How coconut water is making a comeback

0:00Welcome back to another episode of The Curious Consumer. I'm Nate. I'm Jenna. And we got a lot to talk about this week. There's some fun stories, some hydrating stories. I'm actually excited about it. I really liked the deep dive this week. This was really good, Jenna. This was really good. Oh, thank you. Really interesting. But Jenna, are you consuming anything right now? Do you have any fun products on your desk right now? Okay. Well, I did just have Smart Suites just came out with these Dream Puffs and they They are these cloud-shaped marshmallow-y gummies. It's a perfect mix between a marshmallow and a gummy in strawberry foam flavor and peach foam flavor.

0:44And they are texturally so incredibly satisfying. They're beautiful. Beautiful. And the bag is only three grams of sugar, as Smart Sweets so famously does. So that's what I just had as my midday snack. I think it's great. What about you? I am currently almost done with my large Dunkin' iced coffee with skim milk and brown sugar syrup. I shouldn't have done skim milk. And then I also had an Icelandic Provisions extra creamy skier, the honey and apricot one, which for those who are listening to the podcast who don't follow us on Instagram, we just did a What's in Your Cart episode with Jesse Saltzman, who is the head of R &D at Icelandic Provisions.

1:32an Icelandic skier yogurt company. And this was one of her formulations. She also has a strawberry and cream one that she did recently. And she also recommended a pita bread company called Angel Bakeries. Truly some of the best store-bought pita I've ever had. It tastes like it's from a restaurant. It's so good. Apparently, somebody in the comments said that Miznone, a Middle Eastern restaurant here in the city, uses their pita bread. I finished the bag today. I bought it a few days ago. And I just had the pita plain. I didn't do anything with it. I just had a plane. And that's, you're right. And it was great.

2:06And they were delicious. But let's start with our first story, which is coconut water. Coconut water has somehow re-entered the zeitgeist as if it was never a huge thing in the first place. Right. Which is very interesting to me. Coconut water was very big in the 2010s. And then there was this really big lull, I would say, from 2012 until almost now. Suddenly, it is back. So we were really curious how this all went down. And we also were inspired to write about this because Vitacoco, which is the public brand that controls more than half of the U.S. coconut water market currently, just acquired Copra, which is a super premium cold chain coconut water, as opposed to their Tetra Pak shelf stable one.

2:57This is a refrigerated, very premium version of coconut water that is sourced from Thailand. Is that correct? Correct. From Thailand. So it would also give them another reason to source from another location. So there's lots of reasons that they have acquired this company. But yeah, we wanted to go back and just like understand the roots of coconut water in the first place. So gonna start really, I'll take it back, but then we'll fast forward. Gonna start in 2004 because that's when Vitacoco was founded, which is crazy to me that it's been around for so long. And the story of Vitacoco being founded is also very funny to me.

3:36The two co-founders, they were at a bar in New York and they just met two Brazilian women. And they asked them what they missed the most about home. And the women said coconut water. And then they founded a coconut water brand. It's probably one of the best founding stories I've ever heard. That's amazing. They started a massive coconut water brand that controls about half the coconut water market in the U.S. to please two women. Amazing. Incredible. I'm like, were these the most convincing women in the world or were they the most desperate founders? Were they so eager to find a business idea that they felt like any conversation was a genie in the bottle coming to them and giving them an answer?

4:17I wonder now that the World Cup just wrapped in New York, if this happened to more people with more Brazilian women and just people from all over the world coming to New York, going to the bars, watching the game. Maybe there's another coconut water brand or something. Maybe a Casacha, which is a Brazilian rum, which goes really well with coconut water to make a caperina, one of my favorite cocktails. But that's an aside. This is an amazing founding story. So they founded in 2004, and then it actually ended up breeding one of the craziest rivalries of all time because Zico Coconut Water also was founded in 2004.

4:53Their founding story, I'm not going to get perfectly correct, but the founder there actually made a trip to South America, did Peace Corps in South America, and came back and decided to bring it. So a little bit different, a little more firsthand experience. And Zico ended up having a wildly different brand trajectory that we won't get into right now. but there actually is a really good How I Built This podcast on Zico and a little bit on this rivalry that ended up being the Coke and Pepsi of coconut water. But we're going to focus here on Vitacoco because they are the stars right now. Vitacoco got investors in 2010.

