Big food is killing health trends

18:34Jenna Goldring:I think that's such a great point of like, by partnering with creators like Sarah, you're really helping manage this taboo side of THC as well. So really excited for you for this collaboration, for everything that High Confectionary is doing. So thank you so much, Jenna, for sharing your story. It was such a pleasure. And if you haven't tried High Confectionary, you absolutely should.

18:54The Curious Consumer Host:Amazing. Thank you, Jenna. Today we want to start off shouting out ourselves for a new series that we just launched called Brand's Biggest Fan.

19:04Jenna Goldring:As you know, normally put out one podcast a week, which is this one, where we share the latest news in consumer brands and retail. But we wanted to tack on an extra series on top of just the news where we actually talk to some of the coolest brands that we know. and we do it in a pretty unique format.

19:27The Curious Consumer Host:We interview the brand's biggest fan and then we go back to the brand and we interview the founder and bring back some of the insights that we learned from that fan and see if it aligns with how they view their own brand that they built. So for our first guest, our first brand, we had Ollipop on.

19:47Jenna Goldring:Which was super cool. Ben Goodwin is the co-founder, CEO, and formulator of Olipop. And he was such an incredible first guest. But we also spoke with someone who is a self-proclaimed biggest fan of Olipop, a lovely woman named Amy, who shared her story of discovering Olipop, mostly actually for her kids and then falling in love with it herself. So it's a really interesting episode personifying the actual consumers behind a lot of the data that we see. And Ben's response to her story is fascinating. he shared so much interesting perspective specifically from his formulator lens so even if you are also a self-proclaimed biggest fan of olipop there is something for you to learn in that episode and we highly recommend you give it a give it a listen and if you are the biggest fan of another really cool brand let us know or let us know who we should reach out to next because this will be an ongoing series and we're super excited about it.

20:50The Curious Consumer Host:We have a lot more fun brands and fun fans in the pipeline. So stay tuned. Before we continue on, I would love to give a quick shout out to the sponsor of this episode, Tapcart. So Tapcart creates mobile apps for brands and they They just dropped their 2026 mobile trends report and they found out that 71 % of consumers are buying on their phone.

21:18Jenna Goldring:Yeah, desktop is dead. And that also means that this is such a ripe opportunity to have your own mobile app. What was really cool is to develop this mobile trends report. Tapcart interviewed over 1 ,200 shoppers. And so they obviously not only discovered stats like how they're shopping on their phones, but also ask some questions around how AI is shifting e-commerce and helps brands discover new ways that they can be reaching customers in this new e-commerce landscape. And so this report is like chock full of fascinating insights and tips for e-commerce brands. We will link the report in the show notes below.

21:57Jenna Goldring:You will hear from brands like Reformation, Gymshark, and Symbiotica on the actual strategies that they're using to reach e-commerce shoppers these days. So really cool, really grateful to be working with Tapcart, who is open to sharing some of these strategies from the biggest brands for emerging brands to hopefully use.

22:17The Curious Consumer Host:Amazing. Thank you, Tapcart. Now let's get into it, Jenna. This week was not the most jam-packed week, but there were some very interesting things happening. One is that PepsiCo is really leaning into all the trends, specifically two trends, which I'm sure you can guess, fiber and protein. And they have a few answers to the fiber and protein conundrum that consumers are clearly facing. There's not enough products out there, don't you know?

22:50Jenna Goldring:No.

22:52The Curious Consumer Host:So not enough. So they announced at the end of last year that they are going to be releasing a bunch of higher protein products. And more recently, they announced and reemphasized their focus on fiber as well as protein. So they're coming out with a line of fiber-rich smart food, their popcorn, as well as sun chips with a lot of fiber. Oh, and of course, a prebiotic soda. Because buying Poppy wasn't enough. They had to come out with their own prebiotic soda as well, which has officially launched. They announced it over the summer, I believe in July, and it officially launched this month.

