and these vegan gummies are their modern answer to an accessible version of that tradition. They are incredibly thoughtful about sourcing their ingredients (from a 5th generation Taiwanese family), care deeply about quality and testing (they lab-test each batch 3x!), and develop all of their blends with doctors. Great find by Walmart!! - Jenna

  • This feels especially timely, because earlier this month, Walmart launched a new category: Mood & Mind, a beverage set specifically focused on functional drinks, in ~1,000 stores. The category includes brands like TRIP, Recess, Neutonic, Nowadays, and more.

  • With the focus on up-and-coming, buzzy wellness brands—like Reprise Health—and spotlighting functional, wellness-forward categories, Walmart is solidifying itself as yet another mass-retailer-turned-brand-discovery-destination.

• A big W for the frozen aisle. Big Mozz, the frozen mozzarella stick brand, is launching its Original Mozzarella Sticks nationwide at 1,500 Target stores. Also joining the freezer: a Target-exclusive SAUZ collab pairing Mini Mozzarella Nuggets with Creamy Calabrian Vodka Sauce. Brilliant. This might be the most well-aligned collab we’ve seen in a minute—not surprising once we learned that the collab’s impetus was a Target buyer dreaming this up on the Expo West floor!!

  • The fact that they went with the Creamy Calabrian Vodka Sauce, instead of a traditional marinara, adds to the brilliance of this collab. Big Mozz is known for its “big flavor,” and SAUZ is known for its nontraditional pasta sauce flavors. This collab beautifully marries the two, and we actually cannot run to Target fast enough to try this.

• Proda’s bringing protein back, yeah! Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel have joined Proda, a zero-sugar protein soda brand, as co-founders in their first joint business venture. They join original co-founders and co-CEOs Matthew Postlethwaite, an actor and wellness entrepreneur, and Jeff Church, who previously built Suja Organic. Barry’s executive chairman Joey Gonzalez is also joining as a co-founder.⁠

  • We’ve spoken before about what it takes to build the “perfect” celebrity brand, and honestly, we’re waiting with baited breath to see how this one plays out.

• Another influencer tequila RTD. Haley and Hanna Cavinder, former college basketball players turned twinfluencers, are joining Azúcar Tequila as Creative Directors, helping shape its content, storytelling, and events. The canned margarita brand is rolling out in Dallas and Austin, and is made with real tequila, fruit, and agave nectar.

  • Feel familiar? It should, because Alix Earle did something very similar with a very similar product when she joined SipMARGS as an investor and partner. Apparently, everyone needs a tequila RTD to go with their following (or, more likely, every tequila RTD needs an influencer to stand out in an increasingly competitive category…).

• The Hunger Games of haircare. Jennifer Lawrence is officially entering beauty with her first brand, mes°, a hair-care line. The brand was co-created with Arcaea a biotechnology that raised $78M from Chanel, Givaudan and Olaplex back in 2021. More details are teased for October 27th. ⁠

  • JLaw’s entering a crowded haircare aisle, but an even more crowded celebrity haircare aisle: Beyoncé’s Cécred, Blake Lively’s Blake Brown, Shakira’s Isima, Tracee Ellis Ross’s Pattern and Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie.

• Fragrance at the speed of TikTok. Bath & Body Works launched Hype Lab, a small-batch fragrance initiative that develops scents in 8-12 weeks based on social trends, in partnership with MANE fragrance house. The first drop—a viral dessert-inspired trio—sold out online in three minutes. Hype Lab will be hosted on Bath & Body Works’ new online platform, [Drops](https://www.bathandbodyworks.com/t/drops?), which releases early-access products and other online exclusives.

  • This is part of a larger play by the retailer to turn around the business: Bath & Body Works’ Q2 sales fell 2.3% year over year to $1.5 billion, with U.S. and Canadian store sales down 5.4%. The only bright spot remains seen in digital sales, which grew 3% (likely partly due to the brand’s Amazon launch in February). Looks like B&BW will be leaning in further to digital sales (and other retailers, like Ulta) as part of its Consumer First Formula turnaround plan.

eCommerce

• As TikTok Shop volume grows, value shrinks. TikTok Shop beauty sales reported $992.9M in Q3 2026—up 39.1% year over year, but growth has slowed sharply from 96% in Q1. GMV (gross merchandise value) per active beauty video collapsed from $379 in Q3 2024 to $96 today as video volume surged 76% YoY.

  • TL;DR: As TikTok Shop Beauty sales get closer to $1B, and more and more brands join the platform and pump out content, the category’s growth rate is slowing down and the value per video decreases.

  • K-Beauty continues to lead the platform, with brands like Medicube and Dr. Melaxin holding strong at the top—though they’re now subject to the same sales dips seen across the platform.

• Google wants in on every transaction. Google launched Universal Cart in the US, a shopping hub in Search and Gemini that tracks price drops and surfaces promo codes across retailers (right in time for the holidays). It’s built on the Universal Commerce Protocol, Google’s open standard for AI-assisted checkout.

  • As Amazon and OpenAI continue building out their own agentic shopping experiences, it will be interesting to see who wins the next era of ecommerce.

Retail

• Carbone’s parent just put money into groceries. Wilder Market & Kitchen is opening this fall in Miami as an 8,000-square-foot neighborhood market backed by Major Food Group as a founding investor—MFG’s first investment outside its own restaurant operations, with Michelin-starred Grassfed Culture running the food program.

  • Danielle Axman, founder of Wilder, told Forbes: “We are reimagining the neighborhood market by bringing together thoughtfully sourced groceries, a café, and chef-driven prepared foods under one roof. Everything we carry and make is held to the Wilder Standard, our vetting framework that brings together thoughtful sourcing, high-quality ingredients, and food that tastes great, so the homework is done before anything reaches the shelf.”

  • TBH, this sounds a whole lot like a few other fancy grocery stores we’ve encountered—including another one in the same city, Nude Miami. In June, we wrote about how everything is Erewhon now, and this is yet another supporting point.

Funding, Mergers, and Acquisitions

• TikTok to Target to $25M in under two years. EZ Bombs raised $25 million from CAVU Consumer Partners. The brand’s shelf-stable Mexican seasoning bombs scaled from zero retail doors in 2025 to 8,000+ locations—including Walmart and Costco—after going #1 on TikTok Shop last year.

  • We’ll be watching this one closely, because this really is a new model for CPG growth. Where DTC-first was king for a decade or so, we’re now seeing this model arise: social shopping first. For a product like EZ Bombs—which requires some education for use—the social-first, visual-first strategy just makes sense. What CAVU is betting on, really, is that the virality (and subsequent retailer validation) catalyzed by TikTok Shop is sustainable.

• The Kelce bros have cracked beer. Garage Beer, the Ohio-based light lager brand co-owned by Jason and Travis Kelce, secured a $20 million revolving credit line from Tiger Finance to expand its product lineup and enter new markets.

  • Beer is having a rough go of it lately. The industry is facing rising supply chain costs, big swings in drinking habits, and breweries shutting their doors or filing for bankruptcy left and right. Garage Beer, meanwhile, is now Ohio’s biggest craft brewer by volume and 12th largest nationally—and is growing faster than the overall beer category itself! As of late 2025, it was already valued at roughly $200 million, just two years after it spun off from Braxton Brewing into a standalone company. Jason and Travis obviously play a role in selling Garage, but that overlooks what’s really being built here. We think this could be America’s next big beer brand—unless someone bigger scoops it up first 🤷.

  • What’s especially interesting is that this is a celebrity brand that doesn’t fully feel like a celebrity brand. The Kelces are heavily involved, but if we’re being honest, nothing about two football guys selling a beer called Garage Beer feels like much of a stretch. Everything about this brand makes sense for them and the people who follow them, which transcends to what’s actually in the can: a no-frills light beer that comes in classic or lime.

• Big skincare money is at the doctor’s office. Galderma, a pharma and skincare company (known for injectables) has acquired ZO Skin Health, a dermatologist-founded skincare brand primarily distributed through physicians and med-spas, for $1.5 billion, or ~4.5x its $330M in net sales. Blackstone (majority owner) and the founding Obagi family are selling; combined with Alastin, Galderma now holds 19% of the U.S. professional skincare channel.

  • Physician-dispensed skincare has a major leg-up on the broad, non-sticky skincare category. As Hayden Williams, partner at BrandProject, told Beauty Independent: “Skincare shoppers are not known for their loyalty. Every week brings a new TikTok trend, a new hero ingredient, a new brand promising glass skin by Friday. Most brands end up paying to win the same customer over and over again. A brand whose customers actually stick around is rare, and rare is expensive, which is where physician-dispensed skincare has an edge.”

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3. We’d like to give you a little peek into what you can expect from us:

We infiltrate your inbox (consensually) twice a week.

In the beginning of the week, you get smarter about CPG and retail with a full breakdown + deeper insights into the most important news from the past week, plus a longer deep dive into an industry topic we can’t stop thinking about (like the decaf coffee boom, why coconut water is trending, or if Target is the new Whole Foods).

On Fridays, you get a glimpse into our (overflowing) pantries, medicine cabinets, fridges, or freezers. We share our favorite CPG finds of the past week, so you stay in-the-know about the coolest new brands… and hear which are actually worth the hype.

And with that, let’s get into our picks of the week →

Jenna’s Pickup:

HEYDOH - Classic Soy Sauce

If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that elevated versions of everyday culinary ingredients (hey, olive oil) hold a lot of power. Though their core promise is higher-quality liquid than their conventional counterparts, their net effect looms much larger. Unlike a Kirkland Olive Oil, for instance, premium, single-origin culinary ingredients tell a story about the person who buys them—what they care about, their standards, their ambitions. Even when they’re just sitting pretty on a counter, they signal intentionality and thoughtfulness.

HEYDOH is the new brand doing that for soy sauce, and I feel strongly that you learn about it before it claims the counter space of every West Village apartment.

• Quick Facts: Non-GMO Taiwanese soy sauce made with whole, single-origin black soybeans fermented with just sea salt (naturally 25% lower in sodium than other brands), water, wheat, and yeast—resulting in complex, layered soy sauce that elevates any dish.

• Reasons to love:

  • Ingredient difference you can taste. I know it’s been a long run, but it’s time to break up with Kikkoman. Mass-market soy sauces, like Kikkoman, are typically brewed using defatted soy meal or soybean mash from yellow soybeans—an industrial byproduct left over after soy oil is extracted. Meanwhile, single-origin producers like HEYDOH use 100% whole heirloom soybeans (in this case, select-harvest black soybeans). Because the natural oils and proteins remain completely intact, the resulting sauce is much richer, with a rounded, full, umami base and a hint of molasses-y sweetness on the finish.
    The brand dared me to taste the product side-by-side next to the soy sauce in my pantry; I didn’t expect to sense much of a difference, and was proven wholly wrong. HEYDOH makes any other soy sauce taste like murky, one-note salt water by comparison.

  • Rooted in heritage. All three co-founders are Taiwanese, and two of them are based in Taiwan (grateful the third, Christine, is based in the US, because I had the pleasure of meeting her recently!). Co-founder Clarissa, a James Beard Finalist and cookbook author, dreamt up HEYDOH when she was writing a cookbook in the US—and couldn’t find any soy sauce that reminded her of the artisanal soy sauces from Taiwan. Frustrated with her flat, lackluster options, she decided to source the best stuff herself.

  • A gorgeous gift. Spoiler alert: there is a large chance you will be seeing this again in our gift guides. 👀 The perfect gifts, IMO, are practical in use but utterly luxurious in feel. HEYDOH nails that challenge. They put so much thought into their liquid, and the bottle itself matches that. The branding is transportive, bright, and narrative in nature. It’s a love letter to Taiwan, and a conversation piece for your counter.

    • Note: I’ve only tried the Classic Soy Sauce so far, but I’m certain the quality will translate across the entire line of products. I cannot wait to try the Silky Soy Sauce, which is a glossy, velvety finishing sauce for dipping or drizzling!

Where to buy: Online!

Nate’s Pickup:

Party Of Snacks

Popcorn is one of the most classic snacks out there, but most of the time the flavors are pretty run of the mill. When a brand does go wacky, it’s usually a seasonal drop that’s gone before you can even restock, like LesserEvil’s limited edition Watermelon Lime. Party Of is changing the popcorn aisle, making fun, flavor-forward popcorn all year round in unique, fun flavors.

• Quick Facts: Thai-inspired popcorn founded by four sisters who grew up in their mom’s Thai restaurants and wanted a snack that represented both sides of their upbringing. They have 3 flavors so far: Pad Thai, Thai Chili Lime, and Mango Sticky Rice Kettle Corn, with a sampler pack if you can’t decide.

• Reasons to love:

  • The flavors. Each bag tastes exactly like the thing it says it tastes like. Who thought Pad Thai would make a great popcorn flavor? I wouldn’t have, and I’m so glad they did because it’s so freaking good! My personal favorite is the Mango Sticky Rice Kettle Corn, but I have a sweet tooth, so take that with a grain of salt (or sugar). Mango sticky rice is having a moment right now, with Trader Joe’s selling a frozen pre-made version and a buzzy new NYC restaurant that’s gone viral for selling the best mango sticky rice in the city! If you’re bringing globally inspired flavors to an American audience, you have to start with things people already know and love enough to actually pick up off the shelf, and Pad Thai, Thai Chili Lime, and Mango Sticky Rice all clear that bar.

  • Popcorn was the right call. I think there are two snacks that are near-perfect vehicles for bold flavor, popcorn and chips, with pretzels a close third. The popcorn itself is very good here, but the point is how well it carries flavor and lets the seasoning lead. It’s also the easiest snack in the world to overindulge on without feeling the weight of it, and when something tastes this good, overindulging is exactly what I want to do.

  • The branding. It’s bold, fun, and colorful, and it tells you exactly what you’re getting. I still think the American consumer, especially away from the coasts, is hesitant to try globally flavored products, even with plenty of brands bringing ethnic and globally inspired products to shelf and succeeding. We have a long way to go as a country before that feels normal. Party Of does a really nice job bridging that gap. It looks like it belongs in Happier Grocery, Erewhon, Sprouts, or Wegmans, but there’s a lot of authenticity underneath it, in the flavors, in details hidden on the packaging, and especially in the founders’ story.

Where to buy: Online and select independent retailers

In case you missed it… 🎧

The other week, we’re sitting down with wildly impressive Tristan Walker, who built and sold Walker & Company (the parent company behind Bevel) to Procter & Gamble. He also sits on the board of Shake Shack and recently joined Collaborative Fund to help launch Collab Holdings—a private equity arm built for consumer brands that don’t fit the traditional VC/PE playbook. He also runs Heirloom Leathercraft, a trade school and atelier bringing fine handcraft back to America.

He walks us through building Bevel from a personal shaving problem to a national brand, the difficult decision to sell to P&G, and why he now believes most founders shouldn’t take VC money in the first place. We also dig into what makes a CPG brand “durable,” why Gen Z is increasingly skeptical of private equity, and whether AI can ever replicate intuition. 👀

Catch the full episode below 👇

There’s one big question every brand operator finds themselves asking around this season: Is a Black Friday customer worth it?

Our friends at Wayflyer crunched the numbers, and the answer is: a little less than you’d hope, but nowhere near as bad as the “bargain hunter” reputation suggests.

BFCM shoppers spend about the same as anyone else on their first order, but they’re roughly 13% less likely to come back. This impacts lifetime value, and twelve months later, a customer acquired during BFCM has LTV 5% below a customer that was acquired in January through October.

The big surprise is discounts: the deeper the Black Friday discount, the more likely the customer is to return. Shoppers who got 40% off came back 33% more often than those who paid full price!!

For 21% of SMBs, Black Friday is the biggest sales event of the year, but it requires a major stock up and marketing push now for sales that will come later.

If working capital is holding you back from your biggest Black Friday yet, apply with Wayflyer today (it just takes 10 minutes!!) and receive funding in as little as 24 hours.

Get up to $20m in funding

News From the Week

It’s an awkward time to be a big CPG brand.

Data is telling strategics that they need to play in functional and better-for-you, and PepsiCo’s own Q3 results credited protein, fiber and simpler ingredients for what worked this quarter.

Historically, though, better-for-you + functional hasn’t really been BigCo’s thing.

• Coca-Cola’s in-house swings have a short shelf life: it pulled Coca-Cola Energy from North America after just over a year, and drastically cut distribution of its Aha sparkling water as sales slid.

• So far, the biggest wins for incumbents have come from buying in. PepsiCo bought Poppi (more on that below), and Hershey bought a clean-label popcorn brand to get into better-for-you snacking.

• But private equity is now heavily competing for the same emerging brands, so strategics are scrambling to innovate in-house.

Without access to expensive data and insights, innovation at an emerging brand is largely rooted in intuition. Innovation for a larger CPG brand, on the other hand, is largely rooted in data—looking at the little guys and trying to square a pattern it can copy-paste onto its own products. The final result doesn’t feel natural or creative; it feels forced, almost viscerally cringe, and often misses the mark.

This week, both Coke and Pepsi showed us that awkwardness in action:

Coke announced it will add 6g of prebiotic fiber to Coke Zero, Sprite Zero and Fresca, piloting at the end of October in parts of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A whole new line of its beloved brands, now slapped with added fiber.

For context, this is Coke’s second major swing at the prebiotic soda category: Last year, Coke launched Simply Pop under its juice brand.

Strategics can get any data they want, and Coke’s is clearly telling them that prebiotic soda is having a moment, and fiber is the factor worth stealing. But what the data doesn’t tell them is why people buy—that je ne sais quoi cool factor. And, from what we’ve seen, Olipop and Poppi’s “cool factors” were never really about fiber:

• Poppi is the clearest case study, because its fiber claim has already been tested in public. In 2024, the brand was hit with class actions arguing that its 2 grams of fiber per can was too little to do anything for your gut. Poppi denied wrongdoing and settled for $8.9 million.

• If gut health were the reason people bought Poppi, that should have hurt… and it didn’t. As the suits were being filed, Poppi’s U.S. dollar sales were up 171.5% to more than $273 million, per NielsenIQ. A year later, PepsiCo paid $1.95 billion for the brand with that claim still under legal challenge.

• Poppi knew it, too: co-founder Allison Ellsworth said publicly that most people drink Poppi for the flavor, and the brand moved away from gut health toward a lifestyle positioning.

Fiber wasn’t the core reason people were buying Poppi. It was a health halo, a secondary justification for buying the product they already wanted for its taste, its branding, and what it says about them. But that one visible, replicable halo is the part Coke is copying.

Meanwhile, PepsiCo is taking something good… and forcing its strategic lens on top of it. When faced with the same threat of the modern soda category, PepsiCo took the opposite route of Coke: it bought the whole Poppi brand, context included.

But now, growth calls (it always does for Big-Boy Brands), and PepsiCo is similarly falling into this forced innovation cycle:

Last week, PepsiCo unveiled Poppi Lift (energy) and Chill (relaxation), pushing Poppi beyond its gut-health origins into new consumption occasions.

• While the idea of an actually-functional Poppi isn’t a bad one—and in fact, could really take off—it does feel like an awkward, forced departure.

• It reads, again, as a strategic brand haphazardly applying data (this time, from the rapidly growing energy and relaxation drink categories) to an existing brand. It’s asking a brand that was loved for being fun to start justifying itself with function.

Put side by side, Coke and Pepsi ended up in the same awkward spot from opposite directions: Coke copied the most visible trait of a brand it couldn’t buy, and PepsiCo bought the brand… but is now bolting new traits onto it. In both cases, the data showed what’s selling, and the brands mistook it for why.

Big CPG will always have more data than the little guys. What it keeps struggling to buy—or hold onto once it starts tinkering—is the gut feeling that made anyone care in the first place. Until the incumbents figures that out, expect a wholeeee lot more awkward. 🥴

CPG & Consumer Goods

• A cure for the back-to-school hangover. Once Upon a Farm, the organic kids’ snack and meal brand, launched Electrolyte Blends, These are fruit-and-veggie hydration pouches for school-age kids made with coconut water and sea salt for “active kids”. The pouches are available at select retailers nationwide, while the brand’s broader lineup spans 25,000+ retail doors.

  

  • Electrolytes are the latest wellness darling, so it’s no surprise that hydration has reached the blossoming kids aisle. Last month, Nestlé USA entered the pediatric rehydration space with Gerberlyte (a more medically-skewed product), and claimed that the pediatric electrolyte market is expected to reach $451 million by 2031. Though Once Upon a Farm is actively avoiding any language around medical rehydration or sustained energy for this product, it’s slotted into the same sphere.