5:28Their key investor was Madonna, who historically was not really investing in brands. So that was a really big deal. And then they got a slew of other celebrities to invest in them. They had a distribution deal with Carrick Dr. Pepper. They're doing really well. There's this crazy feedback loop where everyone's like, oh my God, there's money going into this. So therefore this is doing well. So therefore we should pour money, more money into it. And then it all comes crashing down in 2012 when Vitacoco was sued for false advertising that it exaggerated its health claims saying that it was more hydrating than it actually was.

6:01It's settled for$10 million. That's a lot. That'll hurt your brand for sure. And this is kind of when things started to go dark. And at the same time, interestingly enough, all of coconut water was facing the same issue. Multiple other coconut water brands were sued for similar reasons to the point that the FDA actually had to issue warnings in response to the number of complaints and lawsuits over these misleading health claims industry-wide. So it wasn't, it was everyone saying that coconut water had these like superpowers basically. It impacted the entire category. The different brands, the different things to stay afloat in after all of that happened.

6:37What was interesting, Zico was bought by Coca-Cola and that was its way out, which ended up being harmful. They were discontinued. The founder ended up buying the brand back and it now exists again, but it was obviously like a pretty rough trajectory. Vita Coco stayed afloat differently if you want to touch on that. Yeah. So Vita Coco did a few things so they started doing private label in 2016 and you know they were private labeling for like costco and this became around 24 of the business for for coconut water and then a few years later they started expanding beyond coconut water they acquired a plant-based energy drink called runa and then they also uh got into the canned water business with ever and ever but neither of those brands really stuck around too much but all the while they were you know still kind of growing especially from the private label brand.

7:30They were still around, very much still around. And then in 2021, they IPO'd. They IPO'd. They became a public company, valuing the company at around$1.1 billion. And at that point, I mean, Vitacoco, it controlled most of the coconut water share. By that point, they also launched PowerLift, which is like a protein-infused post-workout water, which is actually really good. We tried it at Expo West a few years ago. It was actually one of my favorite sips from the show. Very surprised by that. But now it's a very different market that Vitacoco is playing in. Their type of product works so much better in 2026 than it ever has before.

8:09A lot of that work around natural hydration and hydration in general and all this stuff, it's already been done. All this brand education has been done. And there's been a lot of trends around also just coconut water that's been really helpful. There was the loaded water trend on TikTok where people were customizing their waters with coconut water, caffeine mixes, electrolyte powders. It went super viral and that helped propel Vita Coco. Vita Coco has been doubling down on committing on sports. earlier this year, back in January, they announced that they're returning to fitness and trying to take some share away from these other performance drinks that maybe have coconut water in them, but are not positioned as natural as coconut water.

8:55The other thing too, is a lot of consumers want simple, all natural products that they know work. Coconut water has basically no education needed. Everybody knows it's the oldest and most iconic hydration beverage that just comes from a coconut. There's, it falls out of the tree. You crack the coconut. There you go. All good. Maybe there's some processing involved. I don't know. I am not a coconut farmer or producer, you know, but like a lot of these hydration beverages that are coming on the market, there's a, there is some education needed. There's different functional ingredients. There's different benefits.

9:25You have to prove that it works. Coconut water, you don't really have to prove that it works. I mean, it's interesting because you did at a point, the reason that the coconut water wave stalled in the mid-2010s was because of lawsuits around the claims about coconut water. And what's interesting is that I think almost because those companies were sued and then had to come back and say part of the settlement is a commitment to regular nutritional testing, there's almost like more trust in the companies now. And consumers know that they're not over claiming the way that they used to. So it's interesting how actually overinflation of these claims ended up making them a very trusted category in a roundabout way.

10:12And also like, I think Vitacoco's success alongside that education component, alongside Maha and just general wellness trends has also led to just a wild growth of other brands trying to come onto the market and also regrow themselves like Zico, for example. Zico brought on Chris Gallant recently, earlier this year, who was the founder of Bronx Brewery, then CEO of Chamberlain Coffee, and now he's CEO of Zico. And they're really trying to grow this business a lot. But then there's just a smattering of all these newer brands, newer brands like Tom Brady's Goodnut, which honestly, I just like saying that.

