This week on Unpackaged Goods: why Oura walked away from an IPO with demand to spare, plus Kimmy Pace, founder of Afternoon Toast, on building a brand on nights and weekends.

In the news:
- Oura postpones its IPO despite orders reportedly 4x the shares on offer, and why profit buys you the right to wait
- Wella's debt and Shein's rough public debut
- Dose, Manucurist and Stride: selling from strength
- California's non-ultraprocessed seal and AB 2030 supplement rules
- Galleri's FDA panel and Neko Health's $499 body scan
- Rapid fire: tariff cuts, Boots, Something & Nothing, Confido, Cheez-It Protein, Lucali x Nonna's, Bizzy and The Outset

Then Kimmy Pace joins the show. She still works full time in consulting. Afternoon Toast is her nights-and-weekends build: a ready-to-drink roasted barley and ginger tea with no caffeine and no sugar, made for the 3 p.m. slump. The idea started while she was reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, roasting barley on her stove to sip alongside the book.

We talk about:
- Turning a kitchen recipe into a light-roast product, and finding a roasting partner who usually roasts barley for beer
- Why she's skipping traditional grocery for now and selling into Brooklyn cafes, sandwich shops, yoga and Pilates studios
- Calling ahead instead of dropping off samples, and why "politely persistent" got her on the shelf
- Running pop-ups near the stores that carry her, so attention turns into a sale
- Building the brand with strategy first and visual identity second
- Going solo without doing it alone: advisors, community and AI agents
- What's next: more New York, then California, plus roasted barley and buckwheat SKUs

Find Afternoon Toast at drinkafternoontoast.com and @drinkafternoontoast.

This episode is brought to you by DoughCC, an authorized Square reseller helping businesses get set up, trained, and supported locally, with no upfront cost on your first hardware unit for qualifying businesses. https://www.dough.cc/partner/pickle/

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COUNTER SERVICE | OCTOBER 7, 2026 · EPISODE 138 Counter Service is our daily 60-second serving of consumer news; here, we go one level deeper into the businesses behind the headlines.

TODAY’S SPECIAL: MadeGood brings ownership home

Riverside Natural Foods, the company behind MadeGood, has returned to full family ownership after buying back Prelude Growth’s minority stake. Sales grew two and a half times during the partnership. That is a different ending from the usual acquisition headline. Outside capital helped support a period of growth; the founding family now owns the business outright again. An investor exit does not have to mean a founder exit. The important question is what the partnership makes possible—and who wants to own the next chapter.

SIDE DISH: SpikedAde gets a buyer—and a performance test

Constellation Brands is acquiring SpikedAde, a vodka-based drink built around familiar sports-drink flavors. The transaction includes $75 million at closing, plus up to $278 million in additional consideration over five years, depending on future performance. That distinction matters: the contingent payment is not guaranteed proceeds. Constellation brings distribution and brand-building capabilities; the earnout ties a substantial portion of the potential payout to what happens next. Getting acquired and delivering the growth that justifies the deal are separate milestones.

WHO’S COOKING: Ola Sol sells access to the menu

Ola Sol’s new Humo offers smoky agave character in a wine classification, with wholesale availability in California and New York. The company positions it for venues that lack full liquor licenses. The commercial idea goes beyond another flavor. It addresses a constraint on what certain restaurants can serve. Actual permissions depend on the venue’s license and local rules, but the proposition is clear: make more cocktail-style occasions accessible through an existing license.

THE CHECK

MadeGood buys back control. SpikedAde sells to scale. Ola Sol opens more menus.

These are three different answers to the same business question: what is limiting the next stage of growth? Ownership, distribution, and channel access deserve as much attention as the next product launch.

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TODAY’S SPECIAL: Clio finds a buyer

Stride Consumer Partners acquired a majority stake in Clio, the refrigerated Greek yogurt bar brand. Clio says it is on track to produce more than 150 million bars this year at its New Jersey facility. That’s a lot of yogurt that never needed a spoon.

The format gives a familiar food a different job: a handheld snack rather than a cup-and-utensil commitment. But the production figure matters, too. A clever format gets attention; reliably making and distributing a refrigerated product is a different challenge. The acquisition puts both sides of that business in view.