  • Nearly 50% of U.S. parents buying products for ages 6–12 look for electrolytes, according to SPINS’ 2024 survey. Cure already makes kids’ drink mixes; Once Upon a Farm is bringing that pitch to pouches.

  • One thing is clear: kid’s products are no longer an afterthought. We’ve spoken about this before, but the same parents who upgraded their own pantries and medicine cabinets want better options for their kids, too. The same effort going into adult formulation, packaging, and design is finally going into kids’ products, with ingredients suited to their age and formulations they actually enjoy:

    • Hiya Health built its whole brand around better supplements for kids, from zero-sugar multivitamins to probiotics and fiber.

    • Baby care brand Frida moves into personal care for ages 6–11, with everything from body wash to deodorant and electric flossers.

    • Shay Mitchell’s (highly controversial) Rini is bringing K-beauty to kids with various gentle formulas and playful face masks.

    • There are even multiple brands trying to bring the Modern Soda category to kids’: NoBiggie, Roxberry, and Wave Kids.

  • These brands aren’t just selling to the parents anymore. Modern kids have opinions!! In PwC’s 2026 survey of U.S. kids ages 7–14, 61% said social media makes them want to buy things, and 81% said they have at least some influence over skincare and beauty purchases. They’re online seeing the same brands we are, and they want the cool stuff and not a watered-down kids’ version. The ingredients need to pass the parent test, but the packaging, flavors, and experience need to be something a kid actually asks for. Mom might have the credit card, but she’s not always picking what goes in the cart 👀

• Can ramen save Kraft? Kraft Mac & Cheese is launching Cheesy Ramen in April 2027, its first new category in two decades. The $2.99 microwavable bowls come in chicken, spicy, and pork flavors. Apparently, defending the blue box now means getting into someone else’s noodle business 👀

  

  • Kraft Heinz is trying to regain its footing. After pausing its planned split earlier this year, CEO Steve Cahillane said the company is investing $700 million in marketing, sales, and R&D. Kraft Mac & Cheese’s marketing spend alone is up 35% year over year. The brand’s first “innovations” included protein-heavy PowerMac and a “gourmet” Restaurant Edition. Now, it’s expanding into other noodle categories. Kraft wants to give people more reasons to reach for its iconic blue box by meeting demand for trends such as more protein, distinctive flavors, and options beyond the same mac they’ve eaten since childhood.

  • Kraft isn’t competing with just another store-brand mac anymore. Goodles has been winning shoppers with protein, fiber, and fun flavors. Meanwhile, Korean noodle maker Otoki already launched a Cheesy Ramen lineup in January, with flavors like Cheddar & Mascarpone and Spicy Chili & Cheddar in cups and packets. A-Sha has cheesy noodles with chef Andrew Zimmern, too, including Vermont Cheddar. Everyone is meeting in the same cheesy noodle aisle. This Kraft ramen move looks like both a defense strategy of its comfort-food territory and an attempt to grab some of theirs.

  • These launches, though they’re rooted in cultural flavors, aren’t trying to recreate traditional dishes. Otoki is making Korean noodles with cheddar and mascarpone, specifically for North American shoppers, while Kraft is putting its familiar cheese into ramen—neither is trying to sell you an authentic bowl from a ramen shop (we recommend Crafty Ramen for that). At the same time, this isn’t necessarily “dumbing things down” for an American palate, either. It’s more of this mash-up, built around what the consumers are already buying and eating.

  • Global flavors and formats are already all over US grocery, and now even Kraft wants in. They’re no longer confined to the “ethnic” aisle or left to smaller brands and imports. Ramen is familiar enough that Kraft sees it as a place to put its cheese, and that says a lot about how Americans eat now.

• Pepsi’s bargain era is over. PepsiCo reported Q3 revenue of $25.27 billion, up 5.6% year over year, beating expectations—but cut its core EPS (earnings per share) growth outlook to 2.5%–3% (from 5%–7%) and reiterated plans to raise prices 15% to offset rising input costs.

  • Quick refresher: earlier this year Pepsi went the other direction, cutting prices to win back volume, and it cost the company 280 basis points of North America core operating margin. 😅 So this is a reversal, and an expensive lesson in what a price cut costs… even when you’re the biggest player in the aisle.

  • Meanwhile, what actually worked this quarter looks more like an insurgent brand’s vibe: protein, fiber, simpler ingredients, and portion control (think Doritos Protein, Lay’s Baked with Olive Oil, the dye-free NKD line, and lower-sugar Gatorade). Pepsi is raising prices on the core while borrowing the better-for-you playbook to make the new prices easier to swallow.

  • So, what does this mean for smaller CPG brands pricing into a Pepsi-led inflation environment? The upside is a bigger price umbrella: when Lay’s goes up 15%, the gap between it and a $6.99 bag of better-for-you chips shrinks, and a brand that holds price (or raises less) suddenly looks like the reasonable option on shelf.

• HOT DOG! Gleezy, the premium hot dog brand making double-smoked beef brisket dogs 😋, is rolling into 684 Walmart stores across 15 states with its dogs and Carolina Dog Sauce. The expansion follows a $2 million raise earlier this year.

  • Even the humble hot dog is getting a premium upgrade! There’s never not a category in need of a little touch up, and Gleezy is doing that for the wonderful world of hot dogs.

• Distribution is the new DTC. Some of the biggest DTC brands of the 2010s are finding a new home in retail, and seeking ever more distribution to solidify their status as retail brands:

  • AG1, the DTC darling and all-in-one greens powder turned broader supplement brand, announced expansion into Walmart, Kroger, Harris Teeter, and Wegmans, bringing its US retail footprint to more than 8,000 doors—up 75% from earlier this year. AG1 Energy+ launches in November, with an RTD line to follow in 2027.

  • Daily Harvest is expanding its frozen meals at Kroger, Wakefern, Target, Fresh Market, and Meijer—its biggest retail push since Chobani bought the brand in May 2025.

    • Daily Harvest has spent the past few years figuring out its lineup and where shoppers want to buy it. After refreshing its smoothies and oat bowls, ditching the DTC subscription requirement, and building out its freezer-aisle presence, the brand seems to finally be finding its footing. Now, it has Chobani’s retailer relationships behind it to help get it to the next level. Getting on shelves is one thing, but becoming a freezer staple is another beast.

• Beauty looooves fragrance. 2026 has been the year of beauty brands entering fragrance, with nearly every beauty brand—from drug store to premium—entering the space. Earlier this year, we saw Summer Fridays launch its first fine fragrance, as well as Mikayla Nogueira’s POV Beauty launch fragrance in collaboration with Snif. As we shared in a previous newsletter, beauty brands launching fragrance (think: Glossier) is a massive signal of lifestyle ambition—that a brand wants to live in your full beauty routine, not just one step of it. As the Glossier era fades out, there will need to be a new player that can be the all-in-one beauty brand, bleeding into lifestyle. This week, these brands are throwing their hats into the ring:

  • Merit is launching New Wave L’extrait De Parfum, its second fragrance, on Oct. 22 at $92—created with master perfumer Dominique Ropion. The brand’s first fragrance, Retrospect, is now its #5 SKU, with customers averaging four repurchases over two years.

  • e.l.f. Brands launched e.l.f. POP, a new fragrance and body care line debuting with a Norway-inspired holiday drop—three SKUs priced $12–$13 on TikTok Shop, its website, and Amazon. A full destination lineup follows in January 2027. The e.l.f. POP name is an ode to the limited edition scent Jelly Pop.

    • Earlier this year, e.l.f. dabbled in fragrance with another limited-edition scent collab with H&M. That was a more premium collab—an eau de parfum as opposed to the new fragrance mist.

    • e.l.f. also introduced its haircare line earlier this year, which we covered here.

  • Per Circana, fragrance is really where the money is—in both prestige and mass retail. In the first half of 2026, consumers traded up into higher-concentration formats, with eau de parfum (EDP) and perfume posting double-digit growth. Meanwhile, fragrance was the fastest-growing beauty category in mass retail, with sales increasing +15% and units rising +7%.

    

• When the strategy is selling… nothing. Tower 28 opened its first pop-up with Sephora in Venice, Calif., offering shade matching for the Swipe Serum Foundation, SOS Rescue Spray refills, and limited-edition merch—no products sold on-site. Founder Amy Liu framed it as a community test, not a revenue play.

• Is this the Four Loko for Gen Z? Monster is (re)launching Monster Protein Energy, a 30g-protein RTD built on an ultra-filtered milk base, with just 2g of sugar and 6g of fiber, in Chocolate and Vanilla, slated for early next year.

  • If you’re a hardcore Monster fan, you may remember when the brand attempted a very similar product with the same name in 2018 (surrounding the Arnold Expo. At the time, the product was higher sugar, slightly lower protein, and came in a screw top bottle. Now, the product is relaunching into a very different consumer environment—one that is actively seeking protein outside of athletic environments, and is familiar with the concept of a canned high-protein beverage (thanks to brands like Nurri and Slate). Because there is now precedent for protein in a can, Monster was able to maintain its classic energy format while introducing the protein functionality.

  • Do we think this is going to take off? In all likelihood… no. The major hurdle here is that consumers already have an understanding of the experience of drinking a Monster—and a creamy, indulgent milk beverage simply doesn’t jive with that experience.

  • An important note: on the front of each can, it says “GLP-1 Aligned,” which is frankly bizarre copy (”aligned?” Is this a board meeting?!), but also is very telling. Clearly, Monster is betting that this innovation will attract the GLP-1 consumer, which seems to be an increasingly popular target for protein products. Maybe this was added for the NACS audience of buyers and retailers, but we wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up on shelf too.

• Another 🍃 bev brand ditches the “funny stuff.” Louie Louie, the THC-infused drink, launched a separate modern soda brand, Louie POP!, promising “natural sodas without the funny stuff.” The four-flavor lineup skips the functional pitch entirely, there’s no fiber or prebiotics or protein, just soda sweetened with sugar and monkfruit.

  • This is the fourth THC beverage maker we’ve seen build a THC-free offering recently all thanks to a looming ban. A change to the federal definition of hemp is set to take effect December 11, 2026, excluding finished hemp-derived cannabinoid products with more than 0.4mg of combined THC and similarly acting cannabinoids per container. That’s well below the 2–10mg in many popular drinks. Congress is considering alternatives, but right now it looks like this is going through.

    

  • Louie Louie does stand out among what the other hemp-based beverage makers are doing. The rest are still leaning hard into function, trying to help people unwind without the weed: Nowadays’ founders launched Unwind earlier this month, swapping THC for magnesium and L-theanine in a sparkling drink debuting in roughly 1,000 Walmart stores, with TikTok Shop to follow mid-October. Cantrip’s makers took a similar approach with On the Brightside, a “feel-good soda” built around Zembrin, a kanna extract (check out our podcast episode with founder Adam Terry!). Cann is making that shift under its existing brand launching its 0MG line in July, pairing their flavors with magnesium, L-theanine, electrolytes, and passion flower.

eCommerce

• Anotha one bites the (AI-powered discovery) dust. TikTok launched its agentic AI shopping experience, featuring Shopping Assistant (a conversational AI agent) and Buy Direct (one-click purchases from directly inside the FYP), letting consumers discover and buy products without leaving the app.

  • As Retail Dive explained, the move raises a major question for brands: who owns the customer relationship when customers never actually have to enter your brand’s ecosystem? When shoppers don’t have to go to your website or socials, don’t have to provide any first-party data to the brand, the company no longer owns the customer relationship… TikTok does.

Retail

• A more equitable grocery store. New York City is moving ahead with five city-owned grocery stores—one in each borough—as part of its effort to address food insecurity. The NYC Economic Development Corp. has brought together four firms to shape how those stores look, sound and work: Gander, Librarie, Noble Signs and Seven Roots.

  • A lot of the coverage focuses in on the firms’ buzzy-brand credentials—which they rightfully have a lot of. Gander has a long list of clients like Graza, Magic Spoon, Banza, Stiller’s Soda, and Gotham Greens.

  • To us, the “bougie” framing misses the whole point. A city-run grocery store is an ambitious, exciting project on its own. And if the city can make these stores feel as good to shop in as the fancy markets around town—while keeping prices in reach for more people—that’s a win for everyone.

  • Affordable groceries shouldn’t mean a worse shopping experience. Target’s Good & Gather and Walmart’s bettergoods show that private-label can be more than a cheaper substitute and can give people products and a shopping experience they actually want at better prices. City-run grocery stores deserve that same care. People should be able to shop somewhere welcoming and thoughtfully designed, and buy what they want without paying premium-market prices.

• The drones keep coming. Wing and Walmart are expanding drone delivery to Denver and Seattle by 2027, pushing their partnership toward 270+ Walmart locations and 40 million customers. The two new metros join Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Houston, and Orlando.

Funding, Mergers, and Acquisitions

• RTD bevs keep winning. Constellation Brands acquired SpikedAde, a zero-sugar, vodka-based RTD founded in 2025 by serial CPG entrepreneur Jason Cohen (founder of SkinnyPop and Core Hydration), for $75 million—with up to $278 million in performance payouts over five years.

  • As much as everyone loves to cite stats about alcohol dwindling, it isn’t dead yet. In particular, RTD cocktails are booming as the rest of the category seems to be struggling. Spirits-based RTDs grew 30% in dollar sales in Q1 2026 and now make up 28% of off-premise spirits volume; core spirits fell 4.4% in volume and wine 8.3% over the year to March. The catch is that the growth is getting narrower: malt-based RTDs are still declining, and more than 750 spirits-based cocktail brands are now fighting over the same shelf.

  • Love this analysis from Drew Fallon on LinkedIn:

“SpikedAde went from first can to 9 figure exit in 15 months. Up to $353M all within 15 months of its NYC debut last summer. My key takeaway here, which I’ve said a bit recently, is that strategics are increasingly ‘risk on’ as they’re more willing to make bets on relatively ‘unproven’ brands that haven’t been around very long. This is the opposite of the patterns we saw the few years prior and signals to me that strategics are feeling some squeeze and pressure to do M&A.”

• Capitalizing on Greek yogurt’s second wave. Clio Snacks, the refrigerated Greek yogurt bar, has been acquired (for an undisclosed amount) by Stride Consumer Partners, a growth-equity firm with $1.3B AUM. The brand has more than quadrupled revenue since 2021 and is now sold in ~60,000 stores, on track to produce 150M+ bars this year.

  • This isn’t one of those scale-fast-sell-fast brands; Clio has been around for 11 years! Instead, this is one of those examples of a brand that found its footing with the trend cycles. As protein—and therefore Greek yogurt—grew more popular, the idea of a Greek yogurt bar became more approachable and sought-after.

• More cash going into function. Supermush raised a $3 million Series A led by Ndude Labs. The functional mushroom snack brand joins a crowded-but-growing adaptogen space as investors continue betting on functional food.

• The bean renaissance is HERE. Bare Beans, a Native woman-owned Idaho startup, raised $2.79M in seed from Raven Indigenous Capital Partners to fund a DTC launch of vacuum-sealed, preservative-free, ready-to-eat kettle-cooked beans, with retail expansion to follow.

  • As someone whose wifi network is quite literally named “beansforpresident,” I (Jenna) have strong feelings about the bean movement we’ve been witnessing. Beans are the perfect food for the modern wellness environment: they’re a whole food (AKA non-UPF), and naturally high in protein and fiber.

  • The biggest blocker for beans’ takeoff is that, if you’re looking for the good quality stuff (as opposed to canned beans which are cooked in their tins with preservatives), they typically require preparation. Bare Beans solves for that.

  • More broadly, this is a really interesting brand and founding story. The founders are Indigenous women; Indigenous founders receive roughly 0.05% of US VC, and women received just 0.6% of VC funding in the US this year.

• Family buys back the brand. MadeGood’s founding Fotovat family has repurchased Prelude Growth Partners’ minority stake, returning Riverside Natural Foods to full family ownership after 4 years—during which net sales grew 2.5x and the brand expanded to 40,000 retail doors globally. Terms were not disclosed.

In case you missed it… 🎧

Last week, we sat down with the wildly impressive Tristan Walker, who built and sold Walker & Company (the parent company behind Bevel) to Procter & Gamble and recently joined Collaborative Fund to help launch Collab Holdings—a private equity arm built for consumer brands that don’t fit the traditional VC/PE playbook.

He walked us through building Bevel, and why he now believes most founders shouldn’t take VC money in the first place. We also dug into what makes a CPG brand “durable,” why Gen Z is increasingly skeptical of private equity, and whether AI can ever replicate intuition. 👀

Catch the full episode below 👇

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe, like, leave a comment, and share it! It helps us continue to bring you the most interesting news + nuance in consumer and retail every week.

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Well this has been a crazy week, hasn’t it? In case you missed it, WE GOT ACQUIRED!!! Express Checkout is now officially part of the Morning Brew Inc. family, and we couldn’t be more excited.

If you want the full story on what’s going on, we shared more in our last newsletter. Short version: you can still expect Express Checkout’s usual newsletter, podcast, and socials, and it’s all still coming from us! We just have a whole lot more support and firepower behind us to grow + create even more.

We also want to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who replied, texted, DMed, posted, reposted, or otherwise blew up our phones this week. We read every single message, and a few of them may have made us tear up at our desks. This thing started as a side project fueled by a love for CPG, and it only got here because you all kept opening, forwarding, and nerding out about this industry right alongside us.

If you’re curious about why MBI went with us, check out CEO Robert Dippell’s LinkedIn post, this ADWEEK piece, and ’s piece on the deal!

If you’re a new reader, WELCOME! Highly recommend checking out our past editions for a better sense of the Express Checkout experience! ✨

Now, let’s get into our picks of the week →

Jenna’s Pickup:

Row 7 Koginut Winter Squash

Fall enthusiasts: brace yourselves. I don’t mean to come for your gourd prowess, but I am about to introduce you to a new squash that just might displace a Honeynut or Kabocha in your rotation. In fact, it just might become the Squash of the Season (you heard it here first).

I learned about this special squash last week during a Whole Foods Market press trip, where we had the opportunity to try a delicious new Whole Foods Market pizza featuring Row 7’s Koginut Winter Squash. While we indulged, we spoke with Row 7’s co-founder and one of the creators of this seed. Not God (nice try), but someone close: Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of Michelin-starred Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

Dan shared all about Row 7’s mission and thought process around developing its seeds: prioritizing flavor and nutrition above all else by selecting the best genes from different produce varieties. There is so much thought that goes into every single one of Row 7’s seeds, and I promise you can taste the difference in the final product. In this case, that product is a squash that puts all other Winter squashes to shame.

Note: If you’re wondering if I have any authority to talk about produce… fair. This is a CPG newsletter, but that’s exactly why this is an interesting pick. There’s been a recent blurring of lines between CPG and branded produce, and it’s something we like to keep tabs on; last year, we wrote about the “rise of branded fruit,” and this falls within that same discussion. TL;DR: if it’s branded and consumable, if it’s priced as a brand and not a commodity, then we think it should be discussed in the same circles as CPG. Feel free to debate.

• Quick Facts: Row 7’s elevated take on Butternut squash, shaped like a small pumpkin and with the taste and texture of a Honeynut squash.

• Reasons to love:

  • Specifically selected for flavor + texture. Koginut was created as a cross between two of the season’s favorite squash: Honeynut and Butternut. It has the sweetness and velvety texture of a Honeynut, with the size, durability, and storability of a Butternut—packaged in what looks like a small pumpkin. If you don’t think of yourself as someone who can detect the minute differences between squash varieties, I dare you to try this. You will notice its richness, creamy texture, gorgeous bright color, and nutty, honey-like flavor.

  • She’s a skin-on variety. Whenever I try produce prepared by someone with more culinary cachet, the inevitable fear crops* up: what if I can never make it this well at home? For a hearty winter squash, that fear is primarily rooted* in my mediocre knife skills. I was thrilled to see that the Koginut on the Whole Foods Market pizza actually still had the skin on it. The Whole Foods chef who developed the pizza told me that the skin is so soft, it actually bakes beautifully—offering some delightful textural variety and a slight crisp rather than the leathery, tough skin of most butternuts.

  • Produce you can feel extra good about eating. You can (and should!) feel good every time you eat something that came from the ground. But certain things come from the ground better, and this is one. Row 7 partners with regional growers who care for their land by employing organic practices. By sharing their seeds (instead of patenting them so no one else can grow them), Row 7 gives small organic farmers a source of income and encourages biodiversity above and below ground. Their growing process is so transparent, you can trace the exact farm your Koginut grew on here!