10:51I don't know if it's really a brand per se. It's exclusively available on GoPuff. It is one of the best tasting coconut waters I've had, to be honest. I bought it on GoPuff and I was like, damn, this is pretty good. There's Coaqua. They're leaning into more flavors. They have a passion fruit one. They have plain ones, of course. There's strange water, which has, they have a sparkling and a still one and mini cans. It's delicious as well. And, you know, we said in the deep dive that a lot of these newer competitors, rather than leaning to health claims, they're competing on other stuff. cans, flavor, format, you know, rather than trying to lean into what like Zico and Vitacoco are doing.

11:31But also Vitacoco is doing a lot with their product set. They launched these like flavor, cream flavor Tetra Packs. They have a pink drink one, an orange and cream one, which is really good. So they're just sort of innovating as well within their core set that seems to be pushing them forward a lot. And also just like as a brand, they're really leaning into social channels. There was a song called Coconut Water by a rapper. Her name is Trim. That went viral on TikTok, mostly on TikTok. And I think this also helped a lot because they brought her into the office. They did a bunch of content with her here in New York.

12:09They put her up on a billboard in Times Square. Like they jumped on that really fast. And like the part of them winning, I think, is also just them being very social for it. and being very tapped in to what consumers are talking about online and what they want out of their brands. They're not just sitting around and being like, hey, we've been around since 2004. We're the big guys. We don't need to do anything. No, you still very much need to do something. I think this recent play from them using this coconut water song and this rapper and incorporating her into their social channels is just so smart and feels so natural too.

12:41They seem like they're also just having fun with it, which feels like a little bit different than from what I've seen from Zika, which feels a lot more serious, which could work great, but coconut water is so fun. The other thing I think that coconut water has been in the sun for, for a little bit recently is just cafe culture has done a lot for coconut water. Yeah. It shows up a lot. It's showing up a lot. We're seeing a lot of, as just like flavor innovation enters cafe culture more broadly and tropical flavors in particular are being paired with coffee. We see a lot of banana coffee. We're also seeing coconut water Americanos and coconut water shaken espresso and coconut water pairs well with matcha.

13:21So as matcha has trended upward, coconut water has also trended upward. I'm seeing so many trendy cafes with matcha coconut water drinks. And they are delicious. They are so good, especially because coconut water is a little naturally sweet and matcha is naturally bitter and they balance each other really well. That also, I think, is playing a role. But yeah, I think what's been really interesting is it's not just that the brands are entering new retailers because actually I think they're pretty saturated in terms of distribution. They're entering new households. Like new consumers are getting interested in coconut water, which again, we thought that the trend had already come and gone and it is back.

13:58And if you are a single ingredient product in 2026, I think you're just going to do well because that is what consumers are looking for. They are looking for a single ingredient, the most transparent possible sourcing. And coconut water brands are giving that to them in a world that is really trying to overcomplicate hydration in particular. So I think that's where we're at. Yeah, and that's on coconut water. I know we have a lot, a lot to say about peanut butter and jelly and also peanut butter and also jelly. Yes. Oh, my God. For some reason, this has become my favorite topic. My TikTok feed, I think the past six videos I've made has just been about frozen crustless PB &J sandwiches, which you would think there wouldn't be too many brands.

14:49No, there's a lot. So Uncrustables has done a lot for the industry. That brand themselves, a billion-dollar brand for Smuckers, which owns them. And just two weeks ago, yeah, two weeks ago, we were talking about how Welch's entered the ready-to-eat, crustless, frozen PB &J space. And this past week, we got two more brands participating in this war. And we're going to call it a war because why not? It's fun. You know? So Lunchly, which is the brand owned by Mr. Beast and Logan Paul, they just introduced Little Sammy's, which are crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with around 13 grams of protein per pack.

15:28They're rolling out to retailers right now. But the most exciting thing about this brand to me is their cookies and cream flavor. I have not seen that kind of, put in air quotes, innovation in the crustless PB &J space yet. Everything has just been a PB &J. Granted, okay, this is not PB &J, this is cookies and cream. But nobody's made a Fluffernutter. Uncrustables hasn't brought back their grilled cheese one yet. Like, nobody's tried to sort of take that format and do something that's not just PB &J. There's Gallant Tiger, which does more artisanal flavors of jelly, but it's still a PB &J. Doing a cookies and cream, doing a dessert one is so smart.

