You've got to keep reinventing. You'll have new competitors. You'll have new customers all around you. The U.S. energy drinks market is arguably the most competitive beverage sub-category. It reached ~$15B in 2020 and sustained its high-single-digits growth rate, despite the “COVID-19 Effect” basically slowing consumer mobility to a crawl, essentially cutting off the #1 sales channel for energy drinks with fuel and convenience retailing.

Monster Beverage is the #2 brand in the market, behind Red Bull, and has held that position for pretty much all of the 2000s. That being said, complacency is the worst thing you can do within the energy drinks market and brands like Bang Energy showed Monster Beverage exactly what could happen if you are left sleeping at the wheel.

So, why is the 2021 strategy that was unveiled during the annual shareholder’s meeting making me feel blah?

By pure financial metrics, Glanbia would have the “All Valley Karate” championship in the bag, but don’t underestimate the Crane Kick from The Hut Group (THG). In fact, Glanbia and its Glanbia Performance Nutrition division are basically double the size of THG and its Nutrition segment that houses the MyProtein brand. This podcast episode will explore the historical strengths of Glanbia and THG, but more importantly discuss how Glanbia's weaknesses are The Hut Group's strengths. THG also recently acquired two companies that signal an additional strategy that should make Glanbia increasingly nervous. Only time will tell how this battle ends, but don’t let comparative revenue today alone fool you into thinking Glanbia cannot lose in the near future to The Hut Group.

How is the American economy doing? According to the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book, prospect of COVID-19 vaccines has bolstered business optimism for 2021 growth, but what about the CPG industry specifically?  The Beige Book is a Federal Reserve System publication that collects mostly qualitative information, gathered directly from District sources. This consumer data creates an opportunity to characterize dynamics and identify emerging trends in the economy that may not be readily apparent in the available quantitative economic data. Additionally, most CPG businesses today are offered nationally through e-commerce or large brick and mortar retail chains, so it’s important to understand that America is not a one-size-fits-all economy, especially during the coronavirus. Because of that, the Beige Book can potentially help you with regional insights that can be applied to create advantages in your business. To save you time from reading the whole document that comes out every 45 days, I started a content series that takes five CPG industry related highlights that I found most insightful from the latest Beige Book, such as what the vaccine rollout means to CPG brands, empty shopping malls, ecommerce continuing to grow, and food prices rising that will likely result in increased inflation throughout 2021. On CPG industry Beige Book Vol.5, I also provided some additional bonus quantitative December retail data that came from the U.S. Census Bureau.

After giving it a lot of thought, Lebron James has decided to take his talents to Purchase, NY (PepsiCo Headquarters). Since his rookie year in 2003, Lebron James has had a sponsorship agreement with The Coca-Cola Company. You've seen him on countless Sprite and Powerade commercials throughout their deal together. That contract ended September of last year, effectively making the second highest paid athlete endorser a free agent. While Lebron James could have followed other celebrities, such as Dwayne "The Rock Johnson, into beverage entrepreneurship, he decided to sign an endorsement contract with PepsiCo to be the face of its new Mountain Dew energy drink sub-brand called Rise Energy. This move further sparks a feud between beverage portfolio giants that is now focused on the energy drinks category. What will The Coca-Cola Company do to respond to the recent PepsiCo moves in this beverage sub-category? We will explore that and more in this latest Consumed podcast episode.

GNC and The Vitamin Shoppe had a wild ride in 2020, but did either stay on the bull long enough to get a score?

Yet, GNC and The Vitamin Shoppe came out of 2020 with two very different trajectories for their prospective businesses. In this podcast episode, I’ll provide a "Year in Review" for both GNC and The Vitamin Shoppe that should provide an important recap for anyone that is considering either specialty retailer within their sales channel strategies going forward.

This podcast episode breaks down of the 2021Q1 Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ: SMPL) earnings report, earnings call, and supplemental presentations that were filed on 1/6/2021. Those public financial documents will be used as the backdrop to provide broad health and fitness snacking market insights that will be valuable to you. Quest Nutrition and Atkins Nutritionals each continued to have a mixed bag of performance at the product category level, including protein bars and nutritional bars performing worse on a YoY basis (though they outperformed the market average). It begs the question if it's time for The Simply Good Foods Company to become more snackier or should they patiently wait for pre-pandemic mega trends to strengthen again?  Despite the challenges, Quest Nutrition had its best revenue creating quarter under the new ownership of The Simply Good Foods Company and I believe company history at ~$96 million. Finally, I explain if the Simply Good Foods Company will be acquired by a larger CPG company or they will be the one making an M&A transaction. I also cover five potential names that the Simply Good Foods Company could be looking at closely in the market.

Welcome to the 2nd annual J. Schall Consulting year-end awards show that focuses on the "better for you" CPG product category, along with the grocery, brick and mortar, and internet retailers. This is the pinnacle of award shows that are light on tradition, peppered with randomness, and heavy handed with personal bias.  While the awards categories were selected at random, the winners were thoughtfully considered and I provide my accompanying logic to make the content more insightful. 

A few of the awards categories include: ◼️ Best Better for You CPG Acquisition by CPG Competitor ◼️ Best Grocery Retailer  ◼️ Best Retail CEO ◼️ Best New Better For You CPG Beverage

What happens when a bunch of brotato chips circle around the 5 pound protein powder container and start making sports nutrition industry event predictions? This episode is basically the personification of that imaginary scenario. So, what do I see as 5 outlandish events that I could happen within the sports nutrition industry in 2021?

Happy New Years! Now that the celebrating is over and you’ve told everyone on social media how this will be your year…reality is setting in, right? Well don’t fret because I’m here to help you actually make that statement come true. I’ve always been a goal-oriented person and can vividly remember writing up little goals for my lemonade stand or trading card collection when I was a young kid. I never had any formalized method of goal setting until 2009 when I was getting ready to finish up my last semester of graduate school. I remember reading an article where some expert talked about goals, and the systems to achieve them. It seemed logical to an MBA student, so I decided to "steal" its basics and apply it to what I had been already doing informally.

While I don’t particularly think my yearly goal setting is anything fancy and it's not full of technological hacks or mindset tricks, it has worked immensely well for me because it’s rooted in simplicity and focuses on creating impactful results. I will share my simple step by step goal setting process, but also reveal a few of my 2021 goals in each category; Professional, Personal, and Learning.

I'm not one to look back and congratulate myself on any accomplishments, but I figured why not keep with the tradition I started on YouTube in 2018 of being transparent and recapping my performance throughout the year. Firstly, I would like to thank everyone for making this my most impactful year as a professional. The stuff I’ve been barking about publicly the last few years seemed to have come into favor even more than ever, as the world became engulfed in uncertainty and there was elevated risk was at every turn.

For those that trusted me by giving me some of your attention, I’m humbled and I don’t take that for granted, as I know it’s the most valuable thing you own. For those that took it a step further and not only consumed, but also implemented something from my content into your business that worked out positively, where can I send the invoice? Just kidding...but, thank you to those that have messaged me privately saying something from XYZ piece of content helped you in 2020.

For my clients, this was a wild ride that many of us will not forget anytime soon. You trusted me and I left it all out on the playing field for you this year. Finally, along with the performance recap of J. Schall Consulting and my personal brand, I also mention a few things I learned about myself over 2020. 

As for my 2021 goals...you'll have to watch sure to listen to next episode where I outline some of those and also walk you through how I've done my yearly goal setting for the last 12 years.