*: Pun alert!!!! Hide your hobbyist gardeners, stat!!

Where to buy: Try the new pizza at your local Whole Foods Market hot bar in the pizza section! Or buy the squash itself online or in Whole Foods stores.

Nate’s Pickup:

WashWise Reset Spray

Laundry is one of the hottest aisles right now, and WashWise is one of the most exciting new entrants to this space. I’m someone who deeply cares about how I present myself when I’m out and about. How I smell, if my clothes are wrinkly, if my fly is down… you get it. Being out and about nearly every day and night of the week at CPG events, trade shows, conferences, I need to look put together at 8pm for a shirt I may have been wearing since 8am!

On top of simply fitting into my new “going out” routine, this fulfills my need to find new EDC (Everyday Carry) products. Something small that I always have in my bag, and solves a specific issue. This one has earned a permanent spot in my backpack.

• Quick Facts: WashWise’s Reset Spray is a water-based fabric mist that neutralizes odor, relaxes wrinkles, and lightly cleans clothes that have been worn but don’t need a full wash yet. It comes in two scents, Cotton Grove and Verde Rise, in a 6oz can for $29 and a TSA-friendly travel size.

• Reasons to love:

  • Creative innovation. It’s great to see so many brands launching new ways to clean your clothes (like our fave, Wishing Well), but there haven’t been many new brands that touch on the in-between moments of doing laundry. Which is perfect for me because I make SO MUCH laundry that I probably don’t need to be making. What I love is that Reset rolls a few products into one, so instead of owning a wrinkle spray and a fabric refresher you’ve got one can that handles all of it. And, on top of all that, this one cleans the fabric a bit by lifting off sweat and body oils. That’s crazy!

  • Genius positioning. Dry shampoo for clothes. Are you kidding me?! What a brilliant way to describe this product! It so clearly gets the point across of what it does, when to use it, and where it lives in your routine.

Where to buy: Online

In case you missed it… 🎧

This week, we’re sitting down with wildly impressive Tristan Walker, who built and sold Walker & Company (the parent company behind Bevel) to Procter & Gamble. He also sits on the board of Shake Shack and recently joined Collaborative Fund to help launch Collab Holdings—a private equity arm built for consumer brands that don’t fit the traditional VC/PE playbook. He also runs Heirloom Leathercraft, a trade school and atelier bringing fine handcraft back to America.

He walks us through building Bevel from a personal shaving problem to a national brand, the difficult decision to sell to P&G, and why he now believes most founders shouldn’t take VC money in the first place. We also dig into what makes a CPG brand “durable,” why Gen Z is increasingly skeptical of private equity, and whether AI can ever replicate intuition. 👀

Catch the full episode below 👇

This week, we’re sitting down with wildly impressive Tristan Walker, who built and sold Walker & Company (the parent company behind Bevel) to Procter & Gamble. He also sits on the board of Shake Shack and recently joined Collaborative Fund to help launch Collab Holdings—a private equity arm built for consumer brands that don’t fit the traditional VC/PE playbook. He also runs Heirloom Leathercraft, a trade school and atelier bringing fine handcraft back to America.

He walks us through building Bevel from a personal shaving problem to a national brand, the difficult decision to sell to P&G, and why he now believes most founders shouldn’t take VC money in the first place. We also dig into what makes a CPG brand “durable,” why Gen Z is increasingly skeptical of private equity, and whether AI can ever replicate intuition. 👀 Let’s go!

The breakdown:

0:00 - Intro + Tristan’s background and new role
3:42 - Building Bevel: from personal problem to national brand
6:35 - The P&G acquisition and life after
11:45 - Launching Collab Holdings
20:27 - What makes a durable CPG brand
27:48 - Good brands, bad capital, and the true cost of VC money
35:16 - Heirloom Leathercraft and bringing fine handcraft back to America
42:30 - Outro

🎧 Love the show? Subscribe to the Express Checkout podcast wherever you get your podcasts! New episodes drop weekly.

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💬 Join the conversation Have a product you’re curious about? DM us your questions or drop them in the comments—your topic could be featured in our next episode! If you have any thoughts/questions/suggestions, feel free to email us at hello@expresscheckout.co :)

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In case you didn’t hear, we had some BIG news to share today: we’re officially part of Morning Brew Inc.!

As a two-person team running this media biz for the past 2 years, this is the wildest, most exciting moment of our careers. Today, we officially become part of something much larger than ourselves and the business we built, and we are SO excited for what this means for the future of our content.

To us, Morning Brew Inc is the true pioneer of creative, engaging business media—just look at creators like Dan Toomey (Good Work), Macy Gilliam (Out There), Neal Freyman and Toby Howell (Morning Brew Daily). Express Checkout always aspired to that unique lens: speaking to professionals while being approachable to consumers. In building an audience of CPG professionals, we organically reached an audience of “curious consumers” too—the people who nerd out about the coolest new snacks, have a LOT to say about wellness trends, and are really annoying to grocery shop with.

Like MBI, we believe that thoughtfully curated, accessibly presented information makes professional audiences better at their jobs, and equally brings value and joy to consumer audiences.

That’s why this move makes so much sense, and why we are thrilled to share it with you. Here’s what it means for you:

• Nothing about your experience of Express Checkout is changing. We’ll still be the two people behind our twice-weekly newsletter + weekly podcast, maintaining our unique voice and perspective. We’ll still gather the CPG + retail community through events, and we’ll still share our beloved carousels and short-form videos. :) It’ll still be the two of us leading the charge, and prioritizing our community above all else.

• What will change is our ability to reach a larger audience, significantly improve the quality of our content, and put on more creative + larger-scale events. We’ll finally be able to execute some of the ideas that we’ve been sitting on, because we’ll have a whole team of incredible media professionals supporting us.

If you’re curious about why MBI went with us, check out CEO Robert Dippell’s LinkedIn post and this ADWEEK piece!

We’ve had a crazy few days preparing for this moment, so we’ll be keeping this newsletter short and sweet. If you’re a new reader, check out our past editions for a better sense of the Express Checkout experience! ✨

CPG & Consumer Goods

• From Peloton instructor to CPG founder. Former Peloton instructor Kendall Toole and partner Alexander Brzozowski launched DRESSi, a dressing-and-drizzle line with 4g of protein per serving (via whey protein isolate) made with 100% olive oil. The dressings contain no seed oils, gums, or added sugar and come in four flavors: Chipotle Lime, Lemon Caesar, Green Goddess, and Bang Bang.

  

  • Probably not shocking to anyone reading this, but DRESSi isn’t the first sexy BFY sauce we’ve seen. In the past fews years we’ve seen She’s The Sauce, Sauce Revival and the soon-to-launch Lighten Up Foods, made with EPG—one of the first non-David products to use it!

  • Companies like Primal Kitchen and Chosen Foods already proved out the demand for BFY salad dressings. But in Kendall’s announcement video, she specifically called out the other “healthy salad dressings” that included “avocado oil” (with air quotes) which we’ve now discovered is often a blend of oils. The differentiator here is that it’s 100% olive oil, with a few grams of added protein, and a cutesy squeeze bottle donning millennial pink. It’s a smart move for Kendall’s wellness-obsessed audience and an increasingly discerning cohort of BFY shoppers.

• The final boss of protein. There we have it folks, Mars has finally released protein Cheez-Its. There will have 7g of protein per serving and 100% real cheese, rolling out to retail shelves nationwide this month.

  • Mars isn’t first to this party, though—in fact, they were beat at their own game. In May, WILDE launched protein cheese crackers made with chicken breast, bone broth and real cheese, with 12g of protein per serving vs. Cheez-It’s 7g. The WILDE ones are seriously tasty and I’m curious to see how the legit Cheez-It ones will compare to both WILDE’s and to the OG Cheez-It.

• THC founders, zero THC. Nowadays founders Justin Tidwell and Anthony Puterman launched Unwind, a caffeine-free sparkling drink made with magnesium L-threonate and L-theanine for “everyday calm.” It’s in ~1,000 Walmart stores now, with a TikTok Shop launch in mid-October. The duo previously scaled Nowadays to $100M+ in sales in 3.5 years.

  

  • This is becoming a pattern. In July, the makers of Cantrip launched On the Brightside, a zero-THC “feel-good soda” made with Zembrin. Around the same time, Cann launched 0MG, its first zero-THC line, made with magnesium, L-theanine and passion flower. It’s all about finding a way to keep the “take the edge off” occasion but drop the THC.

  • A lot of this likely comes down to how uncertain things are with THC right now. The federal hemp ban is supposed to take effect this fall, with drinks getting an extra month until December, and some states, like New Jersey, have set their own deadlines on top of that. With that much up in the air, it makes sense that these founders would want a THC-free product to lean on, and it doesn’t hurt that it opens the door to retailers like Walmart, which have mostly steered clear of THC to date. We spoke in depth about this with Adam Terry founder of On the Brightside here in our podcast interview with him.

• Finally, some REAL gummy supplement innovation. OLLY, the gummy supplement brand owned by Unilever, has launched Mochi Bites in four formulas: Beauty, Sleep, Multi and Energy. They have a soft, chewy mochi texture, just 1g of sugar per serving, and they’re vegan.

  

  • It’s great to see a brand like OLLY, which Unilever acquired seven years ago, come out with a new format before any emerging brand has. Usually it’s the startups that test something new and the bigger brands that follow, so this is a nice change. Mochi is such a unique and interesting take on the gummy, and the data seems to back it up, with interest in mochi-related products up 17.1% year over year, and up 45.1% on TikTok, according to Spate.nyc.

  • What this really validates, though, is that gummy supplement brands know they’re selling a treat just as much as they’re selling a wellness product. If OLLY was just about the benefits, R&D would focus on ingredient innovation, and launches would be propped up by claims, not by new foodie formats.

  • As from Punam Patel, OLLY’s VP of Product told us: **

“We were drawn to mochi’s soft, pillowy texture and the unique experience it creates, but the challenge was figuring out how to pair that experience with the functional benefits consumers expect from a daily supplement. We worked on bringing these two worlds together for over three years, rethinking what a supplement could look, feel and taste like, while still delivering on what’s inside. For us, Mochi Bites are about pushing the boundaries of the category and giving consumers more choice in how they support their wellness goals.”

• Making fiber fun. Physician’s Choice, the supplement brand best known for its probiotics, is launching Fiber Jelly, a new snackable fiber treat with 6g of prebiotic fiber, 30 calories and 1g of sugar per serving. It hits TikTok Shop on 10/1 and Walmart on 10/24, where it’ll sell for $9.97 for a 7-count.

  

  • Fiber obviously isn’t new, and Physician’s Choice already sells a fiber powder and a fiber gummy. But this format feels like a peek into where fiber is going next. Launching on TikTok Shop first says a lot: the product itself is fun and unique in a way the rest of the lineup really isn’t. Most of Physician’s Choice’s products look pretty clinical and dry, while Fiber Jelly looks much more playful and social-first, which is exactly the kind of product that has a shot at going viral!

• Celebrity doesn’t always pay the bills. Scarlett Johansson’s clean skincare brand, The Outset, is shutting down after four years in business. The brand hasn’t shared why, but co-founder and CEO Kate Foster stepped down in 2025. It launched DTC in 2022 before expanding into Sephora, Nordstrom and Amazon.

  • From what we saw, ScarJo was pretty involved in The Outset, so this might have just been a case of the brand never getting to the scale it needed. Still, it’s a good reminder that a famous name can only take you so far as a brand. The Outset now joins a long list of celebrity beauty brands that have shut down, like Kim Kardashian’s KKW Beauty, Drew Barrymore’s Flower Beauty, and Gwen Stefani’s GXVE Beauty.

• TikTok <3s K-beauty. Dr.G, Korea’s No. 1 skincare brand, is pushing forward with its U.S. expansion with a TikTok Shop launch. The dermatologist-founded brand, which L’Oréal acquired in 2024, first debuted stateside on Amazon and is now bringing seven of its best-sellers and five exclusive bundles to TikTok Shop.

  • K-beauty keeps growing, with global sales up 53% year over year according to NielsenIQ, so it makes sense that L’Oréal picked TikTok Shop as Dr.G’s next stop.

  • At this point TikTok Shop is pretty clearly becoming the new Amazon. EMARKETER projects it’ll hit $23.4B in U.S. sales this year, up 48%, which would put it ahead of the U.S. ecommerce businesses of Target, Costco, Best Buy and Kroger. Retailers like Ulta, Sephora, Ralph Lauren, Olaplex and Best Buy have all opened TikTok storefronts recently to get in on the surge of sales.

Retail

• Walmart’s making pricing digital. Walmart announced a customer-facing upgrade to its in-store digital price tags: shoppers can now use the Walmart app to flash a green light on the shelf label for any item they’re searching for. But because these are digital price tags, it’s raised concerns that these labels could enable “surge pricing.” Our new coworkers (🥹) covered this on the Morning Brew Daily podcast on Friday.

Funding, Mergers, Acquisitions

• More creators on the cap table! Comedian and Therapuss podcast host Jake Shane has invested in Dolce Glow, the self-tanning brand that became Sephora’s No. 1 self-tanner within six months of launching there. It’s his first brand investment, but not his first foray into CPG—Shane is also the Chief Creative Officer of Katje’s, a vegan gummy candy company.

  • We’ve been seeing creator CPG investments more and more. Creators used to mostly launch their own brands, but now many are doing both. Alix Earle launched her skincare line, Reale Actives, and has also backed SipMargs and invested in Cymbiotika this summer. Jake Shane isn’t even the first big name on Dolce Glow’s cap table—Sofia Richie Grainge and Olivia Culpo joined the brand’s $11M Series A back in August. Brands are leaning into the trend, too! ESW Beauty recently named TikTok creators Katie Fang and Aliya Rachinski its first “creator equity partners.” There’s even a dinner series built around it, with Bulletpitch hosting a monthly “Influence Meets Venture” dinner connecting early-stage founders with top creators.

• Clean milk finds a clean home. Three Trees, a 14-year-old clean-label plant-based milk brand, has been acquired by Next in Natural for an undisclosed sum. Next in Natural also owns Chameleon Cold Brew, pairing the brands as a coffee-and-milk duo poised to expand distribution nationwide.

• The functional NA boom. Hiyo, a functional non-alcoholic “tonic” brand, raised an oversubscribed $20.8M Series B to expand its retail footprint and push deeper into live entertainment and nightlife.

  • Just as we mentioned above with the launch of Unwind, functional non-alc is a massively growing category of bevs—it almost feels like the next version of the prebiotic soda boom. Hiyo was ahead of the game—it was co-founded in 2019, developed for two years, then launched in 2021. Since then, its rolled out into over 11,000 retail locations nationwide (including Target, Whole Foods, Sprouts, and more) and secured a major multi-year national partnership with Live Nation (the same strategy that pushed Liquid Death to success).

  • Now, the brand seems to want to double down on that Live Nation strategy. If it can succeed at a concert, why not at a bar or a club?

• Boujee soda bucks. Something & Nothing, a premium soda brand, raised $6.4M led by Venrex to fund its first national US consumer marketing campaign, bringing total raised to $15.7M. The UK-founded modern soda brand now generates 65%+ of revenue in the US, with 70% revenue growth in June–July 2026 and Amazon sales more than doubling.

  • There are a lot of modern soda brands out there. But Something & Nothing lives by its name: it offers a little something special in flavor (really unique, fruit-forward flavors like Hibiscus & Rose and Mango & Thai Basil) but nothing in terms of added sugar of sweeteners—just a natural base of fruit juice and botanicals.

  • The design itself rejects modern soda. Instead of leaning into the playful designs of its shelf companions, this brand is minimalist and art-driven, a sophisticated older cousin of the pops of the set.

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In case you haven’t heard, we’re hosting the second edition of In Season this Tuesday, October 6th, in NYC! So if you’re local, in town for Adweek, or just passing through, we’d love to see you there!

In Season is Express Checkout’s quarterly event exploring the season’s three biggest trends and the brands bringing them to life. For this edition, we’re transforming a downtown gallery into a museum of trends—with plenty to taste along the way. Think a little Willy Wonka (wink wink), a lot of snacks, and a room full of people you’ll want to meet.

• A quick note: The event is reserved for select brands, investors, media, and tastemakers. If you’re a B2B platform or service provider interested in joining us or activating, hit reply to hear about our remaining sponsorship opportunities.

Getting this community together is one of our favorite things we do. Want to host a highly curated private dinner for our network of CPG professionals or partner with us on a future event? Just hit reply.

Now, let’s get into our picks of the week →

Nate’s Pickups:

Legit Queso

Hey, so you like cheese, right? You'd be crazy if you didn't. Honestly, even if you're lactose intolerant, you should still like cheese. Cheese is one of the main food groups, it's near the top of the pyramid, it's all over MyPlate. I'm just trying to say cheese is amazing and should be part of everyone's diet, especially in liquid form. Queso is one of the best ways to enjoy cheese if you ask me, and I know you were thinking it too. You can dip into it, coat a sandwich in it, and drink it if you so please (I wouldn't, that's too far). In my opinion, queso is best enjoyed with a nice tortilla chip, like these from a brand I'll cover soon, TOZI Superfoods (they have incredible products!). Let's get dipping, folks!

• Quick Facts: Chef-crafted, small-batch queso from Kiersten Bartlett, a Kansas City native turned Napa Valley chef who wanted a cheese dip made with whole ingredients and no preservatives. Comes in three heat-and-eat varieties: Queso Dip, Buffalo Queso, and Queso Mac.

• Reasons to love:

  • Scratches the dip itch. I don’t know about you, but when I think of queso, good or bad, I picture the store-bought Tostitos version. It has the right texture, the right taste, and even the right color, though that color isn’t exactly found in nature. I bring this up because most of the healthier, cleaner quesos I’ve tried over the past decade just haven’t been good. They’re grainy, or thin, or they taste like someone described queso to a person. The only other queso I’ve truly enjoyed has come from a restaurant or a bar. These are excellent. You won’t get the neon orange glow, because they’re made with real ingredients. And taste-wise, sorry Tostitos. It tastes homemade. Plus, the texture is perfect. It has that slightly thick, slightly loose consistency you picture when you imagine queso.

  • It’s legit. The name really does check out. These use real and fresh ingredients. Bartlett grew up on the classic Velveeta, then spent time at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa and got deep into farm-to-table cooking, which raised her standards for everything she cooked and bought. So she rebuilt queso from scratch. Getting the right queso texture with natural ingredients apparently took Bartlett a while to nail, and you can taste that effort. It also ships refrigerated, which tells you a lot about what’s inside (and what isn’t).

  • Refreshing founder story. This one doesn’t feel as buzzy or growth-hacky as a lot of new brands do. Bartlett has about 30 years of entrepreneurial ventures behind her. The queso idea came when her Kansas City catering business was asked to put together a football party pack. She later moved to Napa and opened a shop called Legit Provisions, which sold the queso until it closed in 2022. She planned to retire, then decided to bring her queso to a broader market instead. She started by selling to local specialty stores, wineries, and the farmers’ market, and she’s now picking up East Coast momentum launching soon in Gopuff and Pop Up Grocer.

Where to buy: Online (ships cold) and in select retails

Jenna’s Pickup:

NUFS Hot Honey Drizzled Crackers

This week, I had the absolute privilege of flying out to Austin with the wonderful Whole Foods Market team for a sneak peek at their (very exciting) 2027 Trends Report, which we’ll be sharing more on in an upcoming newsletter. 👀 During the trip, the WFM team introduced us to multiple brands, including some of the successful graduates of their LEAP Program, an incubator program that discovers and develops promising local and emerging brands through mentorship, a 12-week curriculum, and investment opportunities.

One of those brands was Austin-based NUFS, and I got to chat with co-founder Jessica Tran at length. Jessica started the business with her sister, Kristine, after their father was diagnosed with diabetes, and they struggled to find low-sugar, filling snacks made with clean ingredients. After dabbling in a few different formats, they landed on the humble cracker—and have produced one of the cleanest crackers on the market, without sacrificing a single hint of culinary excellence.

• Quick Facts: Gluten-free, simple-ingredient crackers made with extra virgin olive oil and hand-drizzled with delicious hot honey (real honey).

• Reasons to love:

  • Bold statement alert: This is the perfect cracker. The base is like a gourmet, better-for-you Wheat Thin (slightly sweet, snappy, craveable), and the drizzle adds the most satisfying textural note and spicy-sweet decadence. I love the concept of a drizzled cracker; it adds some textural variety and a pop of flavor that makes these ridiculously satisfying on their own, but also perfectly primed for any cheese board they may grace.

