Read just about any fitness article that mentions the consumption of alcohol and it have you believing it will absolutely destroy any of your physique goals. So, why have more fitness-focused companies aligned themselves with alcoholic beverages? Fact is, negativity towards alcohol within a healthy person's life wasn't always so grim, as advertising in the 1920s said “Guinness is good for you!” Today's "sensationalism drives consumerism mindset" has tried to replace balance, but three shifts in the last 10 years have fitness-focused and alcoholic beverage brands converging and leveraging common ground. The strongest functional CPG lifestyle brands (ie. Alani Nu) will continue to push the boundaries on product development that expands outside of traditional categories. Additionally, the trend of partnering with alcoholic beverages on marketing activations is only getting started as fitness-focused brands embrace the reality that being “hardcore chicken/veggies/rice 24/7/365" is about as valuable as those plastic trophies single-minded fitness competitors ruin their lives for in today's dynamic business environment. 

Historically speaking, there were these unwritten rules that children were off limits to functional CPG brands, but do those rules hold weight anymore? That being said, most of us have been drinking ready-to-mix supplement powders from birth with brands like Similac essentially being a watered-down vitamin/mineral-fortified meal replacement shake. As we grew older, we continued to take Flintstones vitamins and Carnation instant breakfast powders. Almost all of those early functional products came from brands within multi-billion-dollar CPG portfolios...so I guess it was OK, right? That "monopoly" on kids' functional CPG products slowly started to erode over the last 5-7 years as Millennial parents grew up with more information on nutrition. In this latest podcast episode, I'll deep dive into how the “COVID-19 Effect” sped up what was happening with the trend and also what could happen in the future with product development and marketing towards the youth market. 

How is the American economy doing? According to the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book, most businesses remain optimistic regarding the next 6-12 months as economic activity expanded in the first part of 2021, 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 consumer confidence growing in the Middle Atlantic Region, logistics demand is far exceeding supply across all modalities, and minority- and women-owned business enterprises are struggling in comparison to the national average. On CPG industry Beige Book Vol.6, I also provided some additional bonus quantitative January retail data that came from the U.S. Census Bureau and February jobs data from the U.S. Department of Labor. 

Coca-Cola Energy seemed like it was a strong opening poker hand, but after a year in-market, should The Coca-Cola Company hold them or fold them? To be completely honest, when The Coca-Cola Company announced it was launching a branded energy drink in the U.S. market in late 2019, I believed Coca-Cola Energy would do more for the U.S. energy drink market than any other product/brand since Red Bull originally landed on the shores of California in 1997. My logic behind that prediction is still sound, but a combination of bad execution and challenging market dynamics left Coca-Cola Energy short of reaching $100 million in sales during its first year. So, what happened? I'll dig into that and also discuss why The Coca-Cola Company isn't quick to discontinue its Coca-Cola Energy drink. 

Is it time for wellness brands to start channeling their inner Silver Fox and Gray Panther spirit animals? As it stands, the 50+ crowd is largely ignored by fitness and wellness brands. That is changing fast, as companies wake up to the huge underserved market that no longer subscribes to the “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” commercials of the late 1980s. While seniors control 70% of the America’s disposable income, they only attract around 10% of marketing budgets and less than 1% of innovation. Everyone from Peloton to Apple to "you name it functional CPG brand" has rushed into focusing on the highly coveted consumer demographic/psychographic known as H.E.N.R.Y. (high earner, not rich yet). That’s slowly starting to change recently, as start-ups realize seniors are an active, vivacious and connected group deserving of the same empowering, aspirational attention lauded on younger consumers. Millennials and baby boomers increasingly mirror one another in adopting healthy lifestyle habits, and you’re seeing this play out with new startups.

