A year in consumer brands + retail: 2025 in review

0:00Welcome back to our final episode of the Curious Consumer for this year. I'm Nate. I'm Jenna. And we run a media company called Express Checkout. We cover the latest in the world of consumer brands, food and beverage brands, beauty and wellness brands, retail. And today we're going to cover what 2025 held for us, what it looked like, all the big trends, themes, winners and losers. And we'll talk about some of our predictions for 2026. Briefly, briefly. We're not going to go too crazy. Yeah. We went through our entire year's worth of newsletters, which by the way, was almost 90. Insane. We're trying to find some of the biggest stories of the year.

0:49And to us, so much feels important. And we already curate the news every week. So we're only sharing like the most important headlines. So to whittle that down even more was a behemoth of a task. So we'll preface with the fact that we're not going to hit on everything because we can't. And if you want to know everything that happened in 2025, you have 89 newsletters. And Substack will read them to you. They do have a text to speech function. but we'd like to think that we're going to hit some of the biggest themes of the year as nate said and for anything we miss feel free to email us or leave a comment in the podcast we want to know if there's something that you were tracking on or that you even tracked on from just reading our content and you're like how did you not mention that i think this will be really fun and we're hoping to not just do the themes that everyone's doing we're going to mention protein here but that is not the main spoiler spoiler spoiler so spoiler alert with that should we just get into it let's get into it let's start with i we put this in our notes as the as the big trend and i actually think this might be one of the biggest trends of the year themes excuse me themes we like themes better than trends so of yes of the of the themes we have one overarching big theme that encapsulates a few redefining function and function and functional products have been i don't know a theme of a lot of different years but i feel like in the past a lot of function has been a little wishy-washy.

2:37Like, what the hell is ashwagandha? What does it do to you? I don't know. I couldn't tell you what calms me down. Sure, maybe. But this year, there was a couple functional aspects to brands that were a lot more clear on what the function is. So first one, protein, proteinification of everything. We have energy drinks and caffeine. thc was a really big one this year and magnesium and sleep these were sort of the biggest ones that that we saw over 2025 yeah so instead of functional i think in previous years as as you refer to meant functional mushrooms a lot of the time as an ingredient um that i i feel like that's usually what it was or add it like vitamins minerals those kinds of things but the functionality i think people wanted it almost more in the moment.

3:30So something like energy and caffeine, something like magnesium to help you sleep in the moment, something like THC, which you feel the effect of immediately, and then protein, which I guess you don't feel in the moment other than you might feel a little bit more satiated, which of course had to do with GLP-1s. And again, that's another trend that I think there are people who are far better at talking about how GLP-1s impacted what we're eating this year and how we view wellness this year. We're not going to really cover that, but that's obviously an undertone of a lot of the themes we will talk about.

4:00But yeah, within these subcategories of redefining function, let's just get protein in and out of the way. So some of the main headlines... We ate so much protein this year. Oh my God. We ate so much protein this year. We also recorded two full podcasts on protein. So if you haven't listened to those yet, go check them out because we covered it far more in depth. But this was the year protein ate the world and the world ate protein. A few examples. I think the biggest one that will come to everyone's mind is David Barr, which emerged as a breakout star to say the very least. Raised the$75 million Series A after only eight months in market.

4:42They were tracking to hit$100 million in revenue. I guess we still haven't seen those final stats come out, but I would be surprised if they didn't surpass that, actually. Other thing we saw is just maximizing protein in existing protein products. So a few drinkable proteins went from like 20 grams to 32 grams. Every brand seemed to have a 32-gram protein drink. So we had Slate Milk and Koya were some of the big ones. I think Oikos might have surpassed 32. We have Fairlife's protein drinks. So lots of drinkable protein. A lot of drinkable protein. legacy brands were also jumping in on this trend pop tarts came out with the protein pop tart and also kroger came out with a private label protein line everything has added protein to it simply protein i think it was the name of the line yeah and and then there's like aside from adding protein to everything which also we saw so many protein sodas launch but aside from adding protein to things consumers were really leaning into things that naturally had high protein so we talked about Chobani being an 100-year brand.