  • Super simple, recognizable ingredients. The whole impetus of this brand was to create something really “clean”—a term I often take issue with, but can appreciate when it’s done right. NUFS uses a base of almond, rice, & cassava flour, tapioca starch, and EVOO, plus spices and a drizzle of real honey.

  • A hosting hack. NUFS should be a pantry staple for any frequent host. They’re naturally gluten-free and dairy-free, so they’re a safe go-to for any entertainment occasion involving crackers (every good one does) and diet-restricted partygoers (again, every good one does). I love an option that everyone can have, but also everyone loves—it doesn’t feel like a cardboardy diet-friendly copout cracker. The packaging is also elevated enough that you could put out the whole box, but the drizzled cracker also stands on its own aesthetically.

Where to buy: Online, Whole Foods Markets, or another store near you!

In case you missed it… 🎧

This week, we're sitting down with Aaron Butterworth, Senior Specialist in Product Development at Häagen-Dazs, who's been developing flavors for the brand for over 20 years!

She walks us through the entire journey of making ice cream for a massive brand, from brief to shelf—including the "ice cream charcuterie" brainstorming process (as dreamy as it sounds), why some great flavor ideas can never survive a factory, and how Häagen-Dazs's commitment to a clean label shapes everything about the product.

Plus, we're tasting two new flavors on air (!!!!), getting the inside story on Häagen-Dazs's discontinued non-dairy line, and learning how the brand thinks about trends.

Catch the full episode below 👇

We’ve got something very exciting coming to NYC next week!

On October 6th, we’re hosting the second edition of In Season—Express Checkout’s quarterly event spotlighting the season’s three biggest trends and the brands bringing them to life. This time, we’re taking over a gallery in downtown NYC and turning it into a museum of trends, complete with plenty of opportunities to taste your way through it. Willy Wonka would be proud (hint hint). You’ll want to be at this one!

• A quick note: This event is reserved for select brands, investors, media, and tastemakers. If you’re a B2B platform or service provider interested in attending or activating, reply to this email to learn about our remaining sponsorship opportunities!

We can’t wait to bring so many members of our NYC community together in one room. :) If you’re interested in hosting a highly curated private dinner for our network of CPG professionals—or want to get involved in one of our larger events—just hit reply.

Let’s get into it →

News From the Week

When every brand seems to be launching into Target… what does a Target launch actually validate?

A few years ago, a Target launch meant something big for a growing brand: you’ve finally reached mass-market appeal, you’re widely distributed, you’ve made it. But as Target shifts as a retailer, the meaning of the bullseye logo shifts, too. This has been coming up in countless conversations we’ve been having with investors, and we decided it was time to finally dig in.

A little background: Last week, we talked about how many better-for-you and premium brands are skipping the natural/specialty channel launch strategy and launching straight into Target (or Walmart).

It looks like a win-win from both ends:

• Target, as we’ve covered before, is looking to change its reputation to be seen as a discovery channel for buzzy food, bev, and wellness brands.

• Brands seek the mass-market appeal of a Target launch. Adding that coveted Target logo to their decks, sharing that (AI-generated) social post of a giant rendering of their product in front of a Target store, means that they really made it.

Or, at least, that’s what it used to mean. As more and more emerging brands launch into Target every week, the bullseye may not be the prize it used to be.

Disclaimer: This isn’t a knock on Target. Target is still choosy about what it brings in, but it does want to test a lot of brands; to become a grocery + wellness destination, so you need an exciting assortment.

At the same time, when a retailer is testing that many brands, some won’t take off for a variety of reasons, and some just aren’t built for a nationwide footprint.

We asked 5 investors how they’re evaluating this brand milestone. We’ve anonymized answers at the request of interviewees.

Investor A (VC firm targeting early-stage brands):

“Getting into Target used to be a really big validation and milestone for an emerging food & beverage brands, but over the past year or so that distinction has lost its sheen as we’ve seen a surge of approvals to launch at Target including brands with little to no traction elsewhere. It seems Target is throwing everything at the shelf and seeing what sticks.

We have also seen that, without signing up for Roundel, Target’s in-house retail media network, emerging brands have very little chance of being successful because they won’t even be eligible for placement in out-of-aisle displays and endcaps that drive real trial and increased velocities.

Target is still a leader in the beauty and personal care space for emerging brands, and a stronger signal for us there [than food and beverage].”

Investor B (PE firm targeting growth-stage brands):

“Performance at Target has become increasingly important for the brands we diligence, in part because Target is often the first brick-and-mortar or mass retail partner for emerging brands. How a brand performs there is a leading indicator of how it will fare in a truly competitive retail environment, versus eComm or the more curated natural channel.

Performance immediately post-launch can be hard to parse. Target often invests heavily behind new launches—end caps and other preferential real estate in a brand’s first few weeks—so early numbers can flatter. What matters most is repeat purchase and velocities versus competitor brands.

Retail remains hyper-competitive, and the pace of innovation and new product launches only accelerates year after year.”

Investor C (VC firm targeting venture-stage and growth-stage):

“Target seems to be willing to bring in almost anyone very early these days. While it’s still an awesome signal to land the account, what ultimately matters is what you achieve once on shelf.

I have a theory that Target is basically pitting brands against each other by bringing in multiple new brands per category before determining who actually gets a placement. As an investor, I now want to know how your product performs at Target, not just that you won the placement.”

Investor D (VC firm targeting early-stage, seed):

I wouldn’t say it carries any more or less weight than it did 5 years ago, because national mass distribution at Target is a huge accomplishment. Now every large retailer has built an emerging brands funnel. Shelf count went from scarce to abundant. The thing that matters most, both then and now, is VELOCITY.

Other major signals for us are:

1. Cohort repeat. Not “we have x% repeat rate,” but “what is the repeat rate at 90 and 180 days, and whether it is improving with each cohort.” This is the single most predictive stat to look at in consumer.
2. Unsupported velocity in challenging door. a brand doing top decile in U/S/W in a chain with no promos, no demos, and no trade budget tells me much more than a national launch with significant discounts, trade spend, and sampling. It shows true product-market fit.
3. Full price sell-through. Is your product moving without giving it away?

There are a few risks to launching in target:

1. Scaling a leaky bucket. If your repeat rates aren’t proven, then national distribution doesn’t solve that for you. It just makes the problem larger.

2. Cash. Free fills, slotting, inventory build, trade spend, and long payment terms all hit before you receive a dollar back!

3. Failure is public. You only get one national launch at target- and if you blow it you are ‘screwed.’

4. Concentration. One merchant can control a large majority of your sales.

Investor E (VC firm targeting venture-stage and growth-stage):

“Target is a fantastic retail partner, but just getting in isn’t enough. We need to see Target is investing in the brand over time - more stores, shelf space, additional SKUs, preferential retail marketing opportunities, etc.”

”It’s critical to ensure there’s already demand built up for your product, and that consumers will be looking for it on shelves as organic discovery won’t be as efficient. Also important to ensure the supply chain is set up to support such a large retailer as you won’t get the chance to redo a Target launch again.”

What do you think about Target launches?

CPG & Consumer Goods

• Would you drink an EVOO beer? Athletic Brewing and Graza launched Cold Off The Press, a limited-edition non-alcoholic pils actually brewed with Graza’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil!

  • Graza looooves testing a new category via a collab—it’s how the brand proves its thesis that olive oil can be a platform brand, without having to commit to creating that product from scratch. Historically, this has looked like:

    • An Olive Oil Hummus with Ithaca Hummus

    • Olive Oil Crackers with Firehook

    • Olive Oil Popcorn with BjorQorn

    • And even another non-alc bev, its Olive Oil Martini (”Dry Guys”) with Aura Bora (RIP)

  • This is one of those brands that feels like it’s collab’ing with everybody (see also: Good Girl Snacks and Fishwife), so seeing another Graza Collab surely induces some eye-rolls. But with Aura Bora’s bev out of the picture, and the name recognition + brand loyalty of Athletic Brewing, this one is actually a collab we can get behind.

  • Just last week, we talked about how we’re seeing a lot of innovation in the NA beer space. For the past three weeks, we saw an NA innovation every week: first, Herb Light came out with a first-of-its-kind NA beer featuring 1mg of hemp-derived THC. Then, Optimum Nutrition launched the first protein NA beer. And last week, C4 Energy launched a beer-flavored energy drink, All Hopped Up, with its classic 200 mg of caffeine and added vitamin B12. This week marks a full month of NA-beer-related innovations, which tells us that brands are seeing this category as ripe for innovation—or at least as a strong base for testing LTOs.

• There’s a first for everything. Hidden Valley Ranch has launched its first-ever seasonal holiday release, Spooky Ranch, a limited-edition black-colored dressing made with fruit juice and cocoa, all packaged in a fun glow-in-the-dark bottle.

  • It’s wild to think that Hidden Valley hasn’t done any seasonal launches yet. This is their first one, ever. They’ve done a lot of different flavors and collabs (who remeber Van Leeuwen?) but they haven’t done a seasonal product, which is a staple of the CPG world now. Every big (and small) CPG brand has at least one season a year they’ll make a product for. At the end of the day we’re just happy it wasn’t pumpkin spice flavored.

    

• Beyond, take notes. Voyage Foods, a food-tech startup that makes cocoa-free chocolate, beanless coffee, and allergen-free spreads, is exiting retail to double down on B2B ingredient supply. Voyage will partner with Cargill to bring its ingredients to CPG and foodservice companies at scale, using its nearly 300,000-square-foot Ohio facility it built last year to help lower costs, shore up supply, and hit sustainability goals.

  • A quick Voyage Foods recap: Voyage Foods was founded in February 2021 by food scientist Adam Maxwell and co-founder Alec Lee. Their goal was to build a food technology company that makes alternatives to cocoa, coffee, and peanuts. Its mission is to separate popular foods from supply chains that are unstable or ethically troubled. The company uses up-cycled ingredients and cheap commodity crops like grape seeds and grains to match the taste and texture of the originals. Its core strategy is built around keeping those products affordable and allergen-free. Voyage came out of stealth in May 2022 with a $36M Series A and later that year, it launched its first product, a Peanut-Free Spread, starting at Sprouts. In October 2023, its Peanut-Free and Hazelnut-Free Spreads went nationwide at Walmart and online. In 2024, Voyage signed an exclusive global distribution deal with Cargill and raised another $52M, bringing its total to about $94M. It also announced a 284,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Mason, Ohio, backed by a roughly $25M USDA-guaranteed loan. This May, Voyage and Cargill launched NextCoa, its cocoa-free chocolate ingredient, in the US.

  • This pivot makes a ton of sense. Many of the food-tech startups that took off in the early 2020s assumed consumers would care about the science upfront. Most shoppers really just care whether something tastes good, is priced right, and makes their lives better. Often, once they hear a product isn’t “real,” there tends to be some backlash and confusion. We’ve seen this play out across plant-based meat, with Beyond Meat struggling to turn innovation into lasting demand. The B2B angle lets Voyage keep the technology behind the scenes and sell brands on benefits that actually move the needle. And, honestly, that may be where a lot of food-tech startups belong. They can build incredible science, but they’re often not great at branding or world-building or giving consumers a real reason to care. It makes more sense to become a valuable ingredient supplier and to let the founders and teams who actually know how to build brands turn that innovation into products people want to buy.

• No one is safe from the Costco. This week, Costco’s Kirkland Signature brand launched its very own Liquid IV competitor: their hydration electrolyte drink mix.

  • Costco is building a health-and-wellness empire. Kirkland Signature already has whey protein and ready-to-drink protein shakes, and earlier this year it launched an energy drink aimed squarely at Celsius. Their energy drink in particular made some serious waves. Celsius’s namesake sales fell 12% year over year during the quarter, with CEO John Fieldly reportedly pointing to Kirkland’s lower-priced competitor as a main factor. Costco is a HUGE account for Celsius, representing roughly 11% of Celsius’s global revenue last year before rolling out the dupe. Brutal stuff, man!

• I’ve got a golden ticket! Ferrero is bringing the iconic Wonka candy brand back to shelves with four new limited-edition treats tied to Netflix’s new series, Wonka’s The Golden Ticket—and it looks like this is more than a one-off collab. After the brand largely disappeared from US shelves around the time Ferrero acquired the rights back in 2018, the company is calling this the start of a “new chapter” with reportedly even more Wonka products already in the works.

  • And if we got anybody from the Ferrero and Wonka team reading this newsletter, please bring back the Wonka donut! For the love of God, that was one of my favorite candy products ever. It’s probably my golden goose of discontinued products. - N

    

• Sexual wellness is back on the beauty shelf. Maude, a premier sexual wellness brand founded by Éva Goicochea, is entering more than 600 Target Beauty Studios and nearly 400 Ulta Beauty stores in its largest retail expansion to date. The rollout includes its lubricants, massage products, and vibrators.

  • Sexual wellness is becoming one of beauty and personal care’s next frontiers as retailers stretch “wellness” beyond skincare and supplements. Ulta now counts intimate care among four key wellness growth areas and believes wellness could become its next $1B category. The bet both Target and Ulta are taking stands in sharp contrast to Sephora, which brought Maude into US stores in 2023 but has since scaled back its overall wellness assortment and moved several sexual wellness products—including Maude’s Vibe vibrator— to online only 🤷‍♀️

  • For more on how sexual wellness is moving into mainstream beauty and personal care, read our deep dive: Let’s talk about sexual wellness!

• Haircare you can drink. Arrae, a wellness supplement brand best known for its Bloat capsules, launched Hair Protein. A real thing. It’s a lemonade-flavored daily stick pack with around a 3g keratin-and-collagen protein complex. It’s designed to target shedding, stress, and overall scalp health. The brand developed it with celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton and his daughter, Kitty Bluu, positioning it as a protein-first alternative to the endless sea of biotin gummies.

  • Beauty is getting a lot more snackable. Ingestible beauty used to mean pills, like a lot of pills. Then collagen powders and gummies came on the scene, and those formats have only gotten bigger and bigger thanks to brands like Lemme, Grüns, and even Arrae. But now, the category is getting broader in format and much more targeted in what each product is supposed to do. Freaks of Nature launched an electrolyte for skin-barrier and UV support. Kylie Jenner’s k2o made a skincare-focused hydration stick with collagen and hyaluronic acid. ARMRA even put its very popular colostrum into a can. And now Arrae is making a protein powder specifically designed to support your hair.

  • And haircare overall is absolutely booming. The category has moved way beyond simple shampoos and conditioners into scalp serums, growth systems, supplements, hard-water treatments, and even menopause-specific solutions. Hair, like body care, is getting the full skinification treatment.

• Third time’s the charm? Skims has confirmed a 2027 launch for Skims Beauty, Kim Kardashian’s latest cosmetics play after KKW Beauty and SKKN by Kim. The $5 billion brand has already hired Ami Colé founder Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye as Executive VP Beauty.

  • All we have to say is this is going to absolutely CRUSH it.

• Is this the next viral soap? Three former Bubble Skincare execs have launched LeNose, a $10 Soap de Parfum line backed by a $3 million oversubscribed pre-revenue round from Era (Aesop’s early investor) and Fifth Growth Fund. They’re launching across DTC, TikTok Shop, and Amazon before entering retail in 2027.

  

  • Accessible luxury is bleeding into every corner of consumer. Gen Z is finally growing up, I mean the oldest are nearly 30! These newly formed adults have jobs but that doesn’t mean they have a whole lot of disposable income to fill their apartments and homes with Aesop. Shoppers are more price-conscious than ever, but they still want the scent, taste, vibe, and visual language of a luxury product. Luckily, founders everywhere heard them. We’ve watched brands like Laundry Sauce, Snif, and Homecourt turn everyday home products into these little luxuries by making them smell better, look good enough to leave out, and cost WAY less than the products they’re trying to emulate. LeNose is making the same bet at the sink. Gen Z has taste, but not everyone wants to part with a crisp $100 bill for a few ounces of soap. A crisp $10 bill, though? That just might work. And they’re not being subtle about the ambition either. They named it Soap de Parfum not just hand soap.

  • You can also see plenty of Bubble in the launch. Bubble took a sleepy, colorless, medical feeling category and made it bright, cheaper, and very very Gen Z coded and it very much worked. Bubble does over $100M in annual sales, is sold in over 17,000 doors and hired Centerview last year to explore a sale. LeNose is that playbook applied to the home. Era’s Claire Cherry made the comparison herself, saying the team’s ambition is “akin to what the team achieved with Bubble.”

  • And this is just another note in the fragrance boom we’ve been seeing. Scent is no longer the job of a traditional fragrance brand. Traditional fragrance is popular, more than ever, but fragrance is so much broader now. Body care, personal care, haircare, home care, and even laundry brands are treating fragrance as a core reason to buy, layered on top of any efficacy claims. Efficacy, is basically table stakes now. Fragrance is one of the easiest ways to make an everyday product feel expensive. For Gen Z consumers—who increasingly treat scent as a form of self-expression but don’t always have full-size perfume money—a $10 hand soap is a pretty low-stakes way to buy into luxury. We made the same point in our luxe-laundry deep dive from a few weeks ago.

Retail

• ALDI is coming over for dinner. The grocer is launching its first fresh ready-made meal line, with five single-serve options under $8 and two family-size meals under $15. The protein-forward lineup begins rolling out in October and will reach stores nationwide by January 2027.

  • There’s a lot more here than another private-label launch from a major retailer. Prepared foods are becoming a regular grocery habit for shoppers. According to McKinsey’s State of Grocery North America report, 61% of consumers now buy ready-to-eat grocery meals at least monthly and purchase frequency overall rose 9% year over year for the category. Roughly one-quarter are using them instead of restaurants largely for convenience and time savings efforts.

  • And yes, there’s a GLP-1 angle here as well. With around 11% of U.S. adults now taking GLP-1s for weight loss—up from 3% in 2024—the market for smaller, fixed portions is growing rapidly. ALDI isn’t explicitly targeting these shoppers, but single-serve meals with 30–46 grams of protein fit neatly into how many consumers are eating now. They want less volume, more protein, and fewer leftovers.⁠ We wouldn’t be surprised if this was a main driver here.

Funding, Mergers, & Acquisitions

• Squeezing toward an exit. Graza, the viral olive oil brand, has reportedly hired Lazard to explore a sale that could value the company between $450 million and $600 million. The brand generates a reported $30 million in EBITDA and is seeking a 15x–20x multiple.

  • This ambitious price reflects Graza’s crazy rapid rise to stardom. The company is now the fifth-largest national olive oil brand, drove a reported 24% of the category’s growth in 2025, and doubled its retail footprint to more than 11,000 doors. After generating $48 million in gross sales last year, Graza says it’s on track to triple that figure this year alone.

  • Graza’s impact extends beyond the numbers too. Its instantly recognizable squeeze bottles became fixtures in viral recipes and stylish kitchens, helping to turn olive oil from a basic pantry staple into a design-forward, relatively accessible, and culturally relevant CPG category. Just look across the olive oil aisle today and you’ll see basically everyone has launched their own version of Graza.

• Fertility for all! Fertility supplement brand Bird&Be raised $13M to expand its product line and double down on a “both partners” approach to reproductive health. BDC Thrive and BFG Partners co-led the round, with participation from BAM Ventures, Founder Collective, Rejuvenation Ventures, and HSR Ventures.

  • Fertility has long been marketed as a women’s issue—even though conception isn’t really a one-person undertaking in making a baby. That’s what makes Bird&Be’s approach so refreshing. Fertility—and as we mentioned earlier, sex more broadly—has been treated as awkward and taboo for way too long, with women expected to carry most of the burden here. Bringing both partners into the conversation makes the category feel a lot more honest and equitable and actually reflective of how making a baby works.

• Bye bye silver foxes. Unilever Ventures, alongside existing investors Greycroft and Female Founders Fund, invested in Arey’s Series A round. The haircare brand makes supplements and topical products designed to slow—and potentially reverse—gray hair using vitamins, antioxidants, and peptides (classic). Funding terms were not disclosed.

In case you missed it… 🎧

Last week we sat down with Aaron Butterworth, Senior Specialist in Product Development at Häagen-Dazs, who’s been developing flavors for the brand for over 20 years! We learned how Häagen-Dazs thinks about then actually makes new pints and flavors of ice cream!

Catch the full episode below 👇

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe, like, leave a comment, and share it! It helps us continue to bring you the most interesting news + nuance in consumer and retail every week.

Subscribe now

This week, we hosted the most incredible dinner that we now must brag about publicly: we partnered with the wonderful team at Petra Labs to bring together 20 top growth marketers + founders in consumer brands at Dirty French in NYC.

