Is it time for protein bar brands to party like it’s 2019 again? I was recently asked about shifting convenient nutrition marketplace dynamics…including some questions directed towards delivery formats. And it was the bar delivery format that seemed to draw the most curiosity within that conversation. Maybe it’s because of what happened to the protein bar category because of the “Great Lockdown.” Maybe it’s because out of bars, liquids, and powders…it has the lowest current retail sales growth rate, but the highest household penetration. Or maybe it’s because of the sharp contrast from five short years ago when the protein bar M&A market was arguably at its peak. But during 2020 and 2021, many of us industry analysts/strategists looked past the near-term categorical struggles and pointed to the fact that underlying drivers (feeding long-term secular trends) were unchanged, and the inevitable consumer behavior normalization would continue to support bar format growth. Admittedly, some of that bounce back was slower than consensus expectations, but in this content I wanted to review several “signals” that I’ve been watching over the last 15 months which could be telling us that the protein bar market is ready to party again. These flashing signals include...several converging macro-economic data points, product-based differentiation, second-order effects from the rise in GLP-1 weight loss solutions, and then the final two are more focused on the attractiveness of the space (and format) to “build within” and then dealmaking and liquidity event probabilities and possibilities.

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