5:48And throughout the year, Chobani had multiple milestones where they really demonstrated that they are just killing it. They increased their production capacity a ton. They acquired Daily Harvest. They're just doing really well. They're crushing it. Yeah, we saw, God, there's so many protein things. Protein pretzels, protein chocolate. Horrible's Chorrible's launched this year. My favorite name of a brand ever. um and i i think we'll see a lot more protein going into next year as well but other thing we had an episode about was energy drinks because caffeine had a big year as well so one of the biggest headlines i mean i think this actually might have been the biggest headline of the year was celsius's acquisition of alani new for 1.8 billion dollars crazy no it was huge and and as we've talked about in our podcast aptly named energy drinks are for the girls that is the massive category coming out of 2025 is energy drinks marketed towards women.

6:49Gorgie, you know, has raised a bunch of money and they just added Alex Earl as an investor and a partner, Alex Cooper, a different influencer. She also launched an energy drink podcaster. And of course, Monster, who is one of the largest energy drink brands on the market. They are launching a female focused energy drink line called flirt which we dove into in one of our newsletters and a recent podcast episode we have thoughts on the name we have thoughts on the strategy but but they did it and gendered energy drinks are going to be continue to grow i mean bloom nutrition they launched a sparkling energy drink targeted towards women in their first year they sold 35 million cans and went from 0 % of the energy drink market to 1%, which is actually insane.

7:46And they'll continue to gain market share as well. Yeah. Liquid Death even entered the category. I guess this isn't really about targeting women as much, but that was a big sign about energy skyrocketing. So Liquid Death entered the category with the energy drink. We just saw this will be a theme across multiple categories, but a lot of the legacy brands, their volumes declined and newer brands saw crazy growth. So you just mentioned Bloom's insane growth. Alani New grew 62.7%. The energy drink aisle is just going to look completely different. We actually talked about this in a recent newsletter when we mentioned Lucky Energy just raised, I think a Series C.

8:28They raised like three times last year. They raised so much money. It's a good energy drink. And it is a good energy drink. But we mentioned, we spoke to a beverage expert, Mark Gallo, who was talking about how like this we're entering the era of craft energy so in the same way there was like craft beer there just needs to be a resurgence in energy and it seems to be i i would say that 2025 set the foundation and then it's going to grow immensely in 2026 another space that has been growing and another very functional space is the thc space specifically thc beverages um that That market has boomed over the past year.

9:10Total Wine and Spirits, which is one of the leading liquor stores in the country, they've expanded a lot of shelf space to THC and infused beverages. Target is even testing out selling THC beverages in 10 stores across Minnesota. Edible Arrangements launched edible.com to sell THC and infused products, including gummies and mints and stuff. And there were just like a litany of launches and fundraisers. Uncle Arnie's, which is one of the leading THC-infused beverage brands in the country, they raised about$8 million and just this week launched a soda pop line. So functional sodas are getting a little bit more functional.

9:52Yeah. It is a crazy space. I think there's a little bit of uncertainty right now. But we saw so many really cool THC launches. And just as Nate mentioned with Target introducing THC, even though it was only in one state and was a test, there's just been a lot of legitimizing of the THC space generally. Like a company like Target taking a bet on THC on their shelves is a really, really big deal, even if it's just a test. And a marketplace like edible.com existing is a big one. Huge one. Another one, our sort of final functional theme here is magnesium and sleep. We've seen a lot of products launch around this and also just generally sleep being optimized, which magnesium fits really nicely into this.

10:42We're seeing it in gummy format. We're seeing it in powder format. We're seeing it in beverage format with beverages like Recess. Recess raised$30 million and UK's Trip, which is a very similar brand, also raised around$30 million. They raised$40 million for US expansion. And Recess, which has been around since like 2018, 2019, they saw a lot of growth from launching their Recess mood line, which is infused with magnesium. People really like magnesium and want to optimize their sleep and feel calmer too. Yeah. And I mean, AG1's first ever product that wasn't AG1 is AGZ, which is sleep, which is a sleep product.