16:07And the product photography looks really good. I don't know if it's going to be good or filled well, whatever. We will find it and try it. But they are trying to do something a little bit different, which I think is really smart and really fun. There's obviously also the protein call-out, which we're seeing across the board pretty much. Welsh has had a protein call-out. Jams has a protein call-out. They have a protein call-out. I mean, it's interesting, particularly I kind of thought we would never hear from the brand Lunchly again. No. So they launched as a Lunchables competitor, and they got into some controversies.

16:36There was mold on their Lunchables that they were selling in stores. There's Prime in it, and Prime itself is a controversial brand. So I didn't expect to - Logan Paul and Mr. Beast are controversial brands. Logan Paul and Mr. Beast in general. Yes, I can't believe that they teamed up on anything. It's genius, honestly. It is. I will say, if they're going to do anything, they should be doing this. And they should be doing something like this cookies and cream innovation. Because when you're in that gamer-adjacent YouTube, stupid shit. It's a very like, it's the culture around those individuals is the, I tried it culture.

17:15Right. Like that is Mr. B's whole brand is doing crazy stunts and seeing what happens and the product should reflect that. So just doing a basic peanut butter and jelly, I was like, okay. But when I saw that they did the cookies and cream innovation, which to me sits kind of between like peanut butter and jellies, Uncrustables and an ice cream sandwich, I'm like, okay, I could see a kid being like, this is a really cool thing that the YouTuber I like put out and I have to try it because it's cool and new. So that's interesting. We need to do, we got to try them all. The private label. We got it.

17:46It's like Pokemon, but with frozen crustless PB and JC. Uncrustables. Lunchly. Lunchly. Jams. Welsh's. What am I forgetting? The free one. Rudy's. Rudy's. Sunbutters. No, it's actually insane. And then there's all the private label ones. And then we didn't even get to the second sort of, this is not a sandwich. This is a little bit different, but Sola Bites, which makes protein, high protein bagels and breads. I actually bought some of their bagels recently. They launched Sola Bites, which I really want to try. So they're basically peanut butter and jam jelly filled bagel bites, high protein. And they actually, what's interesting about this, which I have not seen on a lot of products, they call out complete protein.

18:37They are not. As they should. They are not scared to say it or not say it, I guess. But it's interesting because like a lot of these brands just rarely will say complete protein. Yeah. Which obviously. Yeah. Yeah. I love this coming from a brand like Sola because Sola is kind of like keto adjacent. Like it's more diet culture-y. and you don't see as much like fun innovation other than hero actually does have very fun innovation i will say hero bread does some really fun stuff but you don't see they do croissant they do their croissants are ridiculous you don't see a lot of like fun nostalgic stuff necessarily coming out of these more like diet culture e brands so i'm excited to see this one as like if you're on a keto diet and you want a peanut butter and jelly bite like there's something for you.

19:24Love it. I think something that's interesting about this that I was thinking about Crustables we know owns the category. They own it. Oh and they know it too. They sue everybody. Exactly. They know it to the point that they sue everybody. They sued Chubby Snacks which actually was so ahead of the game. You never want to be the first mover because Chubby Snacks came out with a better for you that are crust-free, crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich like five years ago? Something like that, yeah. It was like 2020. And were sued by Smuckers, a.k.a. Uncrustables, and then discontinued. They do not exist anymore.

20:06And now there are all of these, and it's almost like they actually can't litigate anymore because their lawyers would be up at all hours. There are too many brands. They also sued Trader Joe's, and that lawsuit is still happening. So the threat is that Trader Joe's needs to take their crustless peanut butter and jelly off the shelves. Like they're really trying to own this. I think that they need to just decide that they are the nostalgia play and there will be all these cool buzzy brands that come out or try to compete by coming out with like cooler flavor, do anything. Make a healthier one. Like it's, yeah, it's kind of silly, but I do.

20:42I was thinking a lot about chubby snacks because I remember being so excited about Chubby Snacks when it first came out and being like, oh my God, like there's finally an Uncrustables competitor. It's better for you. This is also exciting. And then they couldn't exist anymore because the market wasn't ready and Uncrustables was mad at them. And now here we are talking about a different crustless peanut butter and jelly product launching quite literally every week. So don't be the first mover. No, do not be the first mover. But I think a natural transition from this story to our next one is is around peanut butter drizzy which is a an australian based squeezable peanut butter company think graza but peanut butter almost exactly like i wonder why yes they just officially launched in the u.s so they were teasing it a little bit um with a david protein collab david protein their frozen ice cream pop-up shop here in new york They did a collab with Drizzy.

