If you’re a daily coffee drinker, it’s difficult to overlook that the price of your preferred source of caffeine keeps grinding higher. In fact, the global price of arabica coffee has more than doubled over the past year...with a sharp upward price movement (since the start of 2025) pushing commodity prices of the cash crop to an all-time high price of more than four dollars a pound last month. So, what’s going on? While the famous cartoon character Yogi Bear would say that I’m “smarter than the average bear” when it comes to coffee futures contracts…I’d hardly consider myself as locked into t ..read more

Which of these numbers is larger…the total contract value recently given to Juan Soto by the New York Mets or the total aggregate net income generated by CELSIUS energy drinks since launching 20 years ago? And if you thought that was a dig on Celsius Holdings (think again)! Instead, those remarks were pointed straight towards the sheer ridiculousness of today’s Major League Baseball contracts. But regardless…I have to take my cap off to the CELSIUS marketing team for the perfect timing around leveraging a highly anticipated ephemeral moment within professional sports. This brand ambassador ann ..read more

What does a term initially used 170 years ago in one of the most influential and compelling books in American literature have to do with the cognitive health category? And what was the term that Henry David Thoreau used his 1854 non-fiction book Walden to criticize society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas in favor of simple ones…seeing this as indicative of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort? Brain Rot. But that term has taken on new significance in the digital age, especially over the past year or two. Brain rot is a term used to describe the phenomenon involving a constan ..read more

Did you know that about one in five U.S. children are obese…a number that’s nearly four times the rate in the 1970s? So, what has changed in the last 50 years? The finger is usually pointed towards the proliferation of ultra-processed and/or hyperpalatable foods. Seeking to solve this growing problem…the FDA has been exploring a front-of-package nutrition labeling strategy that lists Saturated Fat, Sodium, and Sugar on every package with each nutrient being accompanied by a traffic light color system score box. But while these blatant warnings have never been required for food products sold in ..read more

Can you name the health and wellness retailer that generates between four to five times more revenue selling categorical products online than the combined efforts of GNC and The Vitamin Shoppe? And here’s a hint for you…it’s not Amazon! Since the bulk of my audience is located within the United States, I’m going to assume that iHerb probably wasn’t the first health and wellness online retailer that popped into your head. So, despite its massive multibillion-dollar success…iHerb isn’t widely known in the U.S. market, mostly because the vast majority of its commercial activity happens internatio ..read more

Life can be A LOT like driving on an interstate highway. It’s important to stay in your lane, only glance backwards if you’re planning to make a change…and always watch out for David Beckham because he might swerve bend that corner woah! So, when it was officially announced in September 2021 that Prenetics (NASDAQ: PRE), a diagnostic and genetic testing company based in Hong Kong, was going public through a SPAC merger…I fully admit not even spending one iota of energy on the financial news headline. But I initially crossed paths with Prenetics last March when the company reached out to me reg ..read more

Dry January 2025 has commenced, but how measurable were effects on beer sales across grocery retailers? According to NielsenIQ sales data, non-alcoholic beer scored a record-high 4.2% share of all beer sold through grocery retailers in January. Moreover, non-alcoholic beer saw slightly more than 20 percent YoY volume growth last month…compared to the six percent YoY decline seen by the traditional beer category. Over the past three years, Dry January non-alcoholic beer sales across grocery retailers have grown 138%...with the marketplace doubling to over 150 brands selling non-alcoholic beers ..read more

It has been a decade since Eight Sleep became the world’s first sleep fitness company…but I assure you it still retained some “magic in the moonlight” after all these years! But for those unfamiliar with Eight Sleep, it’s a sleep technology company that focused on reimagining what a mattress can do by asking “what if it could help you sleep better, recover faster, and even improve your health?” Eight Sleep essentially started as a consumer hardware company, selling “high-end sleep systems” that are loved by top athletes, scientists, and billionaire tech leaders…but also everyday “high-performa ..read more

Keurig Dr Pepper (NASDAQ: KDP) basically went from getting its categorical ass whipped to being the most interesting energy drinks portfolio in just two short years by acquiring a large stake in Nutrabolt (owner of C4 Energy), strategically partnering with Black Rifle Coffee Company to distribute its new energy drink, acquiring GHOST Lifestyle, and adding Bloom Energy to its national DSD system. But what if KDP was making all these strategic moves to simply hedge against a growing risk on its multibillion-dollar U.S. coffee segment? KDP was recently charged by the SEC over making inaccurate st ..read more

Trump is back…but should stakeholders operating within the intersecting CPG categories of functional foods, functional beverages, and nutritional supplements be cheerful about his return to the oval office? This will certainly not sound like a “hot take” or anything, but the second Trump presidential term will undoubtedly offer a mixture of risk and reward…ushering in a new era of market volatility. As press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently pointed out, "there has never been a president who communicates with the American people as openly and authentically as Donald Trump.” But while I perso ..read more