11:29I actually don't know anything about how well that launch did. I feel like it wasn't spoken about a lot. No, I don't think they've promoted enough. I've heard nothing. I've also heard it's not doing so hot. So we'll see what happens with that. But I don't think the success of AGZ is not indicative of the overall magnesium and sleep space doing well. No, I completely agree. I mean, yeah, we've seen, again, raises, launches. It's just been in the rhetoric. Like so much more people have been talking about magnesium and it being in beverages. I almost feel like that's one of the biggest moves of a supplement to the mainstream is when it's introduced in a beverage format.

12:12Like THC is a perfect example of that. So convenient. it's convenient and there is limited shelf space for beverages especially chilled beverages and so if there is any validation that like some of these beverages belong in that limited shelf space that means that there is demand for that functionality so i just think that we're gonna keep seeing more magnesium launches in 2026 we had a newsletter where the deep dive was called magnesium is the new it girl. And I think it is the new it girl. It is. I did the whole deep dive in that one about how the brand moon juice was kind of like the catalyst for it.

12:53If anyone wants to check that out, but those were our functionality trends. And there's so much more to say in each of them. As I said, like protein, we could go on forever. There were so many more protein launches than we mentioned in this same with energy, but we're going to move on because we don't want this episode to be 10 hours to what we're pinning as the next theme of 2025, which is that we've seen the next generation of retail. Yeah. You want to explain what we mean? Yes. Yeah. So when we were discussing this before we started recording, I was sort of saying that even over the past few years, the foundation for the modernization of the retail space is really being laid here, both in terms of like back end operations and in-store operations, then also from like more of the consumer side and also from the delivery side.

13:44But I think really over the next few years, and especially next year, we're going to see the retail space become a lot more interesting. So I think one thing that's really interesting, we dived into this recently is, is the delivery aspect. Yes. And just ultra fast delivery from a lot of different angles. Same day delivery. Target and Walmart both announced enhancements to their supply chain so that they could offer same day delivery options. Yeah, actually that happened really early in the year and we had a headline that we titled same day or bust and that only increased throughout the year. So that is certainly a trend.

14:27and people want things they want them now. I think another good indicator of that, it was Uber Eats partnering with like every retailer under the sun. Everybody. No, it's crazy. It started with Uber Eats partnering with, and their mother. It started with Uber Eats partnering with grocery stores, which makes sense, like Kroger, you know, all the big grocery stores. And then it moved into partnering with Sephora and PacSun and Dick's Sporting Goods, which is, again, I'll say it again, they need to rebrand. It can't be called Uber Eats anymore. It doesn't make sense. No. You can get a laptop. I think one of the coolest things about the ultra fast delivery is the drones, though.

15:09Like the growth of drone delivery in this country over the past year has been really cool to see. I would love things delivered by drones, but I doubt drone delivery will come to Manhattan anytime soon. But I do think we'll start to see more autonomous last mile options. DoorDash has that robot with the cute eyes that can go like 20 miles an hour down the street. Dot. It's very cute looking. I thought Dot was very cute looking. Yeah. No, it is cute. So we definitely have delivery and enhanced delivery as one of the big pieces of the next generation of retail. And then I think the other piece is just some of these retailers that were seen as budget retailers are now attracting more affluent shoppers or are trying to rebrand in such a way to attract more affluent shoppers.

16:10So actually, I forgot about this, but in January, Walmart rebranded. They changed their logo, and it was one of those things that's like you need to see them side by side to even notice a change. Yeah, it was apparently a change. It was really a change, but it's a little bolder, cleaner, and just felt overall very symbolic of what ended up being a really big year of changing their demographic and what they actually carry in store. And their private label is very premium now. They also are removing all dyes and synthetic ingredients from their private label. They launched a competitor to Amazon Grocery and they have had countless wellness launches.