SIDE DISH: Ritual combines the scoop

Ritual’s new mango-flavored Creatine Greens combines five grams of creatine with greens, spirulina, and chlorella. The straightforward pitch is fewer separate steps. For someone already mixing powders, combining them could make the routine easier to keep. It doesn't automatically make the product right for everyone or prove that a combined formula works better than separate products. The commercial question is whether customers want these ingredients together enough to keep buying the same tub.

WHO’S COOKING: Once Upon a Farm grows up

Once Upon a Farm launched refrigerated Electrolyte Blends for kids ages four and up, made with fruit, vegetables, coconut water, and sea salt. This extends the customer relationship: a brand parents discover during the baby-food years now offers something for older children. Availability varies by flavor; the company lists Guava Strawberry’s nationwide Whole Foods rollout for April 2027.

THE CHECK

These stories aren’t about discovering a new ingredient. They’re about changing how familiar ingredients fit into a day: a bar instead of a spoon, one scoop instead of separate mixes, a pouch for the next stage of childhood. The repeat purchase still has to be earned. Does the new format solve a real inconvenience—or just create another product to remember? Subscribe to

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The Deeter Digest for the week’s consumer-brand moves and what they mean for operators.

The appetizer before we dive in

Oura’s IPO was reportedly oversubscribed about four times. The company pulled it anyway.

Nothing about Oura looks like a company in trouble. It’s profitable; it did $907.9 million in revenue last year; it expects roughly 90% growth this year; and it has 5.7 million paid members. Its CEO said the company has “the luxury of choosing our moment.”

That sentence is the whole argument for a healthy balance sheet. The luxury comes from not needing the money tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the private market kept moving. Dose is reportedly running a sale process near $1 billion. A Paris nail brand sold 49% to private equity. Stride closed a $550 million fund. The public door got harder to open this week, and the private door stayed open for brands that make money.

That’s the thread, plus California rewriting two rulebooks, a tariff thaw, and a $499 body scan opening in SoHo. Let’s dig in.

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🍊 THE MAIN COURSE

This week’s biggest CPG moves

Oura Pulls Its IPO With Demand Still Strong

Oura postponed its Nasdaq IPO on Tuesday, September 29, the day it was expected to price, “despite strong demand.” It was selling 50 million shares at $40 to $44, a raise of up to $2.2 billion at roughly a $14 billion valuation. Its last private round was around $11 billion.

Bloomberg reported orders ran about four times the shares on offer. To me, that reads as demand at some price, just not necessarily the price Oura wanted. That’s my interpretation, not theirs. Reuters and AP pointed to AI-spending jitters, the Fed resuming rate hikes, rising bond yields, and Oura being at least the third IPO delayed in a row.

KKR’s Wella is the same bet from the other end of the spectrum. It amended its filing on September 23 and still hasn’t set a price range. It did $2.94 billion in revenue last fiscal year, earned $2.7 million, and carries about $2.29 billion of term-loan debt. A thin-margin, debt-heavy company needs the window far more than Oura does.

And the companies that did get out aren’t getting a warm welcome. Shein listed in Hong Kong on September 1 at about $26 billion, roughly a quarter of its 2022 peak. Its first public results showed first-half revenue up 1%, operating profit down about 53% and U.S. sales down more than 10% over the summer. It blamed tariffs, logistics costs and slowing demand, and the stock dropped double digits. Public investors are pricing what a business earns now.

A great business can’t force a market. It can only avoid needing one.

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The Brands That Get to Choose

Dose. Reuters reported in August that the wellness shot company is exploring a sale near $1 billion, with Perella Weinberg advising. It’s profitable with more than $200 million in revenue. This week it launched Dose for Blood Pressure, its first new product since 2022, backed by what the company calls a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. My guess is the timing isn’t an accident, since a clinical second pillar is an easier story for a buyer than one hero product.

Manucurist. The Paris nail brand sold a 49% stake to British private equity firm Inflexion. It sells in 40 countries and expects $119 million in sales this year. A minority sale lets founders take some money off the table and keep the steering wheel, and for plenty of brands that’s a better middle door than all-or-nothing.

Stride. Stride Consumer Partners closed Fund II at its $550 million hard cap in about four months, up from $420 million for Fund I, bringing assets under management to about $1.3 billion. It backs Chomps, Crown Affair, Serenity Kids and Patrick Ta. Forward ($500 million), Encore ($350 million) and Collab ($250 million) have also closed new funds. Consumer private equity has money to spend.