We learned a ton from this stacked lineup of guests, from how they’re thinking about attribution and AI search discovery, to what a day-in-the-life of a viral candy brand founder looks like (shoutout Leo from BonBon). The evening was full of fantastic conversation, learnings, and connections—not to mention ridiculously good food that we’re all still thinking about…

If you’re looking to curate a room of interesting folks in consumer brands in NYC, reply to this email. We’d love to chat!

Now, let’s get into our picks of the week →

Nate’s Pickups:

Saint Spritz

I’ve been really into wine lately. I mean, I did just spend a week in Lisbon earlier this month—home to some of the world’s best wines—and drank a lot of it while I was in Portugal. Saint Spritz isn’t exactly straight wine, but it scratches a similar itch. Who doesn’t love a wine spritz? It’s light, refreshing, and one of the best ways to enjoy a spritz-y drink. I actually first tried these these at our Yom Kippur break-fast meal recently. Me and my friend each went through each of the flavors, and then finished up the night with the non-alcoholic versions. We were very happy with this situation and recommend everyone do the same.

• Quick Facts: A family-led brand co-founded by JoJo Fletcher (of Bachelor and Bachelorette fame), Mallory Patton, and Ben Patton. It’s a line of Italian-inspired canned wine spritzes made with 25–35% real fruit juice and come in three core flavors—Amalfi, Hugo, and Sicily Lemon Basil—plus complementary non-alcoholic versions with no added sugar. The brand is sold online and at major retailers including Target, Walmart, Whole Foods, H-E-B, Albertsons, and Total Wine & More.

• Reasons to love:

  • Tastes fresh. These taste like something I’d drink at a bougie Italian coastal hotel by the ocean. Like i’m on that Italian season of White Lotus! And I mean that in the best possible way. They taste incredibly fresh, probably because they use 25–35% real fruit juice—which is apparently 10x more than the leading canned spritzes. They’re well-formulated and do not compromise on flavor whatsoever. They taste like a homemade wine spritz you’d get at a bar or restaurant. Basically, they taste like vacation in a can.

  • A perfect pair. One thing Saint Spritz has done that I really like, and haven’t seen many alcohol brands do, is launch complementary non-alcoholic versions of its canned cocktails. So you can kick off the night with the boozy drinks and wrap up with the non-alc ones, while keeping the same flavors going. They are also made with real fruit juice and no added sugar and honestly they taste great in their own right.

  • The branding is gorgeous. The branding, marketing, and positioning are all incredibly strong. It looks and feels very premium, like an Italian wine spritzer in a can. Shocking. The brand also leans into the “better-for-you” side of the consumer world really well but without being pushy, keeping everything still elevated and aspirational.

Where to buy: Online and in select retailers.

Jenna’s Pickup:

Sāch Artisanal A2 Milk Paneer

This is partly a Weekly Pickup, but mostly a public service announcement: We are all sleeping on paneer as a society. If you’re unfamiliar, paneer is a soft, non-melting Indian cheese made by curdling milk with lemon juice or vinegar. It’s used in many vegetarian Indian dishes, almost like how you’d use tofu, but it offers a richer taste and more satisfying texture.

As a pescatarian (something I find myself accidentally preaching in nearly every newsletter…), I’m always looking for more non-meat protein options that can be the star of a meal, especially for hosting. If you’re catering to a veg-friendly crowd that contains a sneaky tofu hater (every dinner party does, statistically), paneer may be your new best friend—and Sāch is doing something really special with theirs.

• Quick Facts: Artisanal, small-batch paneer made by two first-generation Indian immigrants seeking better-tasting, high-protein meatless options.

• Reasons to love:

  • Gut-friendly dairy 🤝 paneer. Typically, paneer is made with normal cow’s milk, but Sāch is thoughtfully innovating with A2/A2 milk. This milk contains only the A2 beta-casein protein, which many find to be gentler on the gut! If you’re dairy-sensitive and still looking to enjoy a paneer dish, this is the only one I’d recommend.

  • Quality you can taste. This paneer is made in small batches with high-quality dairy, and you can taste the difference. Even my friend from Delhi said it was the best paneer he’d had in the States, and tasted just like dishes he’s had at home! If you’ve ever cooked with paneer at home, you know that the options are fairly limited in the US, with many stores only offering one SKU. I was so excited to see a brand innovating in paneer here, recognizing that better options can sometimes create demand, rather than the other way around.

  • You actually cannot mess this up. Though cultural dishes can be intimidating, I promise, you will not mess up a paneer dish. Paneer is easy to work with—you don’t need to cook it through (like meat proteins) and it doesn’t rely on add-ins to improve its texture. Like tofu, paneer acts like a sponge in most dishes, absorbing sauces beautifully. But unlike tofu, it offers a smoother, creamier, more homogenous texture, and a light, cheesy flavor—none of the sometimes-polarizing earthiness of tofu. I added my paneer to a curry dish by just… throwing it into the pan with sauce and peas and leaving it for a few minutes. It came out perfectly, and I’m already planning my next paneer creation.

Where to buy: Find in a store near you!

In case you missed it… 🎧

This week, we're sitting down with Aaron Butterworth, Senior Specialist in Product Development at Häagen-Dazs, who's been developing flavors for the brand for over 20 years!

She walks us through the entire journey of making ice cream for a massive brand, from brief to shelf—including the "ice cream charcuterie" brainstorming process (as dreamy as it sounds), why some great flavor ideas can never survive a factory, and how Häagen-Dazs's commitment to a clean label shapes everything about the product.

Plus, we're tasting two new flavors on air (!!!!), getting the inside story on Häagen-Dazs's discontinued non-dairy line, and learning how the brand thinks about trends.

Catch the full episode below 👇

The breakdown:

0:00 - Intro + Aaron’s role at Häagen-Dazs
3:01 - The flavor development process
7:44 - How to make ice cream factory-friendly
12:00 - “Overrun” and what’s not in the ice cream
16:00 - Where flavor ideas come from
23:34 - The science of texture
25:14 - Behind the (discontinued) non-dairy experiment
35:31 - Tasting our fave new flavor + what’s next

PS. If you’re in NYC and interested in attending our seasonal trends event on 10/6, you can request to join us here!!! :)

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Tuesday newsletter coming at ya after we both took off for the Jewish holiday yesterday. Enjoy this day-late send :)

Crazy fact of the week: for the average food or bev brand, a dollar of wholesale sales translates to just ~$0.81 in the bank (after trade, promos, and deductions).

Roughly a fifth of every gross wholesale dollar never even arrives. Amazon keeps the most ($0.93); wholesale keeps the least.

This data comes from Drivepoint’s new Food & Beverage Brand Benchmark, built from the reconciled P&Ls and order-level cohorts of food, beverage, and ingestible brands, with DTC, Amazon, and wholesale kept separate. A few more sneak peeks of the gold mine of data in this report:

• $56 to win a DTC customer, breakeven at the one-year mark, and median LTV:CAC at day 360 is 1.02x.

• Amazon customers cost $16 and pay back 2.38x.... before merchant fees and fulfillment take roughly a quarter of sales.

• The pool overall: 66% gross margin, 1.8% EBITDA margin, 54% growth. Most brands are running near breakeven and buying growth on purpose!!

• 91 days of inventory, a 39-day cash conversion cycle. Food brands don’t usually die from a bad product. They die from working capital.

The guide closes with five numbers to pull from your own books this week, with the quartile thresholds to score yourself against.

Download the free Food & Beverage Benchmark here!

News From the Week

Last week, another premium, better-for-you brand launched straight into Target—adding to the growing list of brands bypassing the natural channel.

In today’s slightly different deep dive, we’re sharing an interview with the brains behind that brand, then digging into our thesis around this strategy.

Let’s get into it →

Interview with Mark Ramadan, Co-founder of Riff

Every “convenience” meal brand of the last decade has optimized for one thing: getting you further from the stove.

Riff is a new meal kit from Mark Ramadan (Sir Kensington’s, Hu) and Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park) that’s betting the opposite—that the 15 minutes of actually cooking is the part people want back.

We (virtually) sat down with Mark to talk about why he built a meal kit instead of a heat-and-eat, what two very different pantry categories taught him about standing out, and why Target, not Whole Foods, got the first call.

On designing for both standalone eating and customization:

The small idea for Riff is to help people make dinner; the big idea is to bring joy back into the kitchen. Riff is delicious straight out of the box, but the real opportunity is helping people feel confident experimenting with veggies, proteins, herbs, or whatever is in the fridge. Testing recipes as both standalone products and bases for customization certainly added complexity.

The baseline question for us was––can we stand behind this SKU as-is, and does it become even more restaurant-quality, even more exciting, when just a few simple ingredients are added? It’s easy for something to feel incredible if you add expensive inclusions at home (fresh grated parmigiano reggiano, for example), but our goal was for it to feel just as special with ingredients you could buy anywhere, anytime (like broccoli), so that was our focus. In practice, that meant designing a simple, standard preparation system rather than focusing on any single combination.

On choosing the format itself (inclusions optional, “riffing” encouraged):

It was a mix of data and intuition. Data shows people are cooking at home more than at any time since 2012 (over 80% of meals), but they’re also exhausted after work, budget-conscious, and overwhelmed by endless recipe content.

Intuitively, we knew that weeknight “what’s for dinner?” stress all too well. We craved an “in-between” option: not an hour-long, fully-from-scratch meal, but not expensive delivery or plastic microwave meals either. We made Riff for how people actually want to cook—providing structure and inspiration while leaving room for creativity based on what’s in the fridge.

On choosing Target as the first retail partner:

Target has always been on the side of innovation, and this has been especially true in food over the past several years. Though my experience with Sir Kensington’s and Hu has been that the natural channel typically comes first, in the case of Riff, we wanted to create something that had mainstream appeal and affordability from day one. We feel like the question of dinner is a big one, a common one, and we couldn’t think of a partner better able to deliver on that opportunity than Target.

This “day-one mainstream” bet is becoming increasingly common, and we think it could be the new trajectory of premium, better-for-you CPG brands: bypass the natural channel entirely, and launch direct-to-mass-market.

And it seems that, among the new-age brands going straight to the Targets and Walmarts, many are structured similarly: celebrity co-founded with a CPG vet, accessibly-priced, relatively simple + non-polarizing packaging.

Some recent examples:

• Earlier this summer, we broke down Glen Powell’s condiment brand, Smash Kitchen, which debuted in Walmart with its entire product assortment priced under $5 to compete head-on with Kraft-Heinz rather than court the natural aisle first—and is on track to hit $100M in sales this year.

  • Co-founder Sameer Mehta (who cut his teeth in DTC with Casper and the natural channel with Honest Company) has said getting the price point competitive with the biggest incumbents was central to the strategy from day one, just like what Ramadan is describing with Target.

• HallPass, the new candy brand from Peter Rahal (okay this one isn’t a celeb, but Rahal is basically a CPG celebrity from RXBar and David) and Michael Tierney (formerly of Stuffed Puffs), similarly launched nationwide at Walmart. It’s priced alongside classic candy brands, which is unusual for better-for-you confection.

• cadootz! is a creator-led version going through Target. Rachel Mansfield (influencer + now cookbook author) launched her kids’ cracker brand nationwide at Target in June as its first time in stores, following a DTC debut whose first production run sold out in under two hours in January. The difference is that it tested DTC briefly first, but it still went straight to a mass retailer and skipped natural.

• Bero, the premium non-alcoholic beer brand co-founded by Tom Holland and John Herman, formerly the president of Nutrabolt, launched online-only in late 2024, and its first retail step was a nationwide Target launch.

For ~15 years, the standard path for a BFY brand was natural and specialty first, then mass. But now, BFY stopped being a niche, mass retailers are explicitly asking for it, and the founders who know the natural-to-mass path best are the ones who are skipping it in their second go-around.

The risk in the mass-first strategy is that it doesn’t leave much room for error. While a brand that isn’t flying off shelves in specialty can stealthily fix itself, a brand in 4,000 Walmart doors gets delisted publicly. That’s why this model works best for founders with a track record—but we’re curious to see if first-time founders start attempting this track.

CPG & Consumer Goods

• The Swedish candy boom is here.

  • Sweden’s most-bought car is now at Target, and we’re only kind of kidding here… Cloetta Group, the 164-year-old Swedish confectionery company, launched its Ahlgrens bilar candy car brand exclusively at Target stores nationwide. The car-shaped foam candy has been a Swedish staple since 1953 and comes in four varieties including Original, Sour, Fruity Duo, and Sour & Fruity. Cloetta says the brand sells ~2.6 billion candy cars every year in Sweden alone.

  • And in the same week, BonBon launched its two Moomin-branded varieties in more than 1,900 Target stores nationwide for $4.99 a bag. The rollout marks a major leap from niche specialty treat to mass-market category

  • The past few years have made one thing pretty clear: American candy does not cut it for consumers anymore. There has been a huge rush of Swedish and Swedish-adjacent candy, all building up for this moment.

    • The story actually begins in 2010, when Sockerbit, a pick-and-mix Swedish candy shop founded by a Swedish-American couple, opened in the West Village—years before it was a trend. But BonBon, founded in 2017 on the Lower East Side, was the real catalyst for the viral Swedish candy takeover. Rather than importing and reselling Swedish candy like Sockerbit, BonBon built original, Swedish-inspired products and invested heavily in design and a cohesive brand world. It was the perfect storefront for the social media era, and blossomed from a retailer into a beloved brand.

      

    • From there, the pick-and-mix format multiplied—Lil Sweet Treat, Candor, and others opened in its wake, offering the experiential shopping moment of choosing your own sweets. And once shoppers expect a format in-store, grocery follows, because it always does.

    • Bubs went from zero US presence to 60,000 retail stores in twelve months. Katjes has been having its moment in the sun, too, and recently named TikTok comedian Jake Shane its chief creative officer and launched Sourpuss—an octopus-shaped sour gummy named for his TikTok handle—into 1,200 Target stores.

    • And Funday—Australian, not Swedish, but featuring the same foam-on-gummy texture play—hit $100M in sales in five years and just landed 1,300 Target stores.

    • Even Smart Sweets, a brand with zero Swedish DNA, launched its first-ever foam candy this year (and it’s SO GOOD)—because the texture itself has become the trend, independent of the country of origin that popularized it.

    • This trend really shapeshifted from being more about experiential retail into being more about the product itself. The product was introduced into the US at the exact right time in wellness + food culture history: a bouncy, foam-forward texture American candy never had, sour profiles built for a generation that treats sour as a flex, and clean-label positioning (no dyes, no high-fructose corn syrup, natural colors) that reads as healthier even when the sugar content mostly isn’t.

• Add this to the growing list of things that didn’t need to exist: C4 Energy just launched a beer-flavored energy drink, All Hopped Up, with its classic 200 mg of caffeine and added vitamin B12—no alcohol (thank goodness), but flavor inspired by a hoppy brew. It’ll be sold on TikTok Shop (of course) and Amazon.

  • As a sucker for a pun, I’m glad this product exists so this name can shine. But as a discerning human with taste, I’m… concerned. Are people really seeking the taste of beer at the same hour that they’re seeking 200mg of caffeine?

  • In the last two weeks, we saw two other attempts to functionalize non-alcoholic beer: first, Herb Light came out with a first-of-its-kind NA beer featuring 1mg of hemp-derived THC. Then last week, Optimum Nutrition launched the first protein NA beer—we shared our thoughts on that in last week’s newsie. 🙃 Clearly, brands think that NA beer is a format that is ripe for functionalizing; the irony isn’t lost on us that it was created explicitly to de-functionalize beer.

  • Separately, C4 seems to be experimenting with trends. Last month, the brand came out with its first non-energy drink RTD: a protein soda. The lesson we’re learning here: when in doubt, launch something with protein or non-alc beer and hope for the best.

• In other energy news, is Red Bull on the outs?? Kroger has stopped selling Red Bull nationwide, citing that the last units sold in August and in-store coolers/displays were removed at the end of last month, while continuing to carry other energy drink brands.

  • The reason? According to inside sources, it was something of a pricing standoff: Red Bull wanted to raise wholesale prices, and Kroger wasn’t interested.

  • The reality is that a major retailer like Kroger would be willing to pay for a brand driving incremental growth to its category. Red Bull is, unfortunately, no longer that brand. As brands like Alani Nu and Celsius command shelf space with colorful brand blocks and pull in new consumers, that silver can is struggling to justify its existence.

• And one last piece of energy news… Nello is expanding its RTD energy drink line after a successful initial launch with Apple Rush. Now the functional powder brand is bringing four new flavors of its energy line to Target. Flavors that interestingly all feel surprisingly summer-coded. Rainbow Sherbet, in particular, has our attention.

• The new generation of Halloween candy is coming.

  • SmartSweets is launching its 2026 Halloween lineup at Target, including returning Gummy Worms and Sour Zombie Buddies (3g sugar, 50g bags) plus a new Mini Sweet Fish in 24-count snack packs.

  • This adds to a growing stack of new better-for-you Halloween candies emerging: Last year, Unreal Snacks launched its 26-count Halloween-branded variety packs of better-for-you chocolate-based candies. Other better-for-you brands with Halloween-specific snack-packs include YumEarth and Skinnydipped. Curious to see how the transition from the old guard (Snickers, Milky Ways, M&Ms, Skittles… and my personal favorite, Almond Joy) to these new, “cleaner” candies plays out as younger Millennials and Gen Z become parents.

  • But, despite legal efforts, a new, more realistic Reese’s pumpkin will not be part of the stack: Hershey secured dismissal of a lawsuit alleging its Reese’s Halloween pumpkins lacked the carved designs shown on packaging. The judge found plaintiffs suffered only “subjective disappointment,” not economic harm. And TBH… yea.

• A better bowel movement, now in gummy form! Grüns launched its newest product, Müves, a prebiotic fiber gummy with 10 grams of soluble fiber per pack. The Strawberry Kiwi gummies come in low- and no-sugar options.

  • Slowly but surely, Grüns is following the same path as many other gummy supplements: start with the multivitamin to get mass market appeal, then break the benefits out into many single-purpose products (see: OLLY). Across the Ü Snacks portfolio, it now has Grüns for greens, Nütrops for cognition, Immün for immunity, Jüced for pre-workout energy, and Müves for digestion—all (except the energy SKU) functions promised in the OG Grüns gummy product.

  • AG1 is also moving in a similar direction from “all-in-one” promise to a multi-SKU brand: It began with its all-in-one powder and had that for around 15 years before adding other products like AG1 Pro with creatine for the wellness maximizers, AGZ for sleep, and they even launched gummies for a more casual users. The play for both of these brands is to build a portfolio for every type of wellness consumer all under one roof.

  • At $66 for 28 servings, this is still very expensive fiber. Most consumers can get the same nutrient for much less from a powder or, you know, a salad (without the cyclospora of course). But the gummy format is much likelier to become a daily habit. There’s a reason Grüns was sold to Unilever for $1.2 billion!

• Prestige laundry hits mass retail. The Laundress, which Unilever acquired in January 2019 for a reported $100 million after it built its business mostly through its own website and Amazon, is headed to 600 Target stores with 15 SKUs and a Target-exclusive fragrance called Cloud. This marks the brand’s first major move beyond DTC into national brick-and-mortar retail, with over 1,000 stores planned by March 2027.

  • These scents were developed with a perfumer, and Target is even adding scent testers to the display! Fragrance has become one of the biggest trends in personal care, across traditional perfume to body wash, deodorant, and now laundry—offering an elevated feel that makes a chore feel like an upgraded ritual.

• Home care, meet the wellness industrial complex. Dropps, the DTC home-care brand best known for plastic-free laundry and dishwasher detergent pods, rebranded with updated packaging, website, and positioning (”Messy Life. Kind Ingredients. Actually Clean.”).

  

  • Function is only one part of how a product wins these days. Yes, the cleaner needs to clean your clothes or clean the floor or clean your dishes, but it also has to fit into the consumer’s current view of wellness. The old Dropps branding spoke more directly to a plant-based, sustainability-first shopper who may have even been on the crunchier side. But this new identity keeps their ingredient credibility they’re known for but packages it in a more modern and premium way. It then opens up the brand to this new wave of consumers who care just as much about how a product looks in their home as what’s inside it.