16:52So they really doubled down on their wellness sets, which again is attracting a totally different customer. And they're just premium now. Yeah. No, they have something for everybody. And with Target slightly under decline and Walmart wanting to take some market share back from Amazon, they've been doing a lot. I mean, we got to go to a Walmart event where we got to see some of this stuff firsthand and talk to some of the team at Walmart. And they're really pushing fun new brands like Lemmy and Bloom and all of it. Like, and Jams is a new Uncrustables competitor launched at Walmart. Now it's also a Target, but it launched at Walmart.

17:34And Better Goods, which is their new private label line that they launched this year, is a very premium, well-branded, well-merchandised, well-thought-out private label brand that has unique and better-for-you products. I think it directly competes with Target's Good & Gather. And it has brought in a more affluent and higher-end consumer. and there were reports about the average income of Walmart shoppers like more people in a higher income bracket are going to Walmart now one because Walmart is within 90 percent of Americans so everybody has a Walmart near them I think within five miles but also they're to your point their assortment is getting better and more interesting and they're doing a lot to get more people away from some of these other retailers so it's really cool to see Walmart's ascent over the past year.

18:29Yeah. And there are just so many brands. We're not going to list all of these out, obviously, but I just never expected so many of the brands that we really associate with, Better For You and Premium, making these really loud, proud launches around getting into Walmart nationwide. It is from the brand perspective, also a really big deal now. I mean, I think it's partially also a lot of brands realizing they need to make money and be profitable. And a lot of the ways to do that is to get into a mass market retailer like Walmart. And also like all of these retailers are prioritizing more emerging and trendy new brands.

19:09That's also very good to see. I think that's actually a trend in itself is that we're seeing a lot of retailers just take bets on emerging brands more and more. Yeah. Oh yeah. And another trend in retail is that all of these retailers are also starting to play around with formats, especially smaller formats, It's more nimble format. So Whole Foods introduced a small format here in New York. And I actually got to go to the opening, which was really cool. And it seems to be doing very well. They just opened up another small format location, I believe, in Queens. And there's some other retailers also playing around with small formats.

19:46Even Trader Joe's launched a small format store, which is funny because their stores are not huge. But they did launch a small format store here in New York as well. Yeah. And on formatting, I do think it's worth a quick mention that Whole Foods launched what they're calling micro fulfillment centers in one of their stores in Pennsylvania, which is just a really small little area in the back. I compared this to like where you pick up prescriptions at a pharmacy where you can pick up non Whole Foods products. So products that don't meet Whole Foods standards, but are carried on Amazon at your Whole Foods location.

20:22We only saw one launch this year, but I think that'll be something that will be doubled down next year. We had a lot of thoughts on that. That was in another podcast. But just another example of store formats are really changing and increasing accessibility to lots of different products in one place. Our next theme is around teens separate and then also men as new target consumers for beauty and skincare. both these buckets obviously teens have been targeted for a long time but we're seeing even like teen founded brands starting to come onto the scene oh yeah there were so many teen skincare and teen fragrance launches and there were so many men's skincare and men's fragrance launches so trying to bring these different target markets into this beauty skincare space some of those examples as you mentioned were actually launched by teens tweens an example that is Sincerely Yours, which was launched by Salish Matter, who is a tween YouTube creator with her dad.

21:24And when she launched her brand, quite literally, they had to shut down the mall because she tried to do a meet and greet. And there were hundreds of thousands of teenagers who showed up for this launch of face wash, essentially. And it's insane to see that. absurd she got she got more people coming to this launch than when mr beast held an event there and he's the biggest youtuber on the planet but the teens the power of their skincare teens love their skincare yesterday was another example early erly skincare and then fragrance for teens also was huge and this is because we're seeing a lot of teens and just gen z i would say kind of play around with fragrance a little bit more and build fragrance wardrobes so they're trying more than one and then a acquisition that is such a strong indicator of teens playing around with skincare is touchland's acquisition by church and dwight for 800 million dollars so touchland is hand sanitizer company but their whole shtick other than the fact that it's like a the format is very thin that can fit in your pocket um is that they come with really cool fragrances that's It's a fragrance, I would almost say, more than it is a hand sanitizer.