Graza, last week’s lead, is asking 15 to 20 times EBITDA. What these have in common is that somebody is paying for the business as it exists today. Not the story, the earnings.

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California Writes the Rules

On September 28, Governor Newsom signed ten health bills. Two matter to founders.

AB 2244 creates the first state-backed “Non-Ultraprocessed Certified” front-of-pack seal. It’s voluntary, run through accredited third-party certifiers, with a public database and penalties for fraudulent use. The deadline is June 1, 2029. The catch is that the federal definition of ultra-processed food is still pending, and the Institute of Food Technologists warned that state-by-state standards could fragment before there’s a national one.

AB 2030 bans selling over-the-counter diet pills and supplements marketed for weight loss or muscle building to anyone under 18. Retailers and online sellers must verify age, with penalties up to $500 per violation. California is the second state to do this, after New York.

The trigger is what matters. Coverage turns on whether a product is “labeled, marketed, or otherwise represented” for weight loss or muscle building, and a court can look at claims, images, and even how a retailer tags or groups the product. The Council for Responsible Nutrition notes that unlike New York, California doesn’t expressly exempt fiber or protein, and the American Herbal Products Association argued protein and creatine could get pulled in. I haven’t seen a clear answer on where that line lands, so ask counsel instead of relying on me.

New York’s governor is sitting on her own package, with GRAS transparency and on-menu sodium warnings, the same direction as the FDA’s GRAS proposal from Issue #42. States are writing rules because the feds haven’t. The seal is voluntary. Age verification is not.

The Diagnostic Aisle Gets a Storefront

Galleri. An FDA advisory panel voted 7 to 2, with one abstention, that Galleri’s benefits outweigh its risks, but split 6 to 4 on effectiveness and balked at the phrase “early detection.” The NHS-Galleri trial missed its primary endpoint in February, GRAIL hasn’t shown data that screening reduces cancer deaths, and the FDA decision is due in the coming months. Today it’s a cash test at $700 or more, and WHOOP added it at $799 in August.

Neko Health. Daniel Ek’s body scan clinic opened at 300 Lafayette Street in SoHo on September 24. A one-hour scan costs $499, more than 25,000 New Yorkers joined the waitlist, and it’s self-pay with HSA and FSA accepted. Neko says it isn’t a full-service medical practice, so members who need care get referred out to places like Mount Sinai. Miami, Washington and San Francisco are next.

Both are testing whether people will pay out of pocket to learn about their body before they have symptoms. The detail I keep coming back to is the panel’s language. It backed the test and still wouldn’t endorse the phrase on the label. If you sell anything near this space, your word choices are your regulatory risk.

The Tariff Thaw, Sort Of

After Xi Jinping’s first official U.S. visit since 2015, the two countries agreed to cut tariffs on about $30 billion of goods each way, moving most of them to standard rates. U.S. farm goods and personal care items get relief going into China. Coming the other way, 77 categories including tableware, glassware, toys and Christmas ornaments.

For most food brands this doesn’t move the needle. But if you import packaging, glass or seasonal gift items from China, check your HTS codes against the list this week. Your fourth-quarter landed cost might have just improved.

More Deals Worth Watching

Boots. Sycamore Partners is nearing a roughly $9 billion sale of Boots to Canada’s Weston family, per the Wall Street Journal, less than a year after getting it in the Walgreens takeover. Armani is reportedly preparing minority-stake talks with L’Oréal, LVMH and EssilorLuxottica. Caudalie acquired sensitive-skin brand Talm. Next In Natural acquired plant milk brand Three Trees. Sephora is bringing counters to 100 Marks & Spencer stores in the UK starting spring 2027, more than five times its current UK footprint.

💰 THE FUNDING FRENZY

Big checks being written

Something & Nothing raised $6.4 million led by Venrex. The London-founded soda now earns 65% of its revenue in the U.S., and the efficiency is the headline: a team of three, almost no marketing spend, U.S. revenue up 70% across June and July, and Amazon sales more than doubled over the summer. It sells on flavor and design rather than wellness claims, and it’s careful to say no added sugar, not sugar-free. That kind of precision is going to matter more, not less.