23:28Jenna Goldring:Yeah. So they are adding all the fiber and protein to their products. Also on the fiber end, I always forget all the brands that Pepsi owns, one of which is Quaker and they in particular are launching multiple different fiber focused and gut health focused lines and skews for Quaker. So look out for some gut health support granola bars. Who knows what they actually do and high fiber oatmeal, obviously. But I feel like one of the kickers and what got a lot of media attention last week was that they are launching protein Doritos, which actually are really high protein. Like this is like a legitimately high protein product.

24:13Jenna Goldring:Their new protein Doritos have 10 grams of protein per 150 calories serving. And there are seven servings in a bag. So if you ate the whole bag, you would be having like a lot of calories, but also you'd have 70 grams of protein. So that's not bad. And it's a pretty stark difference on the ingredient label. I would say like the first ingredient is milk protein or casein. Casein, I never know how to say that. But there's no shying away from the fact that this is still an ultra processed food because the second ingredient right after milk protein is vegetable oil. And I don't care what you feel about seed oils.

24:50Jenna Goldring:I personally don't think they're the devil. But I do think that having vegetable oil is the second ingredient in a product. Like it raises some alarms, I would say. The red flags are going off.

25:02The Curious Consumer Host:Yeah, it's so funny. I saw some comments that people were like, oh, Quest has this. I was like, yeah, but Pepsi doesn't yet, and they're a much more mass market appealing brand.

25:12Jenna Goldring:Well, it does feel like a response to Quest's tortilla chips, I would say. What's interesting with seeing PepsiCo get into all of these trends is this kind of dichotomy where it's both amplifying and diluting these claims. So on one end, a brand like PepsiCo going in on fiber, going in on protein really validates that this is a mass market trend. This is no longer for a niche. And it also validates it because Pepsi has all the money in the world to conduct amazing consumer research. So clearly their research tells them these are the trends to focus on. So there's that. But then at the same time, every time that like really big companies gets their hands on a trend, consumers start to get more and more skeptical because oftentimes they dilute those claims.

26:07Jenna Goldring:They take advantage of them. They market to those claims, but we don't always see those claims actually reflected meaningfully on the ingredient panel because they didn't build these brands with high fiber and high protein in mind. They retrofitted these brands to have high fiber and high protein.

26:25The Curious Consumer Host:Now's an interesting time as well, because I feel like if they released a high protein skew five years ago, even not not even a decade ago, five years ago, it might have just been seen as some like weird offshoot. And they might have diluted it more than they would have now because consumers are so much more aware and demanding of these products than I think they've ever been. I don't think they're enough, but I think consumers are a lot more educated on what they want, especially because it's the protein and fiber rich consumer packaged good market has expanded so much well beyond just Quest, well beyond the fitness focused products and the really explicitly health focused products that I could see this version of Doritos lasting longer than a year.

27:15The Curious Consumer Host:These feel like very legitimate stakes in the ground for PepsiCo to play in this space. Granted, they also could just be acquiring brands that have built more of an audience and brand awareness around whatever their product offers, like what they did with Poppy. But it also seems like they just wanted Poppy because they could get it. And then they immediately announced their own probiotic soda. But I do get like a different feeling from Pepsi launching this than I feel like I would have even five years ago.

27:50Jenna Goldring:Yeah, I agree with that. But I also do think that these things are just cyclical. And sometimes what happens is when the big guys get in on it, it becomes uncool. An example would be like, we're like, oh my God, Fiber is new. No, it's not. Do we remember Fiber One? Like that was a whole brand from a decade plus ago that blew up, is mass market. Its whole focus was fiber, but it became unsexy because it was mass market. And so I feel like it's almost just how trends come and go in fashion. This is what's trendy right now, but soon something else will take over. Even though I know people are like, America needs this.