  • In case you’re unfamiliar, this brand kinda invented laundry pods: Jonathan Propper founded Dropps in 2006, spinning it out of Cot’n Wash, a gentler-detergent formula his mother developed in the 1980s for her cotton mill. He patented the pod format years before Tide brought its own version to shelves in 2012, and the brand ran on that eco-first identity for over a decade before taking its first outside money—$16M in 2020 from The Craftory, a firm that explicitly funds “anti-VC,” slow-growth, mission-driven brands. Dropps is now officially translating cred it’s held since before “clean” was a shelf category.

• A recipe for hyptertension (AKA, electrolytes for the “everyday consumer”). Momentous launched Daily Hydration, an electrolyte powder made for everyday use (not workouts) with 100mg sodium, 150mg chloride, 50mg potassium, and 2g functional carbohydrate.

  • We’ve been seeing more and more brands launch hydration products catered to the “everyday consumer,” and honestly, we’re getting a little concerned. If you’re not profusely sweating on a day-to-day basis, you likely don’t need to down a bev with added sodium for funsies. If anything, you may be overdoing it on the sodium front… and a generation of wellness-obsessed non-athletes hooked on electrolyte powders may lead to an aging population with seriously high blood pressure 🙃 - J

• Everyone wants in on matcha. La Colombe launched a line of RTD Matcha Lattes—Everyday, Strawberry, and Vanilla—made with single-origin Japanese matcha and lactose-free whole milk. Unsurprisingly, matcha sales at La Colombe cafés have grown 188% since 2023.

Retail

• Costco bets big on same-day. Costco expanded nationwide same-day delivery to Uber Eats (~600 locations) and DoorDash (~630 locations, 47 states + D.C.), adding two marketplace partners alongside incumbent Instacart. CEO Ron Vachris called same-day the fastest-growing segment of Costco’s digital business, and Uber One perks (fees waived on $60+ orders) makes Costco a loyalty amplifier for both brands

  • This will be interesting for Instacart in particular, which, up until this point, had been the go-to for Costco ecomm orders.

Funding, Mergers, & Acquisitions

• Celebrity checks keep flowing into CPG. Podcaster Jay Shetty has invested in Sleep or Die, the buzzy new wellness brand behind Sleep Strips (think Listerine stripes but for sleep). Shetty is no stranger to the CPG world. He also owns Juni, a sparkling tea brand that’s sold nationwide.

  • High-profile names are increasingly investing in brands rather than starting another their own brand from scratch. In the past few months alone we saw, Alix Earle invest in Cymbiotika, Bethenny Frankel took an ownership stake in DpHue, TikTok creators Katie Fang and Aliya Rachinski became equity partners in ESW Beauty, and NBA players including Draymond Green and Anthony Davis invested in Beekeeper Coffee. And then there are brands like TRIP, which has added a whole roster of high-profile names—including Joe Jonas, Alessandra Ambrosio, Paul Wesley, Ashley Graham, and last week just added Kylie Jenner—to its cap table. For the brands? It’s a way to get capital and reach and cultural relevance in one fell swoop. For the celebrities and talent? It’s more often than not a much better way to participate in the crazy CPG without having to actually build something from scratch.

  • This brand also feels very aligned with the type of content and vibe that Jay Shetty puts out there into the world. Maybe this is a bit more bold of a brand but what it’s trying to get at, especially in the sleep category, feels very aligned with everything else that he’s building for his personal brand.

• Allergy care gets a glow-up. Wizard Wellness, the allergy brand launched in January by beauty-industry veteran Lorne Lucree, raised $1 million. Wizard is also expandin while rolling into more than 4,000 Target, Walmart, and CVS stores. The company is also bringing in Clueless actress Elisa Donovan for its first celebrity campaign.

• A French beauty portfolio. Caudalie, the family-owned skincare company known for grape-powered formulas, acquired Talm, a French sensitive-skin and maternity brand sold in about 60 doors across 12 countries. It’s Caudalie’s first acquisition, and Talm will remain independently run by founder Kenza Keller

• Little bottles, big bucks. Sol-ti has raised $30.3M in equity, per an SEC Form D filed in June, as the glass-bottled juice and shot brand positions for expansion in retail and foodservice.

• Loves an RTD. Sazerac acquired Au Vodka, the UK-based gold-bottle vodka and RTD brand founded in Swansea in 2015, expanding its UK portfolio and giving Au a path into more global markets. Terms were not disclosed, though Bloomberg’s source puts the deal at more than £300 million.

  • Au is the second-largest player in the UK’s RTD cocktail market, and it now sits in the same portfolio as the category leader, BuzzBallz, which Sazerac bought in 2024. Together the two brands hold about a fifth of UK RTD sales by value (per NIQ data cited by The Grocer).

  • Au is also Sazerac’s third RTD bet this year, following its March purchase of the canned cocktail brand Dirty Shirley and a May stake in Sipmargs, the canned margarita brand backed by TikTok creator Alix Earle. IWSR expects RTDs to be the only alc category to grow in 2026, so the owner is buying its way into the one corner of spirits that’s still growing.

• Brain food buys snack food. Cerebelly, the company that makes brain-focused baby food, acquired Fresh Bellies, a plant-based, freeze-dried kids snack brand founded in 2015, to expand into snacking. Financial terms weren’t disclosed; both brands will operate separately under shared ownership with distinct retail presences.

In case you missed it… 🎧

Last week, we caught up on a bunch of launches from the past few weeks, from David Protein’s new ready-to-drink milkshakes (fresh off a $2.2B valuation), to the Liquid Death founder’s new canned bubbly brand, and Beyond Meat’s latest (bizarre) attempt to regain relevancy.

Plus, what “peak function” looks like now that Folgers is doing functional coffee, why “supplements for your supplements” might be the next big thing, and more.

Catch the full episode below 👇

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe, like, leave a comment, and share it! It helps us continue to bring you the most interesting news + nuance in consumer and retail every week.

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If it seems like pumpkin spice season gets earlier every year... just imagine what’s happening to Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping!! ~80% of shoppers start BFCM shopping before Thanksgiving week. So if you’re not building your BFCM plan yet, you’re missing out on a LOT of potential business.

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ALSO! We’re hosting a private dinner on Tuesday at a stunning NYC restaurant, exclusively for growth marketers at $20M+ brands. We’ll be chatting about how to turn AI discovery into your next major growth channel! We have two spots left—reply to this email if you’re interested!

Now, let’s get into our picks of the week →

Nate’s Pickups:

Chocxo Dark Milk Chocolate Cookie Butter Cups

This might surprise many, but I’m not always the biggest chocolate fan all the time. When I do enjoy chocolate, I prefer either very dark chocolate or chocolate that’s richly flavored and filled, usually with peanut butter or caramel. But, I’m a candy person, so I try everything. And it’s my job but that’s besides the point.

Chocxo makes some of my favorite filled (and lower sugar) chocolate candies, and this is probably their best one. I mean, come on. Who doesn’t like taste cookie butter, speculoos, or a Biscoff cookie on a Delta flight? Mhmm?! You know you do. That’s exactly what it is, you take a Biscoff cookie and a jar of cookie butter and put it in a chocolate cup….but with a twist! 👀

• Quick Facts: These are speculoos-inspired cups with a cookie butter center made from cashew butter blended with white chocolate, cinnamon, and molasses, all wrapped in 43% organic dark milk chocolate and finished with toasted graham cracker crumbs on top. Each cup has 5 grams of sugar, sweetened with organic cane sugar. They’re also USDA Organic, Non-GMO Project Verified, and certified gluten free.

• Reasons to love:

  • Great flavor formulation. Shockingly, there are no speculoos or Biscoff cookies in the filling. It’s cashew butter blended with white chocolate, cinnamon, and molasses to achieve that speculoos flavor. Until I sat down to write this, I hadn’t realized that! That’s some impressive flavor science at work. The taste of a Biscoff cookie is so universally well-known, it’s a beloved thing, that the only way to make this product good is to do it 100%. It must taste exactly like the original, and it does.

  • Well-constructed. This is a well built piece of candy. The filling-to-chocolate ratio is perfect, for my taste at least. There’s enough filling that every bite delivers and enough chocolate that it still feels like candy and not a spoonful of just the spread. If I wanted that I’d buy some Oat Haus. And one thing I love about Chocxo’s chocolate cups is that they have a little texture on top. In this product it’s graham cracker bits, but almost all of their products have some added crunch and it just adds so much to the experience.

  • Low sugar that doesn’t taste like it. If sugar alternatives mess you up, this is the candy for you. Chocxo uses real cane sugar and no artificial sweeteners or sugar alcohols in any of their products, so if other sweeteners upset your stomach or you simply dislike their taste, this option should work for you. You might wonder how it can be low sugar when it uses real cane sugar. Well, according to the brand, the way they source their cocoa and the quality of the beans make the chocolate naturally sweeter so less added sugar is needed to coverup anything.

Where to buy. Online and retailers nationwide

Jenna’s Pickup:

Tsubi Soup - Red Miso Soup with Spicy Mushrooms

It’s back-to-school season, AKA illness season, and last week, I humbly discovered that I have not outgrown it (perhaps because I still refer to weeknights as “school nights,” and essentially live on a college campus, but I digress). While I was down for the count, I was craving soup constantly—and felt like the luckiest girl in the world when a package of Tsubi Soup arrived at my door. I proceeded to have Tsubi nearly every day last week.

If you (like me) grew up on the delicacy that is Cup Noodles, this format won’t be too surprising to you. A just-add-hot-water freeze-dried soup situation, with real veggies magically sprinkled in. But Tsubi is a major flavor + nutritional upgrade from its styrofoamed predecessor, and I am so excited to have it as part of my Fall-Winter soup rotation.

• Quick Facts: Premium, freeze-dried instant soup cubes (just add hot water), made in Japan.

• Reasons to love:

  • You can taste the quality. Every ingredient in Tsubi is sourced from Japan, and the product was made in Japan in small batches—and it tastes like it. If I didn’t make it myself, I’d never know it came from a freeze-dried cube! As a mushroom enthusiast, I LOVE the Red Miso with Spicy Mushrooms. It includes four gourmet Japanese mushrooms—shiitake, enoki, maitake, and nameko—so you get full mushroom (and lots of variety, umami-style) in every bite.

  • SaaS (Soup as a Snack). I’m gonna be real with you: these are nowhere near hearty enough to have as a full meal. They’re mostly a rich miso broth with some mushrooms (other flavors have tofu, but it’s still a small portion), and come out to just 35-45 calories depending on the flavor. That is at MOST a small snack, but I actually love that reframe: a warm, flavor-packed snack you can slowly sip rather than mindlessly chow down in 2 minutes. It feels so luxurious—as a vegetarian, I imagine this is how the bone broth girlies feel.

  • Ridiculously convenient. Have you ever wanted to BYOSoup? Or literally throw soup in your bag and take it on-the-go? Now you can! I love that these come in small, super light packets you can fit in anything and take anywhere (take THAT Cup Noodles). These would be fabulous to stock at your desk as a office snack, bring along on travel days, or just keep in your bag as an emergency snack that isn’t another protein bar.

Where to buy: Online or in stores (Whole Foods North Atlantic)!

In case you missed it… 🎧

This week, we’re catching up on a bunch of launches from the past few weeks, from David Protein’s new ready-to-drink milkshakes (fresh off a $2.2B valuation), to the Liquid Death founder’s new canned bubbly brand, and Beyond Meat’s latest (bizarre) attempt to regain relevancy.

Plus, we’re getting into what “peak function” looks like now that Folgers is doing functional coffee, why “supplements for your supplements” might be the next big thing, and more.

Catch the full episode below 👇

This week, we’re catching up on a bunch of launches from the past few weeks, from David Protein’s new ready-to-drink milkshake, to the Liquid Death’s founder’s new brand and Beyond Meat’s latest (bizarre) attempt to regain relevancy.

Plus, we’re getting into what “peak function” looks like, why “supplements for your supplements” might be the next big thing, and more.

Let’s get into it →

The Breakdown

0:00 - What we’ve been loving lately

4:55 - David Protein milkshakes and $250M raise

10:43 - Liquid Death’s founder’s new business

17:36 - Bero’s NA beer goes premium in glass

22:05 - Girl Scout Cookies x BARK and Partake

25:53 - Alec’s Ice Cream x Purely Elizabeth

29:19 - Beyond Meat’s bizarre new direction

38:46 - Folgers goes functional

43:38 - Optimum Nutrition’s NA protein beer

46:17 - Supplements for your supplements

PS. If you’re in NYC and interested in attending our seasonal trends event on 10/6, you can request to join us here :)

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We have two very exciting events coming up in NYC, and we’re looking for the right folks to join us:

First, we’re hosting a private dinner next Tuesday at a stunning NYC spot, exclusively for marketing and growth leaders at $20M+ brands. We’ll be chatting about how to turn AI discovery into your next major growth channel! We have very limited seats remaining for some of our lovely newsletter readers—if you fall within that category and you’re hoping to attend, reply to this email.

And on October 6th, we’re putting on our most exciting event yet: the second edition of In Season, Express Checkout’s quarterly event featuring the top three biggest trends of the season and the brands behind them. This time around, we’re hosting at a gallery in downtown NYC… basically a museum of trends, where tasting opportunities are abundant (giving Willy Wonka a run for his money).

• Note: This event is for select brands, investors, media, and tastemakers only—if you’re a B2B platform or service provider hoping to join + activate, please reply to this email to chat about remaining sponsorship options!

We’re so excited to see some of our incredible NYC community in one room. :) If you’re interested in putting on a highly-curated, private dinner with our network of CPG professionals, or if you want to learn more about getting involved in our larger-scale events, hit reply to this email.

News From the Week

If everybody else is proteinmaxxing, how do you retain your status as a superior, highly-informed wellness consumer?

You supplement your supplements, of course.

This week, Thorne launched Protein Optimizer, a probiotic-enzyme formula combining active cultures with the digestive enzyme, amylase, marketed to “work along the gut-muscle axis” to “maximize the benefits of every gram of protein you consume.”

In other words, it’s a supplement for your supplements. A meta-supplement, if you will. Welcome to wellness dystopia 😈.

How the heck did we get here?

We don’t need to tell you that protein is everywhere now. But just to really drill it in: this week, Optimum Nutrition launched a non-alcoholic protein beer, and Folgers launched protein coffee (more on both in the newsie below). Every category has been utterly doused in protein, to the point that the latest wellness trend, proteinmaxxing, is inescapably mass-market.

But the whole point of wellness is to keep consumers forever striving towards something that’s juuuust out of reach. Once Folgers is offering protein, once it’s in every single category including NA Beer, it’s probably too reachable. And the industry must do its job to introduce something that, once again, reminds you that you aren’t doing enough.

Once an ingredient goes mass-market, the category doesn’t die—it just moves up a level of abstraction, from “do you take X“ to “are you taking X correctly? How fluently can you describe what happens to it once you’ve swallowed it?” (followed by a slew of terms that trigger AP Bio anxiety like: Gut-muscle axis, amino acid absorption, bioavailability). The meta-supplements layer is where the next round of premium pricing and consumer anxiety gets manufactured.

Just look at what’s happening to the GLP-1 market. GLP-1s went mainstream fast (15% of Americans have now tried GLP-1s), and once being on one stopped being differentiated, an entire secondary industry sprang up purely to manage what the primary product does to your body:

• Nestlé built an entire brand, Vital Pursuit, explicitly for GLP-1 users—cauliflower-crust pizzas, chicken bowls, sandwich melts, while Danone launched Oikos Protein Shakes “geared to GLP-1 users.”

• Conagra put the words “GLP-1 Friendly” directly on packaging, an “On Track” badge slapped across 26 Healthy Choice frozen meals.

• Herbalife launched a GLP-1 Nutrition Companion line built around its existing protein shake, marketed to fill the nutritional gaps created by appetite suppression.

None of these compete with the GLP-1, but they all exist because the GLP-1 alone wasn’t enough to feel “done.”

“GLP-1 creates new nutritional gaps” is similar in rhetoric to “you’re not absorbing all your protein”; it takes something people feel good about doing correctly and reveals a new, previously invisible problem underneath it.

So what’s next? If the pattern holds, meta-supplements won’t stay a one-off Thorne launch—they’ll become their own aisle. Here’s what we’re watching for:

• Gut-muscle-axis vocabulary migrating out of sports nutrition and into everyday wellness. Right now “optimizer” language lives mostly in performance and longevity circles. Expect it on mainstream shelf tags within the year like Nature Made, Olly, and the private-label brands that usually lag trends by 12-18 months.

• Bundling, not swapping. These products only work as an add-on, never a replacement—so we’re watching for protein powder sold packaged with its own optimizer, at a combined price higher than either would command alone.

• A GLP-1-style taxonomy forming around protein specifically: side-effect mitigation (bloating, digestion), gap-filling (absorption, amino acid completeness), and eventually post-optimization support—something to help you taper off the Optimizer once your gut’s “recalibrated.” Because of course there will be an off-ramp product too.

And if we’re really getting meta here, we just might see a product positioned to help you absorb your absorption enzyme. Dear god….

There is always a higher-order function to be sold in the hamster wheel that we call Wellness. Just make sure you know why you’re running on it in the first place.

CPG & Consumer Goods

• Beyond Meat is having a major identity crisis. In the latest edition of “Beyond Meat tries something weird in hopes of making a comeback” (see two more examples here), the brand launched its “Phytosphere portfolio”—protein powder (”Beyond Starmatter”), jerky (”Beyond Starcut”), and a veggie burger (”Beyond Veggie”). Every product in the line is focused on complete nutrition featuring protein, fiber, and in the case of “Starmatter,” polyphenols, adaptogens, and biotin.

  

• As a veg girl, I was really rooting for Beyond’s comeback, and I cannot stress enough how disappointed I am to see where it’s landed. For starters, “phytosphere” is giving me chilling flashbacks to “metaverse,” AKA out-of-touch tech company attempting to sound hip. But my biggest gripe with this line is that the core objection to alt meat has always been its “lab-made” framing, that consumers “don’t know what’s in it.” Leaning into this celestial theme only further alienates the product—and the literal black-box design, which offers no on-pack product imagery, wholly removes any possibility of gaining trust.

• Just last year, Beyond’s CEO Ethan Brown told Inc that he wanted to focus on “producing food that doesn’t imitate anything,”—clearly aware that trying to compete against animal-based protein wasn’t a winning game. While the veggie burgers (which are made from whole-ingredients, reminiscent of Actual Veggies) do seem in line with this thesis, Starmatter and Starcut both diverge. Starcut is literally marketed as jerky…during the height of the meat stick craze, no less. And Starmatter, the protein powder that seems to have thrown every single nutrition trend into one bag, competes with countless whey powders and, by nature of its format, drives the consumer even further away from the “whole food” messaging. Color me (galactically) confused.

• Cookies for all! The Girl Scouts are adding two new cookies to the 2027 lineup, and both arrive by way of a collaboration: Patch Pals, a blueberry dog treat made with BARK, and Girl Scout Sparkables, an allergy-friendly oatmeal cookie made with Partake. Both of these are a first for this organization—its first cookie for dogs, and its first free of the top nine major allergens.

  • Partake is a fascinating brand to watch. The brand itself, founded in 2016, seemed to peak when allergen-friendly products were all the rage, hitting national retail in 2024. Since then, it’s maintained relevance through smart co-branding and ingredient supply: The Ben & Jerry’s Oatmeal Dream Pie (2023, a permanent non-dairy flavor using Partake’s oatmeal cookies), plus deals with JetBlue and DoubleTree by Hilton, show a company that licenses its allergy-friendly credibility into other people’s products, just like it’s now doing with Girl Scouts. It’s a great example of a brand creatively transcending the perceived ceiling of nationwide mass-market retail distro.

• Ice cream for breakfast. Alec’s Ice Cream just launched the Ice Cream for Breakfast Culture Cup with Purely Elizabeth, a probiotic cereal milk ice cream under a crackable strawberry shell, finished with Purely Elizabeth granola clusters.

  • Alec’s Culture Cup, an A2 dairy, single-serve, pre- and probiotic, clean-label, gluten-free ice cream cup, launched in early 2025 and had a viral sellout. Though Alec’s was already known for its A2 pints, it was these single-serve cups that really helped the brand take off. By October 2025, the brand closed an oversubscribed $11 million Series A.

  • “Ice Cream for Breakfast is more of a feeling than a flavor and Purely Elizabeth was a natural partner to bring this to life! We share the same philosophy: craveable foods and foods that make you feel good don’t have to be mutually exclusive.” - Alec Jaffe founder and CEO of Alec’s Ice Cream

• Now THIS is peak function. JM Smucker’s Folgers, AKA the coffee that’s been in your grandparents’ cabinet since the 60s, is launching its first-ever instant functional coffee blends this November: four varieties including Protein, Focus, Boost, and Prebiotic.