21:47And just the other day, they officially announced that they're coming to the U.S. And it's honestly a great way to deliver peanut butter. It looks really good. I'm really excited to try it. I think it looks great. And it's only two ingredients, which I know you're like, I mean, if you're like me, you're thinking, why couldn't it just be peanuts? But in order to make it like a Drizzy format, they needed to also add peanut oil. So it's just peanuts and peanut oil. It's in the squeezy bottle. I don't know why it took the peanut butter category so long to come out. Obviously, people use peanut butter as a drizzle for everything.

22:23I think this should absolutely be in food service also. Ice cream shops, yes. Froyo, a thousand percent. It's perfect. I just remember. So I know Smuckers has their like goober jar, which is both jam and peanut butter. But didn't Kraft Heinz and or Smuckers have a squeezy bottle that was jam and peanut butter in one? Or am I completely mistaken? No. It was like a squeeze, not a drizzle. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, those are different things. Like, it's a squeeze and it comes out and it's still viscous as opposed to a drizzle. A drizzle is nice. A drizzle is easy. I definitely want it in my house.

23:05I know that for sure. So I am excited about it. it's also backed by some pretty cool folks it sounds like they're this tiny brand but they're coming in with some some serious backing yeah alexis ohanian he invested personally um alexis ohanian for those who somehow don't know who he is he started reddit uh he is the founder of reddit he also has a fund seven seven six which is not involved in this raise but he is personally Yes. He also is the husband of Serena. Correct. I like to acknowledge when someone is the husband of. And she's great. But he's also, one thing he does that I think, like, which is probably why this piqued his interest, he is known for making pancake art for his kid and posting it online and having a lot of fun with it.

24:00So this kind of actually really aligns with just like some of the content he puts out too. That's a great point. And then on to the jam. Jam. The jam side of things. So the brand Smash Foods, not to be confused with Smash Kitchen. There's a lot of smashing going on. Smash Foods.

24:23My mom listens to this. so smash foods which makes a better for you jam just like normal strawberry grape jam but made instead of with a bunch of sugar with just the fruit itself and chia seeds and dates they just raised an 18 million dollar series b led by l catterton which is deploying so much capital these days it's actually insane smash foods not only makes these jams but also in the past two years they launched their bites line which includes their jammy bites which are basically like a a date bite or like a like a powerball i feel like people have different words for these kinds of like little energy ball whatever you want to call it but they to me are just effectively a bowl of peanut butter that is like a gusher with jam inside they are so good they're great and their jam is great too their jam is fantastic it is my it actually fun fact can't even technically be called jam oh god what is it called it's called a fruit spread because no this is a great thing jam needs to have a certain amount of sugar to be called jam and it's too low sugar and so therefore it's a fruit spread and not a jam.

25:43Really interesting. I mean, they still call themselves like a chia jam, but it like categorically. Yeah. But yeah, I think this is like a, it's a really exciting raise. It's obviously$18 million. That's nothing to scoff at. And it's a signal really that better for you pantry staples are still attracting capital. And this is, I think like everyone was a little bit surprised to see a jam company do so well, But I think we're all forgetting like jam is not a product that most people are buying once a year. Like other pantry staples, like olive oil, whatever it is. Parents especially, I imagine, are going through a jar of jam like probably more than once a month.

26:20I heard from an undisclosed source that their velocities are insane. Like you would not believe. And I'm not all that surprised. No. And look, there's not a lot of innovation in that space. There's some protein jams like Bam Jam out there. And I think the other thing that's really interesting about this raise alongside like the fact that it's kind of so much for jam, which like does feel inherently like, oh, interesting. But I think it's really cool to see a company, a new CPG company sort of building out this like suite of products, trying to maybe be the next Smuckers in a way. You don't see it that much.

26:59Usually a lot of these brands are like one type of product company. Already Smash has toaster pastries. They have the bites, they have the jams, they have the single serve. And I'm sure they're going to be building out a whole suite of products at some point. Probably a peanut butter, probably other spreads. It's cool to see. It's really fun to see these brands sort of take on these legacy players that have been very sleepy in some of the categories that they operate in. And make it a lot more exciting. And I'm sure that like parents also love that Smash Foods is, it's got the chia, it's got the low sugar.