28:31Jenna Goldring:Colon cancer is rising. Like, yes, we do need more fiber in our diets. But we needed more fiber in our diets. For decades. Fiber one became a thing too. Exactly. And then it became mass market and then it becomes less of the focus. And so I do think that with Pepsi going into it, we might see this trend kind of start to die down a little, not in the near future, but in the coming years. Mass market, again, it amplifies a trend, but it also dilutes it and makes it uncool. And therefore, it kind of dies out.

29:04The Curious Consumer Host:Yeah, I think the fiber piece is really interesting more than anything, because to your point, it has been around for so long. I was reading the Trader Joe's book. He was talking about colon cancer and getting bran flakes in his store, and he was like very adamant about it. It's the one trend that when it was a trend previously was also in this same like it's the same discourse. It's this it's in the same vein. It's just so interesting how it wasn't as sticky as it feels like it might be becoming now. Now, one thing I do think we'll start seeing, especially from some other strategic brands and some smaller brands as well, is brands not changing anything about their product.

29:42The Curious Consumer Host:But if they happen to have some meaningful amount of fiber, they'll just start calling that out a lot more. I think there'll be more marketing that I don't think many more strategics will come out with very explicit fiber lines. And if they do, it'll be a very small amount, sort of like what Pepsi's sort of testing out right now. Now, clearly PepsiCo is like trying to play into the trends a lot more than some of the other big strategics are, at least very publicly. Yeah.

30:07Jenna Goldring:I'm just curious to see what, as I said, what this will do for like the trend cycle. Like Pepsi will make this so popular. And then the like niche people who started this trend in the first place will get really obsessed with one facet of it. So in this case, people are becoming really obsessed with fiber source. So they're like, oh, it's not enough to have one kind of fiber. We need to like diversify the kinds of fiber that you have or whatever it is. Protein source. I also already see people getting like really into that. And there can only be certain sources or it doesn't count. And so then people get really obsessed with one source.

30:41Jenna Goldring:And then a new source, like it's just kind of narrowing in on a trend. But yeah, I mean, it's smart of them, I think, to get in on it. I would be really like confused if they didn't. If anything, it actually feels a little bit late. But we'll see if it'll become a lasting priority or if they're just riding the wave.

31:03The Curious Consumer Host:Speaking of another trend that has been blown up over the past few years, squeezy bottles. This story that we put in the newsletter, it's about Zoom foods.

31:17Jenna Goldring:They're making flavored tahini in squeeze bottles. One of the flavors is harissa, which sounds delicious. and that's a Mediterranean sauce. Basically what I think is so interesting about this is putting something in a squeeze bottle solidifies its position as a daily use product. So something like a sauce that's in a jar, because there's kind of a larger barrier to entry of like opening a jar and getting a utensil and yada, yada, yada, it doesn't feel like an everyday staple. And this is what's so cool about this space is we talk all the time about ingredient innovation and we talk about flavor innovation, but packaging innovation, and I don't mean branding, I mean physical form factor, can change completely the way that you use a product and can turn a product from something that people see as a nice-to-have into an everyday essential.

32:10Jenna Goldring:And so I think that's something that Zoom is doing with these Mediterranean flavors and tahini.

32:16The Curious Consumer Host:And I think something about Zoom as well is the American consumer, and we've talked about this a lot, is a little bit scared of a non-American seasoning product, something that has global flavors or anything like that. So I think to your point, people kind of know tahini, but putting in this squeeze bottle and adding these fun flavors also makes it so much more accessible to that kind of consumer who might be a little bit hesitant. I think you're spot on. And it's so cool to see what kind of packaging brands can do to shift how a consumer views and uses that product.

32:53Jenna Goldring:It's really interesting. I love to see how a packaging innovation can completely disrupt a category. So very excited. And also I'm excited because Zoom is my favorite tahini. And tahini is my favorite condiment in the world. I don't know if I can call it a condiment. It's a condiment. I put tahini on everything. So I'm very excited to have this.

33:15The Curious Consumer Host:Let's move on to our next story. This one's a little bit more about innovation that goes inside the package, inside the product.