  

  • You heard that right folks, the legacy players are coming for functional beverages. And you know what that means: we’ve reached the peak. Enough functional brands have launched in recent years that there’s no clear winner, which communicates to legacy players that they can develop something like this internally rather than acquiring it.

  • It’s further proof that wellness culture is now mass‑market and everywhere. If Folgers is doing this, there’s no stopping the wellness boom that we’ve been seeing over the past few years.

• ….this also might be peak function. Optimum Nutrition, the world’s No. 1 sports nutrition brand, launched ChampionSips, a limited-edition non-alcoholic beer with Wisconsin Brewing Company, featuring 10g of protein.

  

  • It’s not just protein beer; it’s protein non‑alcoholic beer, which is just putting too many different trends into one can. At least it’s limited edition and not something sticking around on shelf. I personally do not want protein beer. I would like to keep those things to be as separate as possible - Nate

• We told you, Apple is fall’s new flavor. Culture Pop is joining the apple craze with a limited-edition Sparkling Apple probiotic soda, sold at Albertsons, Wegmans, H-E-B, and Amazon.

  • Side note: Culture Pop is a sleeper brand in the better-for-you soda category! This fast-growing brand is tracking toward more than $25 million in revenue this year. What’s different about it is that it’s made with organic fruit juice and no added sugar or sweeteners, and it’s probiotic, not prebiotic.

• The DTC-to-retail pipeline strikes again! Factor is expanding its fresh, refrigerated, ready-made meals to 800+ Target stores across 47 states. This comes nine months after a 70-store Midwest pilot where its meals became top sellers in the category.

  • But why now? Like so many things, it traces back to the pandemic. Everyone was trapped inside, at home and online subscriptions surged. Now that the world has fully reopened and shoppers have returned to many of their usual routines, most shoppers want to shop IRL… while maintaining the convenience shortcuts they learned during Covid times. They want Factor to be their meal-plan provider and a stop on the grocery run where they can pick up other essentials, and a store like Target is where that happens.

  • And then there’s GLP-1s. It’s 2026 after all! Ready-to-eat, pre-portioned meals are winning right now partially because there’s a large, motivated group of people who need exactly this type of product. In the US, there are roughly 16 million active GLP-1 users and this is projected to hit ~30 million by 2030. Per BCG’s new survey of GLP-1 users, they’re willing to pay for it too. Active users plan to spend 11% more each month on high-protein foods. Total calorie intake might be shrinking, but budget is not—the perfect set of conditions for a premium, high-protein, prepared meal line to take off.

  • I also loved this take from one of my favorite Substacks, Kevin Ryan’s FoodStuff, on how we’re “post-meal kit now.” HelloFresh, Factor’s parent company, is betting on Factor’s ready-to-eat meals instead of its own meal kit subscription as Americans move further and further away from cooking. Kevin also offered the other great point that a deli case communicates higher-quality and fresher than many frozen meals, even as the frozen aisle constantly improves.

• Carbone exits the pasta aisle. Carbone Fine Food launched Italian Chili Crisp in two varieties, Calabrian Chili Crisp and Aglio e Peperoncino, exclusively at Whole Foods for $13.99 a jar. It’s the brand’s first category expansion since launching pasta sauce in 2021.

  

  • Chili crisp is already a crowded category, with Fly By Jing, LAOGANMA, Momofuku, S&B and Trader Joe’s all competing for your pantry space. Momofuku even owns the trademark for “chili crunch,” though it stopped enforcing it in 2024 after industry backlash.

  • Carbone is betting its Italian spin and restaurant name cache will help it stand out. A Whole Foods launch exclusivity keeps it at premium, but does cap the volume ceiling. The bigger question here is whether the Carbone name can sell its condiments as well as it sells pasta sauces.

  • I actually got to try this at a Carbone Fine Foods event early last year….it was so freaking good! Especially that green one. DAMN. I will be running to buy a jar or two when it hit shelves near me. - Nate

eCommerce

• Every delivery service is launching an AI shopping tool:

  • This week, Instacart launched Cart Assistant, a white-label AI shopping tool regional grocers can embed on their own sites, alongside Clementine, its own marketplace assistant, which builds personalized, ready-to-buy carts from simple text prompts.

    • Food Bazaar, Heritage Grocers Group, and Woodman’s are already live; ads will be layered into both by year-end.

  • Meanwhile, Target-owned Shipt is doing something very similar: the delivery service launched Ask Shipt, an AI tool that generates shopping carts from meal photos or text prompts across 100+ retailers. Users can snap a dish photo or describe a spread, and ingredients get added to their carts automatically.

  • Kroger rolled out its own version this year, and now, delivery services are offering the same capability to basically any regional grocery chain that wants it. Expect nearly every grocer to have an “AI shopping assistant” within a year.

  • Definitely curious to see the stats on adoption here. The revenue promise isn’t about getting customers to add more to cart, necessarily; it’s more about the new ad units tucked into these platforms.

Retail

• Whole Foods gets a raise. Amazon is investing more than $230 million in pay and benefits for 100,000+ Whole Foods employees, raising average pay to $21/hr ($29/hr in total comp) starting Sept. 28, with health plans from $5/week beginning January 2027.

  • Amazon has spent the better part of a decade unsure what to do with grocery—opening and subsequently shuttering Fresh and Go formats, never fully committing. But now that it’s dropping $230M into Whole Foods labor, it feels like Amazon is finally picking a lane: WFM is Amazon’s grocery identity now. But the question remains: will a ~75% jump in benefits actually rewrite Whole Foods’ post-Amazon reputation , or just buy goodwill headlines heading into the holidays?

• Pay-to-play, but make it a felony. 😇 Southern Glazer’s, the largest U.S. wine and spirits distributor, will pay $12.5 million and enter a non-prosecution agreement with the DOJ after employees allegedly funneled cash, gift cards, golf trips, and luxury goods to California retailers—hidden behind false invoices—in exchange for better shelf placement between 2016 and 2024.

  • Every operator reading this knows shelf placement is, to some degree, bought (slotting fees, trade spend, “marketing support”). The distributor tier is the least visible and most powerful part of alcohol retail (thank the three-tier system), so this is a rare look at how the sausage actually gets made.

• Grocery deserts get a lifeline. Illinois Gov. Pritzker announced more than $26M in grants through the Illinois Grocery Initiative—$20.8M for new stores in food deserts, $4.5M to reopen recently closed stores, and $750K for equipment upgrades—building on $19M already distributed since 2024.

  • While the national chains chase functional SKUs and reshuffle their wellness sets, ~$27M is going toward whether some Illinois towns have a grocery store at all. “Retail” isn’t only the Targets and Walmarts fighting over shelf space… a lot of the country is still fighting for access at all.

Funding news

• Pouring cash into protein. Protein2o, the clear protein brand, announced a new growth investment, though it did not disclose the amount. The funding will support further brand building, retail expansion, hiring, and product development. The company also named Mark Rappaport CEO and added him to its board. Rappaport was previously global chief commercial officer at Congo Brands, the company behind Alani Nu, and held senior roles at Red Bull.

  • The brand might have a relatively generic name and pretty simple branding, but it clearly works: it surpassed $60 million in retail sales by late 2025 and is sold in more than 10,000 doors nationwide. Just because a brand doesn’t have flashy branding or marketing doesn’t mean it won’t perform well.

  • Brian Folmer, founder of FirstLook VC, a platform that puts emerging CPG brands in front of investors, saw Protein2o very early and told me most investors passed at the time, and the numbers definitely weren’t the issue. The company just didn’t fit the usual venture mold. The team was comprised of seasoned operators rather than a pair of young founders with a compelling origin story, and the branding wasn’t the polished, design-forward look investors have been trained to expect.

“They were not a standard VC-looking brand. Sometimes people put way too much emphasis on branding, like the actual appearance... To only pay attention to the brands that are in the VC buzzy circles is a complete mistake. You’re going to miss out on all these brands that are not in the VC bubble.” - Brian Folmer

• • Consumers mostly just want a product that works. And this focus and lack of flashiness can be a huge leg up for brands because it doesn’t alienate some consumers who might find extremely well-done branding a barrier to purchase.

• The tampon gets a redesign. Viv, a Gen Z-founded period-care brand, just raised $2M to launch its patented Cottonlock™ tampon nationwide. The fiber-resistant design aims to prevent residue and protect the vaginal microbiome, and will roll out across all 526 Whole Foods locations.

• A different kind of international delight. Petit Pot raised a seven-figure Series A co-led by Eclair Partners and Terri and John Penshorn to expand distribution of its French-inspired refrigerated desserts—pot de crème, rice pudding—already at Whole Foods, Costco, and Target nationwide.

  • Refrigerated dessert has been a sleepy, low-expectations category forever, the thing you grab on impulse while perusing for yogurt. Petit Pot’s whole bet is that Americans will pay up for a premium version, the same way they did for yogurt (hi, Chobani) and, lately, protein pudding cups.

  • While a seven-figure A is small, the brand’s retail footprint is already in place, and has potential to see some success from what we predict will be a new wave of “small, intentional indulgences”: products made with real ingredients and real sugar, but packaged in premium, portioned vessels. As appetites shrink (xoxo, GLP-1s), luxe, pre-portioned indulgences will likely see a surge over artificially sweet, ultraprocessed sweet snacks designed for volume eating.

  • “Pudding still has a special place in people’s memories, but the category has been stuck for years with low expectations, and uninspiring choices,” says Eric Lallart, CEO of Petit Pot. “American consumers are raising the bar for what they eat, and dessert should be no exception. Made with real ingredients and perfectly portioned, Petit Pot is a little treat worth slowing down for.”

• Oral care first, everything else negotiable. Colgate-Palmolive is weighing the sale of Softsoap, Irish Spring, and Speed Stick in a deal that could top $1 billion, with Goldman Sachs hired to run the process. Its personal care unit generated ~$3.5B in 2025—17% of net sales.

  • This news comes off of last week’s announcement that S&P Dow Jones Indices confirmed that Colgate-Palmolive was removed from the S&P 100 index in favor of AI-adjacent tech companies (go figure).

  • This is the same portfolio-pruning move we keep seeing from the giants: shed the mature, slow-growth brands, concentrate on the core. Colgate’s core is oral care, which makes Softsoap, Irish Spring, and Speed Stick suddenly non-essential.

  • Just last week, we saw Nestlé dumping $1B of vitamins. These brands aren’t failing, they’re just not the core. And there’s a deep bench of PE firms and roll-ups happy to buy steady, unsexy cash cows. Speed Stick getting squeezed by DTC deodorant on one side and labeled “non-core” on the other is SUCH a classic tale of mid-tier CPG these days.

• Kendall gets calm. Kendall Jenner is joining TRIP, the magnesium-based calming drink brand, as a global ambassador and equity partner. She will front the brand’s new global campaign and take a stake in the business as TRIP projects $200 million+ in revenue for 2026.

  • And miss Jenner here is far from the first celebrity to touch TRIP. The brand recently raised $40 million at a valuation north of $300 million in late 2025, with Joe Jonas, Alessandra Ambrosio, Paul Wesley, and Ashley Graham joining the round alongside Coefficient Capital. Millie Mackintosh has also been named as an investor, while Graham previously worked with TRIP on its Calm partnership. Earlier in 2025, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s Equity Studio took a multimillion-pound stake in the company. At this point, TRIP has assembled a full cast ready for a Netflix original!

• Keeping the CSA box alive. Farm to People, a Brooklyn-based online farmers’ market, raised $5 million from New Fare Partners, Stonyfield founders, and a former Whole Foods exec—its first outside investment. The company serves 13,000+ monthly customers across 200+ NYC-area farms and will use the funds to open a 40,000-square-foot Bronx facility in 2027.

In case you missed it… 🎧

This week on the pod, we were joined by Adam Terry, CEO and co-founder of Cantrip and On the Brightside—and absolute WEALTH of knowledge on all things THC regulation and functional beverages.

Adam walks us through his journey in the cannabis beverage industry and pivot into a new kind of functional drink. He explains why the low-dose THC hypothesis didn’t pan out, the science behind the new functional ingredient he’s betting on, and the tricky retail landscape of functional beverages.

This is a great follow-up episode to our interview with Jake Bullock, CEO and co-founder of Cann—offering some updates and rare insights into the ever-changing THC regulatory environment!

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe, like, leave a comment, and share it! It helps us continue to bring you the most interesting news + nuance in consumer and retail every week.

Subscribe now

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Now, let’s get into our picks of the week →

Nate’s Pickups:

Dairy and dairy-free protein shakes. (David and Grounded)

This week, I wanted to offer you a two-for-one deal. David just released their protein shakes, and I’ll talk a lot about them because they’re absolutely delicious and wildly impressive. These are David’s best product by far! But I didn’t want to leave my dairy-free friends out to pasture, so I’m also including one of my favorite dairy-free protein shakes from Grounded.

The protein shake space, while not as crowded as the protein bar space, still has a lot of players right now. Standing out isn’t always about macros. Taste and texture are what win, if anything. And both of these brands nail everything. They nail macros, they nail taste, and they definitely nail texture.

David protein milkshakes

• Quick Facts: David’s first ready-to-drink product, launched in Vanilla and Chocolate. Each 12 oz bottle is made with ultra-filtered skim milk and, of course, EPG, and delivers 30g of protein with ~150 calories and less than 1g of sugar.

• Reasons to love:

  • It’s a milkshake. It says “milkshake” on the front of the bottle, and it definitely tastes and feels like a milkshake too. The texture is not too thick nor is it too thin despite being a skim milk base. This is where the infamous EPG comes into play in particular. EPG, for those that somehow don’t know, is the modified plant-based fat alternative that gives David products the same taste and texture of conventional fat but with over 90% fewer calories. So when you put it all together, you get the texture you want from a drink like this with the incredible macros as well. And these drinks are a really drinkable texture.

    • You may be asking, “Doesn’t Fairlife have the same macros?” They do, but the biggest difference here is EPG, which enables them to achieve such an amazing texture that you can’t get with ultra-filtered low-fat milk. Definitely read my friend Eli Mack’s post on this.

  • Zero aftertaste. This is the one product from Medici and the David family of products that I don’t think really has any aftertaste whatsoever. Usually, with these lower-calorie sugar-alternative types of products, there’s always some aftertaste. There’s some trade-off in some way. These really just taste like a vanilla and chocolate milkshakes. I’m very, very impressed with this product, which is why, above, I said this is my favorite product from David. If you don’t like the bars or the frozen pints or even the Hall Pass candy, you will like these shakes. This is probably their most mass-market palate-compliant product that they make right now.

Where to buy: Online and select retailers

Grounded protein shakes

• Quick Facts: Grounded makes dairy-free, vegan protein shakes with no artificial sweeteners, in Chocolate and Mint Chocolate. The full-size 16.6 oz bottle has 20g of plant protein, and the new 8.5 oz mini has 10g.

• Reasons to Love:

  • Smooth as silk. When I think plant-based protein shake, I normally don’t think smooth and never silky smooth! I think grainy and pain. This? Perfection 🤌. I remember the first time I tried this product, and I actually didn’t realize it was plant-based for a long time. That’s how good it is and how well-formulated it is as a product.

  • Bold af. I try a lot of protein shakes, both because of my job and because I’m interested in finding the best protein shake. These are some of the boldest-flavored protein shakes I’ve had. Especially the mint one. I love love love chocolate mint, and this just scratches that itch.

  • The bottle. I love the original bottle they launched with; its short, stout, slightly triangular shape makes it stand out and feel very different from everything else on the shelf right now. I also like their new product. They just launched an 8.5 oz bottle with 10g of protein (instead of the regular 20g). It feels fun and nice, and almost like an adult version of the milk boxes I had as a kid!

Where to buy. Online, Whole Foods, and select retailers

Jenna’s Pickup:

OHME! Strawberry Yogurt Crunch

New snack alert!!!!

These days, it can be hard to impress me with a new snack. I’ve tried a lot of snacks, and honestly, innovation has been somewhat lacking in the sweet snack department. But these really surprised me. OHME! took a concept that I thought was reserved for kiddos (yogurt bites), stripped down the ingredients and added probiotics, matured the packaging and presentation, and offered something so texturally unique and craveable, I now seek it out daily.

• Quick Facts: Freeze-dried bites of yogurt + real fruit + probiotics. I love the strawberry flavor, but the brand also offers mango and blueberry SKUs!

• Reasons to love:

  • The CRONCH. I am all for a product with a satisfying crunch, and these do not disappoint. If you’ve had freeze-dried products before, you’ll be familiar with the texture. But the combo of the creaminess of the yogurt paired with that foamy freeze-dried crunch is especially satisfying. I also really enjoy the cube shape—its thick and dense enough to offer a real bite to it.

    • Note: They can get a stuck to your teeth, especially if you’re downing the bag as quickly as I do. 🙃 It’s my only critique of the product, and something I felt the need to flag for my texturally-sensitive friends!

  • Real ingredients + probiotics. These crunchy bites are made with just yogurt, real strawberry, apple juice, and bacterial culture to load you with probiotics (the brand even lists the added probiotic strains, so you know you’re getting the real deal!). There’s no added sugar (or added artificial sweetener of any kind), but these bites still deliver on fulfilling a sweet craving.

  • Packaging + convenience. OHME! knows how to make a product worthy of your purse. Its adorable gingham-esque packaging is also functional, with a flat bottom and seal (if you manage to not finish the whole bag in one sitting…). This product is effectively a shelf-stable yogurt with fruit, making a perfect on-the-go option that isn’t another bar.

Where to buy: Online

In case you missed it… 🎧

This week on the pod, we were joined by Adam Terry, CEO and co-founder of Cantrip and On the Brightside—and absolute WEALTH of knowledge on all things THC regulation and functional beverages.

Adam walks us through his journey in the cannabis beverage industry and pivot into a new kind of functional drink. He explains why the low-dose THC hypothesis didn’t pan out, the science behind the new functional ingredient he’s betting on, and the tricky retail landscape of functional beverages.

This is a great follow-up episode to our interview with Jake Bullock, CEO and co-founder of Cann—offering some updates and rare insights into the ever-changing THC regulatory environment!

Adam walks us through his journey in the cannabis beverage industry and pivot into a new kind of functional drink. He explains why the low-dose THC hypothesis didn’t pan out, the science behind the new functional ingredient he’s betting on, and the tricky retail landscape of functional beverages.

This is a great follow-up episode to our interview with Jake Bullock, CEO and co-founder of Cann—offering some updates and rare insights into the ever-changing THC regulatory environment!

The breakdown

0:00 - Intro and Adam Terry’s background

1:56 - The low-dose THC hypothesis

6:13 - The hemp ban and birth of On the Brightside

7:14 - What is kanna?

9:09 - Educating consumers on an unknown ingredient

13:20 - Retail strategy: soda, function & shelf placement

19:55 - Kanna vs. other functional ingredients

24:01 - The science: why kanna is more pro-social than THC

27:50 - Rethinking the functional beverage category

37:22 - The future of Cantrip & hemp ban outlook

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News From the Week

There’s no ignoring it: money is pouring (dare we say, flooding?) into CPG right now. In the past two weeks, we’ve seen two historic acquisitions and one mind-boggling raise:

• Purely Elizabeth was acquired by Ferrero Group, the global giant behind Nutella, Kinder, Ferrero Rocher, and Tic Tac.

• GOODLES was acquired by Barilla Group, the 149-year-old Italian pasta company.

• Medici Brands, the parent company of David Protein and now HallPass, raised $250 million at a $2.25 Billion valuation (with a B) in a round co-led by Greenoaks and Valor Equity Partners.

Three very different transactions, three very different brands. But taken together, they’re a pretty perfect snapshot of why CPG—specifically food & beverage—is so exciting right now.

Let’s get into the deets →

Ferrero bought its health halo. We already talked about the Purely Elizabeth deal when it was announced, so we won’t rehash it. The short version:

• After spending $3.1 billion on WK Kellogg, Ferrero bought one of the clearest leaders in modern, better-for-you breakfast.

• Purely Elizabeth reportedly generated around $200 million in brand sales in 2025 and more than doubled sales in two years, building a portfolio on granola, oatmeal, whole grains, protein, fiber, and cleaner ingredients—the exact qualities legacy cereal has struggled to own.

Ferrero is making a serious bet on the American breakfast aisle, and it’s buying the health halo it couldn’t build itself.

Barilla bought the future of mac & cheese. GOODLES was founded in 2020 and hit shelves a little over four years ago. It already controls nearly 8% of U.S. consumer spending on boxed mac & cheese and added roughly 2 million new customers in the last 90 days (!!), according to the brand.