Confido raised a $55 million Series B led by Insight Partners for AI software that handles CPG forecasts, trade promotion, deductions and accounting for more than 250 brands, including Unilever and Dude Wipes. I’ll admit some professional interest. Deductions are where emerging brands quietly lose margin.

Tiny Health closed a $33 million Series B led by B Capital, with revenue split roughly evenly between direct-to-consumer and B2B. Two routes to market means a bad quarter of ad costs doesn’t sink you.

VicBlends launched men’s grooming brand BetterDays with $7 million. South 40 Snacks raised nearly $6 million. Amaani, parent of Aiza’s, raised $5 million to scale across the Gulf. Spirited Brands raised $3.1 million for Soula margaritas and Sokē sake soda. SuperMush closed a $3 million Series A led by NDude Labs for its gummies, sold at Target, Sprouts and Amazon.

🆕 PRODUCT LAUNCHES & INNOVATION

This week’s innovation circus

Mars Gives Cheez-It a Protein Claim

Cheez-It Protein Original has 7 grams of protein per serving and rolls out nationwide this month at $4.49 a box. CPG Wire’s take was that Mars received the protein memo, and I can’t improve on that. With whey costing what it does, I’d want to know the protein source.

Chefs and Creators Turn Into Pantry Brands

Lucali teamed up with Nonna’s on Hot EVOO, Sicilian olive oil with Italian chili peppers, the pizzeria’s first-ever CPG collaboration. If you’ve waited two hours for a table there, you know the brand equity is real. Molly Baz is Sweetgreen’s first Chef in Residence, with three items through November 9 built on Dill Pickle Mayo from her brand Ayoh. ALL THINGS, Thomas Straker’s butter brand, launched in 500-plus Whole Foods, picked up a seven-figure check from Spacestation (Graza, OLIPOP, LMNT), and is on pace to 5x revenue. Kendall Toole launched DRESSi, protein-forward dressings with 4 grams per serving and no seed oils, on its site and Amazon.

The through line: the audience came first, and the product followed.

Physician’s Choice Bets on the Jelly Stick

Physician’s Choice launched Fiber Jelly sticks with 6 grams of prebiotic fiber, chromium, 30 calories, and 1 gram of sugar. They’re on TikTok Shop now and hit Walmart on October 24. Jelly sticks have been big across Asia for years, and this is one of the larger U.S. brands to try the format. The brand says chromium supports metabolism, which is exactly the kind of phrasing California’s AB 2030 now makes worth reading twice.

Familiar Names, New Formats

Magic Spoon refreshed its packaging to make a cereal-turned-platform (oatmeal, bars, granola, toaster pastries) look like one brand on shelf. P90X launched canned energy drinks with 200mg of caffeine. OLLY brought mochi-inspired supplements to Target. Dunkin’ went Halloween with Green Apple Dunkin’ Zero and a Terror-misu Cloud Latte. Away launched Series 3 luggage with brakes, fronted by Colman Domingo. Native Pet launched its first cat supplements, at Petco from October 19.

📊 THE DATA DIGEST

Numbers that matter

Conagra reported first-quarter net sales down 1.4% to $2.6 billion. Volume fell 2.1% while price and mix added 1%, it cited about 5% inflation including tariffs, and it reaffirmed guidance for organic sales down 1% to 3%. Falling volume and rising price is the legacy food pattern this year, and Conagra is the cleanest example.

818 is the fastest-growing tequila over $25, with volume up 73% in the latest four weeks while the category slipped 0.4%. That’s what a strategic partner like Sazerac is supposed to deliver.

Bizzy is now the No. 4 refrigerated coffee brand in the U.S., behind Starbucks, STōK and International Delight, with 4.8% dollar share, up 81% in a year. It was founded 11 years ago. Most overnight successes aren’t.

Real Good Foods ranks first in frozen chicken by unit velocity, per brand-supplied Nielsen data. Velocity measures rate of sale, not total sales, so it’s a different claim from being the biggest.

On deck: Constellation Brands reports Tuesday, October 6.