33:23Jenna Goldring:So Lasso Spintech is their proprietary technology. And it uses, I really hope I can say this word right, centrifugal force. Centrifugal. Centrifugal? Centrifugal.

33:36The Curious Consumer Host:Centrifugal.

33:37Jenna Goldring:Someone is cringing. It spins really fast. And it spins really fast exactly like a cotton candy machine does. So if you think about how when you pour sugar into a cotton candy machine, if you've ever used one or seen one, it basically spins the sugar really, really fast, which uses force to turn the sugar into these like threads that then make cotton candy. So Lasso is kind of doing the same thing, but instead of sugar, they're using protein and fiber, spinning them together really, really quickly, which outputs these little threads that you can then weave together to make snacks. So it's just like cool.

34:16Jenna Goldring:It's so cool. So it's this fibrous material. That's a combo of protein and fiber, which as we know, are two biggest things on everyone's radar. Usually when you are trying to put protein and fiber into one snack, you would need some kind of like binder to get these molecules to stick together. And this technology allows brands that are developing snacks to add protein and fiber without gums or binders or any artificial ingredients. The tech has existed for a little bit, but to prove out their technology, they actually came out with two of their own snack companies themselves.

34:53The Curious Consumer Host:Yeah. And both the snacks look great.

34:56Jenna Goldring:I tried them both. So there's Froobies and Crunch Club. Froobies is a fruit snack. it's more geared towards kids so it's four grams protein and five grams of fiber per serving of fruit snack and then there's crunch club which is a baked crisp a few brands have come out with like a protein crisp kind of thing it's basically like a flavored cracker and one serving of these you get 21 to 23 grams of protein and seven to eight grams of fiber which is crazy and they have a very simple ingredient list and they happen to have really cute branding for both as well.

35:33The Curious Consumer Host:Yeah. Both the branding is really nice and doesn't feel like it just came out of some like random food tech company. Like it feels very properly new age is how I'll put it. Yeah.

35:44Jenna Goldring:They're not the first food tech company to basically prove out their concept by coming out with their own brand. But oftentimes it feels like a food tech company tried to come out with their own brand. As you said, like these feel really standalone, but what's cool about it is this is such a great example for how they can play a role in developing other companies' snacks in the future. So you might not know it, but I do think that Lasso will be playing a big role in developing snacks for some big companies in the near future. So now you have a backend view and hopefully we can cover them a little bit more in depth because I'm actually quite nerdy about the science behind it.

36:24The Curious Consumer Host:Yeah, it's really cool. And it's so fun to see this kind of innovation come out because like we've said in previous newsletters and previous podcasts, it's very hard to innovate in the CPG world. Kind of everything that needs to be made has been made at some point. And this kind of innovation is needed. The applications are clearly there and clearly wanted. So I'm excited to see a lot more innovation coming through and I'm excited to talk about it more in depth on the other side of innovation but still in fiber and protein i it's crazy right baby bell came out with a new product called baby bell pro it's got five grams of protein and it's got a bunch of a billion prebiotics in it and i was looking at it when i first got the news about it i was like okay it's gonna be like 10 grams of protein no it's five grams per little circle of baby bell you know the baby bone the wax wax coating a normal baby bell has four grams of protein and that's on innovation that excites look and i think this is kind of the dilution a little bit that we were talking about earlier it's like they're just trying to be like look we have this too but they're not really doing anything they're not changing anything.

37:44Jenna Goldring:The prebiotics is something new. That is fair. Yeah. But the five grams of protein call out, it's basically just a call out. Like these already had, as we said, four grams of protein. So the difference is just that they're calling it out. I don't think it's deceptive marketing per se. I just think it's like these companies who have been around for a while and were already doing this are like, Hey, I've been doing this. Like, can we talk about it? And if they don't, they'll probably get left behind. It would be better to be like, we've always had this, but we added one more gram just to do it. Like kind of make fun of it in a way, as opposed to be like, this is a brand new innovation.