• That’s wild for a startup going up against Kraft, which literally invented the category in 1937. GOODLES won by making boxed mac and cheese exciting again: more nutrition, bolder flavors, packaging worth looking at, and a brand voice pitched at adults as much as kids.

• We’ve seen some great analyses on how this brand won through brilliant brand world building and a keen focus on product. But one point we haven’t seen raised was that it also won because it both was, and strategically wasn’t, a celeb brad:

  • Gal Gadot was presented as a co-founder at launch, her name attached to just about every news item in the early days of the brand, and then seemingly fell off of all promotion. Today, we’d bet that next to nobody picking up a box of Goodles at the grocery store knows that she was ever involved. This isn’t what we’d normally tout as a prime example of a great celebrity brand; usually, we look for a celebrity who is deeply involved in the brand, regularly uses it in their daily lives, and doesn’t just slap a name on it and disappear.

  • The fact that this ultimately wasn’t a celebrity brand is almost key to its success: Gadot gave GOODLES credibility and, critically, capital at the start. But the brand was built on a product, not a person, which is why it survived her exit and why Barilla wanted it.

• GOODLES will reportedly stay standalone, with co-founder and CEO Jen Zeszut, all 73 employees, and the Santa Cruz headquarters in place. Post-acquisition independence is easy to promise, but consumers have watched plenty of brands in this exact position get sanded down. Whether Barilla can scale GOODLES without dulling its sparkle is the question.

…and David reached $2.2 billion valuation at startup speed. Then there’s David. Oh, David. Medici Brands raised $250 Million at a $2.2 billion valuation less than two years after David was founded in 2024, possibly the fastest any CPG company has ever crossed the $2 billion mark (Grüns certainly tried to give it a run for its money).

• When you look a little closer, it all comes together. David launched with an extreme promise: the most protein possible for the fewest possible calories. Its original bar delivered 28g of protein, 150 calories, and zero sugar… unheard of.

• David didn’t stop at the bar. It acquired Epogee, the company behind EPG—the modified plant fat that makes those unheard-of macros possible. Medici then used that technology and brand-building machine to expand David into ice cream (well, “frozen pints”) and protein shakes, launch HallPass (a better-for-you candy brand), and soon, chips.

  • As Chuck Cotter, Partner at Morrison Foerster (the law firm that’s advised David since its early days) told us, “Through its parent company Medici, the team isn’t just growing category-defining brands—they’re building a next-generation nutrition platform.”

• Medici is building a platform around the EPG ingredient, emphasizing what consumers increasingly want: indulgence and restriction at the same time. That’s also made David controversial from day one. It’s faced lawsuits over EPG, calorie claims, and allulose labeling (more on that below), all while pulling off some insane marketing stunts. As Jenna wrote on LinkedIn, David keeps pissing people off, generating discourse, and selling anyway. You don’t have to love the tactics to respect the outcome.

  

So, what ties these deals together? All of these brands changed what people expect from a category the giants assumed was finished or oversaturated. They’ve evolved the breakfast aisle, the protein aisle, and the boxed mac and cheese aisle into something way more culturally relevant, with better (or in one case, more innovative + macro-friendly) ingredients.

They’re all playing in the same intersection of forces pushing CPG forward: more protein, more fiber, fewer calories, cleaner labels, better taste, sharper branding, and products that manage to feel functional and indulgent at once.

The strategics are paying attention because challengers keep proving the same thing: the oldest, most familiar categories are never done evolving—the incumbents just aren’t the ones who evolve them. There’s always another tired aisle waiting for someone to make it better, and another giant that will have to buy its way back in.

CPG & Consumer Goods

• “Zero-sugar” is on trial. Liquid Death, David protein, and now Grüns each face class action complaints over zero-sugar labeling after an FDA amicus brief confirmed allulose—a natural sweetener in both products—counts as sugar under federal law, citing a revived Chobani lawsuit as precedent. There’s a lot going on here, so it’s worth breaking down:

  • Allulose is a completely natural sweetener (simple sugar, or monosaccharide) found in foods like figs and molasses. But allulose isn’t like the other sugars: it has a rare molecular structure that doesn’t get broken down by the body into energy (read: calories) and therefore contributes no glycemic response. For all intents and purposes, it offers a sweet taste to your food, and then you pee it out—no calories contributed or blood sugar spike. We SHOULD see this as a really exciting, naturally-derived ingredient, but instead, it’s being subjected to some silly scrutiny.

    • Basically, the claim here is that allulose is technically a sugar, and therefore these brands shouldn’t be able to claim “zero-sugar.” The FDA’s guidance states that sugars are “the sum of all free mono- and disaccharides” —if a product contains >.5g of “sugar” by that definition, it cannot be advertised as “sugar-free.” Definitionally, the litigators have every right to sue. But frankly, this is a misleading lawsuit.

    • In my (Jenna’s) opinion, the point of something being labeled “sugar-free” isn’t to confirm that there is nothing molecularly similar to sugar in the product; it’s to confirm that someone who is trying to limit their sugar intake or is managing blood sugar can enjoy the product. In the case of allulose, they can. This kind of litigation only encourages companies to opt for more artificial alternatives—the exact kind of alternatives that similar scare tactics are trying to push consumers away from. Consumers seeking sugar-free options will see this headline, and, in all likelihood, they will not opt for an apple instead; they’ll go for the yogurt, bar, or soda sweetened with (gasp!) aspartame or sucralose. Is that really a win?

    • My concern is that this could also steer food companies back towards real sugar—great for some consumers, but really harmful for others. In demonizing all sugar alternatives, even the natural ones, we’re simply limiting food options. Would love to hear opposing POVs, though—feel free to reply to this email if you have thoughts!

  • It’s no surprise that David was on the target list here. It seems that litigators are hellbent on exposing David as nutritionally fraudulent, from claiming its calories were wildly underreported thanks to its fat source, to now claiming its sweetener source is actually sugar. If you’re looking at David like a real food, then yea, you’re gonna spot some red flags. But David isn’t trying to be “real food,” and never was—its nutrition label literally lists ingredients in “systems” (ex. “fat sytem,” “protein system”). And as evidenced by David’s raise last week, these lawsuits aren’t achieving their goal. You’re going to have to get a lot more creative to take down this brand. 🤷‍♀️

• Chobani keeps building. Chobani is acquiring a Keurig Dr Pepper facility in Allentown, PA for $125 million and investing $1.2 billion total to convert it into a high-protein milk and shake production hub, creating 900 jobs—part of a $4B+ U.S. manufacturing buildout fueled by 20% annual growth over three years.

  • While everyone fears data centers and AI stealing their jobs, yogurt, of all things, is creating jobs. We <3 CPG.

  • We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: Chobani is the next 100-year brand. Even as the aforementioned allulose lawsuit, along with multiple other lawsuits like Danone’s over its high-protein claim, the brand seems to be pushing forward with no signs of slowing down. We’re excited to see the innovation that comes along with its increased manufacturing capabilities!

  • Separately: this week, Chobani launched its newest SKU in its delicious line of creamers made with simple ingredients, Ube Sweet Cream! Chobani partnered with an artist from the Philippines on the spooky packaging, celebrating the origins of this trending flavor. I already tried my sample and it may just be my favorite of their whole line (not to mention the stunning purple color, achieved solely through real ube!).

    

• Battle over the crustless rages on. J.M. Smucker Co.’s Uncrustables lawsuit against Trader Joe’s ‘dupe’ has moved forward after a federal judge ruled the case can proceed. Smucker’s alleges Trader Joe’s frozen “crustless” PB&J sandwiches and packaging are too similar to their Uncrustables’ trade dress.

  • Hopefully the other crustless PB&J brands are keeping a close eye on this one. Smucker previously sued Chubby Snacks for trademark dilution and false advertising; the startup shut down in early 2025 after four years, citing financial and legal difficulties—including its fight with the $1 billion (with a B) Uncrustables brand. Smucker also came after Gallant Tiger over its crustless PB&J back in 2022.

• The cupcake leader is back. CRUMBS Bakeshop, the iconic bakery brand, is launching Piñata Cakes nationwide in nearly 3,000 Kroger-owned stores. The new line brings candy-filled, three-layer cakes into the supermarket aisle.

  • CRUMBS originally helped build the gourmet cupcake category and turn cupcakes into a full-blown nationwide obsession in the early 2000s. After being sold off, founder Jason Bauer bought the brand back a few year later for around $300 and is now rebuilding it as a retail-ready bakery brand.

• Kangaroos in the candy aisle. Australia’s No. 1 better-for-you candy brand, Funday Natural Sweets, is launching five flavors in around 1,200 Target stores. And Funday isn’t a tiny brand with no traction setting off in pursuit of the American Dream: it surpassed $100 million in Australian sales just a few months ago.

  • Funday is entering a packed better-for-you candy aisle. SmartSweets grew into a major acquisition and a brand you can now find pretty much everywhere. JOYRIDE went from relative obscurity to Target’s No. 1 non-chocolate candy brand in just a few short years, largely on the back of viral YouTuber Ryan Trahan and his millions of fans. Then there’s a growing bench of brands like Harken, Rotten, Blobs, BEHAVE, Better Sour, Good Greed, and Good Candy all fighting for their own piece of the shelf. Consumers clearly know the category exists—62% are aware of better-for-you confectionery—but only 10% buy it regularly. So Funday’s real challenge is giving them a reason to choose its candy over countless others.

  • We’ve seen a similar playbook with established UK brands coming stateside—and wrote about the British brand invasion here. TRIP, Misfits, and Barebells, for example, all built meaningful traction at home before chasing the US market’s higher prices, greater volume, and more discovery-driven consumer. Funday is a big opening bet by going directly into roughly 1,200 Target stores. Its Australian success lowers the risk, sure, but they need to treat America like a brand-new launch, not an extension of the home market. Americans don’t even know half the brands sold nationwide anyways!

• Plant-based keeps innovating. Daring Foods launched six frozen skillet meals at Sprouts Farmers Market, delivering 21–25g of protein and 9–13g of fiber per serving: a direct play for GLP-1 users.

  • This is happening within the context of a plant-based meal segment that fell 12% last year. While other alt meat players like Beyond scramble to pivot into entirely different categories (like beverage), Daring is taking a different approach: maintain alternative meat as the hero ingredient, just make it more convenient, emphasize macros, and put flavor first. If you look at the packaging, these just look like convenient ready-to-heat meals with tons of protein—you have to squint (or already know the brand Daring) to understand that it’s not real chicken.

  • As a veg girl myself, I love seeing a brand make this move. You can’t convince people to swap to plant-based for ethical or sustainability reasons… you just need to create a product that’s better than its meat counterpart, on all fronts: flavor, convenience, and macros. Excited to try these!

• Power Crunch needed a reset. Ferrero has announced a full relaunch of the wafer protein bar—new formula, packaging, and “A Lighter Way to Protein” slogan—after sales slipped double digits in the year since its 2025 acquisition.

• All the trends, in one small shot. Pure Genius Protein, co-founded by Mel Robbins, launched Protein + Fiber shots: 20g protein and 5g fiber in a 3.38oz, 100-calorie, zero-sugar shot. The brand says they’re targeting GLP-1 users, busy parents, and older adults with shrinking appetites. We were destined to get a product like this at some point, just shocked it wasn’t a gummy 😂

• Back with more bubbles. Mike Cessario, best known as the founder of Liquid Death, is partnering with spirits giant Sazerac to launch Mr. Fancy, a ready-to-drink canned sparkling wine positioned as “American bubbly.”⁠

  • This is a very interesting departure in many ways from the Liquid Death brand. For one, it’s booze! Liquid Death’s whole shtick was giving people who didn’t want a drink a way to look like they were, to make it less taboo to not drink in normal drinking settings. Also, the branding is so….tame, even leaning on generic. It doesn’t have the same pizazz as Liquid Death did at launch and over the years since then. Maybe that restraint is intentional. Maybe it was what Sazerac wanted. After years of building Liquid Death, perhaps Cessario learned some vital insights about what consumers want and what will last.

• Coulda had a V8. The Campbell’s Company, owners of V8, is doing what any reasonable bev owner would do in these trying times: adding electrolytes to its energy drink line.

  • V8 is actually one of my favorite energy drinks! It’s only 80 mg of caffeine and made with real fruit and veg juice (quintessential to the V8 brand) and no artificial sweeteners. It feels like real juice, because it is, with a hit of a pick-me-up that doesn’t leave me jittery. - Jenna

  • Adding electrolytes is just about the least surprising move Campbell’s could make, as every brand seems to be coming out with a “hydration” line.

Retail

• So smol!! NYC is getting a minis-focused beauty store near Union Square called Little Luxuries. It’s being launched by Beautyspace, the prestige beauty curator formerly part of Space NK, and will carry a little over 100 brands. Loyalty members can credit mini purchases toward corresponding full-size products online.

  • This is such a smart concept, and I really hope we see more stores like it! Target’s mini section is already one of my favorite ways to sample a new product—or grab a travel size—without committing to a full sized bottle. Especially if something is pricey, I want to know if it’s really worth the investment. Plus, with beauty interest booming and new brands launching constantly, a dedicated discovery format feels like a no-brainer. - Nate

Funding

• Nestlé continues selling out. Nestlé sold its mainstream vitamins and supplements portfolio—Nature’s Bounty, Nuun, Puritan’s Pride, and four other brands—to Yellow Wood Partners (yes, private equity) for $1 billion. The business did $1.2B in 2025 sales; Nestlé retains premium brands Solgar and Pure Encapsulations.

  • This is all part of a much larger move for Nestlé to shift its focus to its best businesses: coffee, petcare, food, and snacks. In July, the company sold half of its premium waters business to private equity for $3.4 billion, creating a joint venture including S.Pellegrino, Source Perrier and Essentia

  • As CEO Philipp Navratil said in a statement, “This is another important step in the strategic transformation of our portfolio. We are focusing our resources where we have the strongest competitive advantage.”

• Everyone is betting on personal care.

  • Dollar Shave Club acquired Truly Beauty, a Gen Z-focused mass-premium body care brand with a viral TikTok marketing engine, in its first acquisition—pivoting from grooming challenger to multi-brand personal care platform across Ulta, Walmart, Target, and CVS. Financial terms were not disclosed.

  • Skyline Beauty Group acquired men’s skincare brand Lumin alongside its sister-brand Meridian, from Pangaea Holdings for an undisclosed amount.

• The NBA loves coffee. Beekeeper Coffee, a ready-to-drink latte brand founded in 2023, raised an undisclosed round from NBA players Draymond Green, Anthony Davis, Zach LaVine, Fred VanVleet, and De’Aaron Fox, plus sports agent Rich Paul. It’s now targeting Target and natural grocery after reaching 2,500+ retail doors.

If you’re a brand trying to understand the nuances of creator marketing (and how it’s different from—and more sustainable than—influencer marketing) you’re gonna want to listen to the most recent episode of the Express Checkout podcast, featuring Agentio.

Check it out below or on your pod streaming platform of choice!

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe, like, leave a comment, and share it! It helps us continue to bring you the most interesting news + nuance in consumer and retail every week.

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Now, let’s get into our picks of the week →

Nate’s Pickup:

All my travel essentials!

As some of you know, I recently spent a week in Lisbon. We ate well, drank well, and took so many photos. Lisbon was such a fun and interesting city! Literally some of the best meals and wine I’ve ever had. If anyone wants recommendations, I have so so many!!

But, what I really want to talk about is what products I brought with me! That’s why were here, to talk about all the fun CPG products. And guess what, I brought so many things! Guess what though, they’re all amazing and most of the products I literally use multiple times a day. So let’s freaking go!

• 4AM wipes - these are magical

• Flaus flosser - I’m a terrible flosser and this literally saved me

• Neuro energy mints/gum - good breath and energy?! hell yes.

• goodwipes - because i need a clean tushy and these are truly flushable

• swishables - also for good breath

• SURI toothbrush - best toothbrush since sliced bread! (granted I haven’t tried the new Dyson one lol)

• WashWise reset spray - this is literally a life shave!! It’s essentially dry shampoo for your clothing

• HAESKN - great skincare-Infused suncare

• DUNE SUNCARE mug guard - literally the best face sunscreen! I use it daily. WEAR YOUR SUNSCREEN

• Vacation Inc. sunscreen - for the body

• gemi beauty hand sanni - because the plane surfaces is kinda dirty

• Ranger Station Smooth Operator parfume - both the scent and the parfume brand I get THE MOST compliments on. I even convinced my doorman to buy it because I walked by so many times and he asked why I smelled so good

• Experiment super saturated - I use this 2x a day and it has saved my skin!

• Prequel face moisturizer and face wash - also use this stuff 2x a day and it’s perfection.

• Leaf Shave twig razor - my favorite razor, been using it for years!!

• PAUME anti-bac hand gel

• EDJY clipper - I was shocked how good this nail clipper is!

• Carpe deodorant - keeps me smelling good and dry as a towel (or whatever the phrase is)

• KRISTIN ESS loose styling powder - I’ve been using styling powder for a while now and been loving this!

• Medicube eye patches - the plane is drying and I don’t want under eye bags!

Where to buy: https://shopmy.us/shop/collections/7234315

Jenna’s Pickup:

Algae Cooking Club - Smoked Tomato Oil

There’s been a whooooole lot of oil noise lately. Whether it’s criminalizing seed oils, exposing avocado oil fraud (what a hilarious string of words), or finding another olive oil to accuse of stealing Graza’s shtick, there’s always some kind of oil scandal happening (and this just the small-potatoes, consumable oil stuff… lest we get into the fuel and global crisis of it all 🙃).

While everyone else is pulling their hair out over which oil is the best for their health, clout, and/or roasted veg, I’m sitting pretty. Because this year, I had the pleasure of being introduced to Algae Cooking Club—and most recently its Smoked Tomato variety—and I no longer fret over the olive/avocado/seed varieties. If you’ve never tried algae oil, I’m about to change your life (in the least dramatic, most practical way).

• Quick Facts: Algae oil (made by fermenting microalgae in steel tanks, like how beer is made), with a gorgeous smoked tomato flavor, perfected by Chef Musashi Osaki.

• Reasons to love:

  • Ridiculously good flavor. When I was presented with the idea of “smoked tomato oil,” I can’t say I had much of an understanding of how that would translate to the palate. What I can now tell you is that it is *delightful—*and unlike anything I’ve had before. It’s a true grilled tomato flavor: deeply savory, with the brightness of basil and umami hit of smoke. I loved the way this utterly transforms my veggie-based dishes, offering incredible depth of flavor and savoriness I usually associate with meat. And because the algae oil base is neutral in flavor, there are no competing flavors happening (something I find in something like a flavored olive oil, for instance).

  • Algae oil is a dream to cook with. It has a naturally high smoke point of 535°F, 125°F higher than EVOO! This means you can sear/fry/grill the heck out of your produce with this oil without fear of burning or bitterness. This particular SKU is also lovely for a finishing oil, for all of the aforementioned flavor accolades.

  • The best oil choice for your health and the planet. Algae oil is naturally rich in heart- and gut-friendly Omega-9s and over 75% lower in saturated fat than olive or avocado oil. For those who care, this isn’t a seed oil, and for those who don’t care (sorry… 🙋‍♀️), here’s something easier to get behind: algae oil has roughly half the carbon emissions of avocado, canola, or olive oil because it uses a fraction of the land and water required by these oil-producing crops.

  • It’s stunning on the counter. In 2026, there is no kitchen accessory that subtly flexes elevated taste quite like the oil bottle du moment left out on your counter. For a while, that was Graza (now, it feels like Graza is a demonstration of baseline income, not “taste” per se). If you’re really looking to showcase your culinary trend awareness (while also nodding to your environmental benevolence) this is your bottle. The packaging is whimsical yet elegant, and the bottle is a stark contrast to the dark greens and ambers cluttering the oil aisle.

  • It would also make for a fantastic gift… expect to see this in our gift guides!

Where to buy: Online (and it’s apparently limited-edition, so get it while you can!)

In case you missed it… 🎧

Last week, we sat sitting down with Arthur Leopold, CEO and co-founder of Agentio, the buying platform for creator media. We dove into how creator marketing has evolved beyond the old influencer model and why most digital attention now lives with creator content (yet there’s still a spend gap).

We also get into the non-obvious creator matches that drive real results—like how a lobster fisherman became a top performer for Grüns—and why the best brands treat creators as a channel, not a one-off campaign. Book a demo with Agentio here!