🏪 DISTRIBUTION DOMINATION

Everyone’s everywhere

Walmart: Neutonic rolled into nearly 1,000 stores in the new Mood & Mind beverage set, and Unwind, from the Nowadays founders, debuted in about 1,000. Whole Foods: ALL THINGS Butter and BEZi. CVS: Bayer’s MiraSOFT in 7,000-plus stores and Hanhoo in 600-plus. Target: Melting Forest’s D-Stress calming drinks went nationwide. Sprouts: Wave Kids went nationwide. Sephora Europe: Rhode in 500-plus stores across 19 new markets. 7-Eleven: Strip Jerky in select Chicago stores, seven months after launch. DoorDash: added Macy’s and Anthropologie.

👋 PEOPLE MOVES & EXITS

Capri-Sun CEO Roland Weening was “released” after nearly a decade, with owner Dr. Hans-Peter Wild stepping in for now. Chef Gavin Kaysen joined PB&J brand Gallant Tiger as an investor and advisor.

The Outset, Scarlett Johansson’s skincare brand, is winding down after four years. It joins Gwen Stefani’s GXVE, Drew Barrymore’s Flower Beauty and Kate Moss’s Cosmoss. Fame gets the first purchase. It doesn’t get the fifth.

🔥 THE HOT TAKE

My unfiltered opinion on this week’s madness

Founders spend a lot of energy on two things they can’t control: when the market opens and what the rulebook says. This week both moved.

Oura had everything an IPO needs: profit, 90% growth, demand around four times the shares on offer. It stood down anyway. Wella is waiting. Shein got out and got punished. Nobody on the outside can tell you when the window reopens, and I won’t pretend to.

Then the rules. California signed a non-UPF seal and a law that defines a muscle-building supplement partly by how a retailer tags it. New York has another package waiting. The FDA is rewriting GRAS. None of it is coordinated, and the IFT is right that it could get messy before it gets uniform.

Both are out of your hands, and both reward the same two habits, which are in your hands.

The first is that profit buys you the right to wait. Oura had the luxury of choosing its moment. Dose and Graza are running sale processes from strength. Something & Nothing grew U.S. revenue 70% in two months with a team of three. A brand that needs its next raise to make payroll doesn’t get to choose a moment. It gets the one it gets. If you’re two quarters from needing capital, the work is pushing that date back, with margin or with a minority partner, before the market narrows your options for you.

The second is that your claims are a liability you control. The FDA panel backed Galleri and still balked at “early detection.” AB 2030 turns on how a product is labeled, marketed or otherwise represented. So print your label, your ads and your retailer product pages and read them the way a plaintiff’s lawyer would. If a claim only works when you squint, rewrite it now, while it’s free.

What I don’t know is whether the window reopens this fall or stays shut into next year. Nobody does. That’s the point.

Own the things you can: profit and precision.

Build accordingly.

🎙️ COMING TUESDAY

Unpackaged Goods Episode

Oura saying no to a four-times-oversubscribed IPO, Shein’s rough public debut, and the brands selling from a position of profit. Plus California’s new rules, the tariff thaw, and what an FDA panel will and won’t say out loud.

🥫 ONE MORE THING...

Before you close this tab

Red Bull’s advent calendar launched with 24 cans, and one of them is Arctic Berry, a flavor from its 2020 winter lineup. Gap brought back its 1990s fragrances. SidePiece built a functional Dunkaroos. Cove and Good Humor put an ice cream bar in a soda can. Red Bull is reissuing a flavor it already paid to develop.

Nostalgia may be the cheapest R&D budget in consumer. The flavor is built, the customer remembers it, and the only open question is whether the memory is better than the product. Sometimes it isn’t. I’d still keep a few old formulas in a drawer.

Until next Monday, Jonathan Deeter Your CPG-Obsessed Friend

P.S. Prediction ledger. Sweetgreen now has a pickle-mayo menu through November 9, built on Ayoh’s Dill Pickle Mayo. That’s pickle on a national salad menu, which I’m counting as a point for the pickle thesis. Cheez-It also has protein now. Pickle protein powder by Q1 2027 is still outstanding, and at this rate Mars will beat me to it with a Dill Pickle Cheez-It Protein.

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Today’s menu has a familiar-name problem, in the best way: you probably know the workout, the vitamin brand, and the pop star. Now each wants you to buy something a little differently.