38:28The Curious Consumer Host:Yeah. And a brand who's actually done that very, that exact thing very well. And very recently is Raisin Bran.

38:34Jenna Goldring:I know I was thinking that.

38:36The Curious Consumer Host:Raisin Brin did a great job. Their marketing right now post Super Bowl is like, hey, guys, we've been here and we have fiber and we're like good and accessible. We're the reason you won fiber. But yeah, Babybel could have just been a little bit cheekier with the fact that they've always been a good source of protein because it's just a wheel of cheese. Let's move on to our next story. I love this story because it's a founder who won and then won again. So Just Ice Tea, which is a relatively newish brand, they just raised$9 million. But if you looked at Just Ice Tea, you might think it looks like another Ice Tea brand, Honest Tea.

39:22The Curious Consumer Host:And Honest Tea was a very popular Ice Tea brand, very simple branding, very, very similar branding to Just Ice Tea. And the reason is because Seth Goldman, who is the founder of Just Ice Tea, also started Honest Tea. He eventually sold that brand to Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola, maybe like a year after they acquired it, shut it down. They're focusing on their other tea brands that they also, they have other tea brands. Goldleaf is their other tea brand that they're really trying to focus on. So they just shuttered Honest Tea. And Seth Goldman was like, no, I had a good thing going. I'm going to do it again.

39:56The Curious Consumer Host:He did it again. He's got nationwide distribution. He just raised about$10 million. He's winning for a second time. Who knows? Maybe Coca-Cola will buy him again.

40:08Jenna Goldring:that would be insane but it's possible yeah i think what's really cool about this so honest tea they were really a mission focused brand the whole premise of the brand and seth goldman was a co-founder there were two other co-founders actually the whole premise of the brand was that it is organic fair trade and less sweet iced tea so this was really disruptive when it came out And obviously they really killed it because Coca-Cola was interested in them and purchased it. And when Seth founded Just Iced Tea, he wasn't just like, I'm going to create another iced tea brand. He specifically made another very mission-oriented iced tea brand.

40:50And I think in a way that it's like an extra F you to Coca-Cola because it's so mission oriented in a way that I think a larger brand would have a hard time replicating.

41:03Jenna Goldring:And so, again, organic, fair trade, less sweet. It's a little bit different now. It's sweetened with agave instead of sugar. So, like, slightly different formulations, different flavors. There are 12 flavors of just iced tea, and it's very flavor forward. They also are not only available in glass, they're available in cans now. But it's just exciting to see a founder rise from the ashes in a way. Although I'm sure he got a lot of money from Coca-Cola when they bought the company. But it also shows that it was not about the money for him. He easily could have taken that money and been like, oh, they just continued it.

41:36Jenna Goldring:Whatever. I came away with what I needed. But he didn't. He was like, what I wanted was for this company to exist. So I'm going to start it over again.

41:44The Curious Consumer Host:Yeah.

41:46Jenna Goldring:And he did. And they're killing it. Their sales are projected to hit$30 million this year, and they'll be doubling their retail presence to 12 ,000 stores. So this will be a pretty ubiquitous brand. The other thing that's cool, I think, is just that it's just iced tea. It's not anything crazy, functional, whatever. It's just a less sweet, flavor-focused, mission-oriented iced tea. And this is another example that simple, great products always have room to win.

42:13The Curious Consumer Host:Yeah. And it just proves how good Seth's character is. To sell to Coke, mission-driven company, and then just redo it even stronger. It's kind of lovely.

42:27Jenna Goldring:So our final bit of news is actually on the retail side, which is that Walmart just came out with the news that their grocery penetration has hit a record of 72%, which is up six percentage points year over year. And if you don't know what that means, penetration means the share of U.S. households that shopped at Walmart at least once over the past year. So that means 72 % of U.S. households shopped at Walmart in the last year.

42:58The Curious Consumer Host:For grocery.