22:40100%. It is pungent, too. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So that's another really good example of just – and market validation of teen fragrance. And do you want to do the men's stuff? I feel like you're really passionate about the men's stuff. I am. I think it's a really interesting category because it feels like we're at the precipice of men actually starting to dabble in skincare. I think we're going to start seeing it probably more with fragrance. I think it's an easier way to get somebody into the fold. It's not really taboo. There's a lot of men's fragrances out there. And we saw some launches, Noteworks, by the genderless fragrance brand Sniff, launched Noteworks, which is targeted towards men.

23:26Harry's has been growing. And we've also seen some body care launches and acquisitions. Dr. Squatch was acquired for$1.5 billion by Unilever. Dr. Squatch is a more natural leanings men's skincare line. Sahil Bloom, who is a big entrepreneur, personal, I don't even know what kind of influencer he is. Sahil Bloom is a big influencer. He's got like a couple million followers across multiple channels. He launched a skincare line. Curious to see how that one does. It's a bit more premium, but he does have a big following. I'm sure he's got a lot of men following him. So I'm very curious to see how that goes.

24:13I think the men's skincare market is on the up. There's brands like Huron. There's brands like Jack Furr that are starting to make some traction. I think it's starting to become a lot less taboo to have something, to have men in this country use skincare beyond just like acetaphil. And I'm excited to see what brands come out over the next year too that are targeting men a bit more. So I think that's something that's gonna come up more in 2026. But aside from men, kids are getting targeted with skincare too. Not just tweens, kids, three-year-olds. Yeah, we had a very controversial launch, which you can see again in our podcast episode, Skincare for Three-Year-Olds.

24:59Rini by Shay Mitchell launched, which is a children's skincare brand. And our thoughts are in that episode. Kids were even being targeted for sure. And then, I mean, also on the market validation side, Elf acquired Rode. I don't, that's a huge piece in teen skincare. I mean, Of course, Rode isn't only targeting teens, but one of the products, which we spoke about in our recent episode, why every brand has a lip balm now, is Rode got really popular for their lip balm. And they got really popular with a really young audience and a phone case that fits the lip balm in it. And that is a huge piece of how Rode ended up doing so well.

25:47And then a company like Elf, which again is really targeting a younger consumer. They have lower price point products. They're very social media friendly. They were able to acquire Rode, which is a really big deal. I think everyone was kind of underestimating Elf until this year. And then they were like, oh, this brand that has like$2 products is actually a brand to compete with. Yeah. For Elf, it's the power of dupes. And then the other piece of market validation that we're, I think, going to see in 2026 and we're seeing the seeds planted now is that teen targeted brands like Bubble, which is another teen skincare brand, and Starface, which is famed for its star-shaped pimple patches, are both exploring sales with strategics this year.

26:35So definitely curious to see if they do get acquired in the next year. But yeah, so teen and men, skincare and fragrance, huge theme of 2025. Yes. Yeah. And again, I think it's one of those themes that it's like laying the groundwork for an even bigger trend going into 2026. Absolutely. Our next theme is big strategic CPGs are streamlining their portfolios significantly. Kraft Heinz announced they're splitting into two companies only after a decade of being Kraft Heinz, which is crazy. Ferrero bought W.K. Kellogg, which is the cereal business of Kellogg's for$3 billion, which is nuts. So this includes like Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes, Special K.

27:30Most of the cereal aisle is now going to be owned by Ferrero, which is the European candy company. And we sort of dove into this in our newsletter about this news story, but it's sort of like a couple of reasons that CBG companies are starting to streamline themselves. Private label is eating their lunch. Private label is taking up a big piece of consumers' shopping habits now. The consumer loyalty is starting to fade. There's a lot of younger consumers who are starting to switch brands. There's an innovation crisis. these big strategics are not really innovating. They're pretty much just acquiring.