Glanbia Performance Nutrition is in the free fall portion of the bungee jump, but will the strategic transformation cord catch it before it’s too late? Glanbia plc (LON:GLB) is a global nutrition company that's comprised of two wholly-owned segments; Glanbia Nutritionals and Glanbia Performance Nutrition. For this podcast episode, I'll mainly focus on the latter, which comprises of various nutritional supplement and sports nutrition brands. By diving into the recent earnings report, earnings conference call, and presentation slides, I'll update you on how the Glanbia Performance Nutrition portfolio is performing against the complex operating environment. Additionally, I will discuss how the Glanbia Performance Nutrition transformation project is progressing against the original goals and timeline. Finally, Glanbia's progressively stronger balance sheet is setting up for them to add another acquisition in the near-term, so I suggest several functional CPG brands to the Glanbia leadership team should consider for M&A activity.

Can you imagine living without frozen pizza, potato chips, ice cream or Tennessee whiskey? Fact is, these CPG food and beverage staples and many more would likely not exist today in their current iteration if it wasn’t for the innovative and inventive minds of Black Americans throughout history. Every year I grow older (and hopefully a bit wiser), I’ve found it increasingly important to study the American history that wasn't taught in traditional school curriculum. History is an academic subject, but the "history of history" is actually rooted deep in marketing strategy. It’s critical that we all realize that before the greatest marketers sold consumer packaged goods, they sold subjective observations that eventually became objective truths. This piece of content was adapted from an article I wrote for my client OneSpace (read here - https://www.onespace.com/blog/2020/09/10-black-americans-who-have-shaped-the-cpg-industry/). It includes additional historically prominent Black Americans that impacted the CPG industry which can further your educational journey.

Once an epicenter of the suburban lifestyle, the purpose and importance of shopping malls have slowly faded way. The “fall of the mall” or more broadly the “retail apocalypse” was happening long before the pandemic started, but things accelerated over the last twelve months as consumers stayed inside. In the coming years, hundreds of America’s roughly 1,100 malls are expected to shutter. The reasons for this include specialty retail bankruptcies making shopping centers boring, anchor department stores fallen out of consumer favor, and e-commerce became increasingly more convenient. This has caused an influx of vacancies that has made the shopping mall's economics increasingly unsustainable. All that being said, these malls still have value, but it just takes property owners to be innovative or history buffs that understand the vision Victor Gruen had for the Southdale Center, as they look for new uses of their dying malls.

Dr. Seuss famously said “why fit in when you were born to stand out”, so it’s only natural consumers would want CPG products as customizable as their individual uniqueness. Mass customization has been the “next big thing” in CPG product strategy for a very long time. Problem is, the CPG industry isn't there yet, but that doesn't mean brands can't creatively find ways to integrate customization elements now. Trends are changing faster than ever before, as consumers share their tastes, preferences and individualism with the world online. That has bled into the functional CPG categories, as personalized nutrition heats up and customized nutrition is growing more mainstream. Those that succeed will be the ones who have laid out their customization strategies clearly and build simple, executable models from manufacturer to customer. To drive home the creative mass customization layers available today, I provide a "case study" on the brand Gainful.

This is the fiftieth anniversary of the very first cereal to be born out of a licensing agreement. The unique-at-the-time agreement between Post Holdings and the Flintstones owner created a cereal brand named after Fred and Wilma Flintstone’s daughter Pebbles. What does this have to do with the legacy sports nutrition brand Dymatize Nutrition? I'll utilize the recent BellRing Brands (BRBR) 2021 fiscal year Q1 financial reports and publicly-disclosed news as the backdrop to discuss what that information could mean to the overall active nutrition market in the liquids, powders, and bars formats. I’ll be again diving deeper into the Premier Protein brand that makes up 84% of the portfolio’s total revenue, but I’ll also provide more commentary than normal on the Dymatize Nutrition brand because of it's recent growth turnaround story. A big driver for this success in large retail channels could be attributed to the “Pebbles Effect”, as the Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles Dymatize protein powder has been a major bright spot of the legacy sports nutrition brand. The recent growth of Dymatize allows Bellring Brands leadership to shift M&A focus from “must have” to “nice to have” in the short-term, thus giving them time to find the right targets. Only time will tell how this plays out, but Bellring Brands will certainly be an interesting name to pay close attention to in the near-term.