43:00Jenna Goldring:For grocery. Yes. Thank you. For grocery. And that's why that's mind-boggling at large.

43:07The Curious Consumer Host:Yes. That's actually very surprising.

43:09Jenna Goldring:And the data that goes along with that also is that mass channel retailers generally have matched traditional supermarkets at 79 % penetration. So mass channel retailers are stores where grocery is just one department among many. Walmart is an example of that. Target is also an example of that. Even Costco is an example of that. They have matched the traditional supermarkets. So the Kroger's, the Safeway's, the Publix of the world stores where they just sell food.

43:40The Curious Consumer Host:Right.

43:40Jenna Goldring:So people are shopping for groceries in these mass channel retailers the same amount that they're shopping for groceries at a grocery store.

43:50The Curious Consumer Host:it's it was bound to happen and yeah it was bound to happen look and i i think i think it makes a lot of sense i i think it's a mixture of things i think one people got very used to the convenience of amazon that you could just get kind of everything in one place and obviously amazon has grocery and they own they own whole foods but going to target and going to walmart is is like going to amazon.com just in person. It is very similar. You also get the benefit of deals and price discounts. And these retailers have also leaned so heavily, these mass channel retailers have also leaned so heavily into private label and improving their private label products to keep up with some of the even nicer CPG brands.

44:34The Curious Consumer Host:Like Walmart's Better Goods is one of the fastest growing private label brands, there is. It's Walmart's higher end, think Target's good and gather, but it's Walmart's better goods. It's basically the same higher end, like fancy, frozen, pesto gnocchi and pistachio butter spread, but under the Walmart brand name, better good. And we've also seen over the past few years, and I'm assuming this is a post-pandemic thing that also higher income shoppers are shopping at Walmart and targets, especially Walmart, more than they have in the past. I think it's because their product assortments have gotten better.

45:14The Curious Consumer Host:I think it's the convenience play. Also, targets at Walmart are kind of everywhere. Walmart in particular, they cover like 98 % of the country. I think every American is within like 10 miles of a Walmart. So this makes a lot of sense. And the other side of it too is these retailers are really emphasizing their assortment and reorganizing the stores to also emphasize grocery. They want a greater share of wallet from these consumers and groceries are a great way to get somebody in store consistently.

45:45Jenna Goldring:Yes, that consistency piece is huge too. As you said, this was bound to happen. I would say that the numbers were impressive to me and especially a really large year-over-year growth. We could talk about the Amazon effect of how we shop from the past decade, I would say it has been impacting the way we shop. But I do think that that year over year 6 % jump is probably more due to that other piece you mentioned, which is that their actual grocery set is getting so much better.

46:15The Curious Consumer Host:Yeah.

46:16Jenna Goldring:Yeah, but that's the retail news of the week. And if you've been reading Express Checkout or listening to Curious Consumer for a while, you'll know that we have been talking about either Target or Walmart almost every single week. they continue to impress us with their growth and yeah you probably won't we probably won't

46:36The Curious Consumer Host:stop talking about them for a while no and i kind of love it it's honestly becoming one of my favorite topics i think it's endlessly fascinating and it's just it's it's so tangible and like it covers so much different trends different categories so that is the news but before we wrap up, I want to give some updates. So Express Checkout is going to Expo West next week. We're a week away from the Super Bowl of CPG. We will be on the floor walking around. But more importantly, we are partnering with the Angel Group and we have a little part of their booth where we will be recording podcasts, interviews live.

47:19The Curious Consumer Host:We'll be putting together a podcast, but also we are working on a larger story around Expo and around how these great brands get built.

47:28Jenna Goldring:Can't wait and can't wait to report back on all of our favorite things we've tried and show you our hauls.

47:34The Curious Consumer Host:So many products. If you haven't yet, please review this podcast wherever you can review podcasts. If you haven't subscribed to our newsletter, go to expresscheckout.co and find us on Instagram as well at Express Checkout. Thanks, everyone. Bye. Have a good one. Thank you.