28:09And the startups are winning. The startups are taking a lot of market share from these strategics. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But the fact of the matter is there is a lot more players in this space. There's a lot of ways for newer brands and smaller brands to get more eyeballs and take some of that share away from these bigger strategic brands that have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on marketing a year. It's so interesting. But yeah, I mean, I think the way the economy is going, a lot of these strategic CPG companies need to streamline so they can focus on their core competencies, their core businesses, their core brands, so that going into the next few years, they can really win and maintain their market shares.

29:01You summed it up perfectly. I am. Thank you. Yeah. Nothing to add. That's great. So those are our themes for 2025. But we did want to do like quick rapid fire round of just some crazy things that we bet you forgot happened in 2025 because we forgot they happened. CPG is wild. There's crazy shit. And retail. Mm-hmm. And retail. There was some wild things that happened. And I'm going to kick it off with one that like, it just, we should have, no, not what you think it is. One that we, you would think have mentioned, we would have mentioned in the themes of the year, but I also, I like it more as a crazy thing that happened, which is that Poppy was acquired.

29:43That was a huge, huge deal. Poppy was acquired. Poppy was acquired for$1.5 billion. $1.5 billion. And why I'm putting this as a crazy thing that happened is because of a headline that we crafted that ended up actually kind of popping off on LinkedIn, which was that Poppy was acquired for more than Versace was acquired this year. I forgot about that. That is fucking crazy. That's a crazy thing that happened. Crazy thing that happened was that Prada bought Versace from Capri Holdings for$1.4 billion, which is less than$1.95 billion if you're paying attention to Pepsi's acquisition of Poppy, which means a 47-year-old luxury fashion house was worth less than a 7-year-old better-for-you soda.

30:42That is crazy. That is insane. I mean, yeah, we broke it down in that newsletter. But basically, Versace is like more of a play in perceived value. But Poppy is a play in projected value. They are already killing it. They have had 122 % year-over-year sales growth through early this year. So I can only imagine that has increased significantly since then. And they're playing in the functional beverage space, which is projected to hit$2 billion by 2029. So Pepsi is betting on poppy killing it. And I think Prada was betting on Versace just staying the same and being an accessible. It's luxury. Yeah, of course.

31:32That is luxury doesn't change. That's why it's luxury. but being an accessible high volume mass market brand is very valuable so people need to stop sleeping on cpg and that was the first crazy thing that happened but now we'll get into the actually silly crazy things that happened i'll let you kick that off all right let's do some rapid fire crazy things that happened david the protein bar released cod which they're still selling on their site mind you they're still selling filet of cod on their website and everybody was talking about it and this was all a marketing promotion to show that the david bars calorie to protein ratio is so close to cod that was on their site from day one that's why they did this and they're still selling it on their site which is so funny to me yeah the internet was like is this a gimmick is this real and then people ordered it and it is real but it's also a gimmick and honestly and also more expensive than like buying an grocery store oh for sure i mean it's premium it was bought by an alaskan farmer or sorry sourced by an alaskan farmer yeah that was one nutty thing that happened one of my favorite nutty things that happened actually that's really messed up to say it's not my favorite thing that happened but it's just crazy how crazy it is which is there's this company called Better Brand, which makes low carb, high protein bagels.

32:59They were previously valued at$170 million, which doesn't make sense. Actually, it just doesn't. And they faced allegations of fraud and deceit after they defaulted on a$700 ,000 loan. And after all that happened, the founder, Amy Yang went missing. Is impossible to locate. She was accused of conspiracy and disappeared off of the face of the earth. Customers are not receiving their bagels. Duh. And that was crazy. Like the internet like blew up about this. Like nobody could understand. She is the, she is the Elizabeth Holmes of bagels is really what it is. Do we know that the bagels are actually high protein, low carb?