TODAY’S SPECIAL: P90X, minus the burpees

P90X has entered the canned energy-drink business with four flavors and 200mg of caffeine, sold online in twelve-packs. The name already carries a workout association. Putting it on a can gives people a much smaller commitment than a training program. You don’t have to finish the workout to finish the drink. That recognition can earn a first look. Taste, price, and repeat purchase still have to earn the second order. A familiar fitness name is an introduction, not a retention strategy.

SIDE DISH: OLLY takes a dessert cue

OLLY’s new mochi-inspired supplements arrive at Target in Beauty, Sleep, Multi, and Energy formulas, priced at $17.99 for a thirty-day supply. The interesting change is the soft, pillowy format. Supplements are already sold around routines; this makes the experience itself part of the pitch. Less “remember your vitamins,” more “here’s a little treat.” That doesn’t make the product dessert, or establish that it works better. It gives shoppers a different reason to consider the supplement shelf.

WHO’S COOKING: Dua gets a Paris address

Dua Lipa’s skincare brand with Augustinus Bader opens its first standalone Paris boutique on October 3. At 215 square feet, this is a compact physical introduction, not a sprawling flagship. A store lets a digital or celebrity-led brand become something shoppers can encounter in person. The question shifts from knowing the name to wanting the product in your own routine.

THE CHECK

All three moves make an existing association easier to shop: fitness in a can, supplements in a softer format, celebrity skincare behind a storefront. Recognition gets attention. The new format still needs to give someone a reason to come back.

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Subscribe to Deeter Digest for more on the brands changing what we buy, eat, and keep on the bathroom shelf.

Counter Service is our daily 60-second consumer-news series. Here, we go one level deeper into the brands showing up in your kitchen—and the money behind them.

You probably don’t need another errand. Brands know that. Today’s lineup is showing up where you already stop: the coffee counter, the convenience store, and the daily wellness routine. The products are different. The invitation is familiar: while you’re here, try this.

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Your caffeine has a costume

Dunkin’ kicked off its Halloween menu with Green Apple Dunkin’ Zero and Purple Marshmallow Cold Foam. The lineup includes a Terror-misu Cloud Latte, because apparently even an iced latte needs to dress up for October. The new menu arrived September 30 for a limited time. It gives regular customers a seasonal detour without asking them to change their morning route. That’s the appeal of these launches. You don’t have to become a different kind of coffee person. You can just be the same coffee person holding something purple.

SIDE DISH: An upgrade to the emergency snack stop

Strip Jerky has landed in select Chicago 7-Elevens, with Original and Hot Honey Date flavors. For a young brand, that’s a useful place to meet someone who wasn’t looking for you. Convenience-store shopping doesn’t always start with a carefully researched list. Sometimes you’re hungry, your train is coming, and whatever’s in reach gets an audition. This is a selective Chicago rollout—not a nationwide launch. But it puts the brand into a very recognizable buying moment: “I need something now.”

WHO’S COOKING: SuperMush gets fresh backing

SuperMush closed a $3 million Series A led by NDude Labs. The wellness brand sells gummies positioned around routines including energy and sleep. The format is approachable. The claims still deserve scrutiny. A gummy can make a supplement easier to take; it doesn’t, by itself, establish what that supplement will do. The funding is backing the business. It isn’t proof of a health outcome.

THE CHECK

Dunkin’ wants to change your usual order. Strip Jerky wants a shot at your next snack stop. SuperMush wants a place in your daily routine. Getting into an existing habit is a good introduction. Earning the repeat purchase is the next job.

Subscribe to Deeter Digest for more on the food, brands, and consumer shifts worth paying attention to.

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COUNTER SERVICE | SEPTEMBER 29, 2026

Counter Service is our daily 60-second consumer-news series. Here, we go one level deeper into what’s landing on the menu and in the grocery cart.

You’ve watched the recipes, saved the videos, and probably forgotten to make half of them. Now the people behind that content are offering a shortcut: buy the thing instead.

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Molly Baz clocks in at Sweetgreen

Molly Baz is Sweetgreen’s first Chef in Residence, with three limited-edition items available through November 9: Molly’s Big Dill Caesar Wrap, Molly’s Pickle Caesar Salad, and Molly’s Double Chick Scoop.

The connecting ingredient is chicken salad made with Dill Pickle Mayo from Ayoh, Baz’s own condiment brand. This isn’t just a familiar face next to a salad. Her product is part of the meal, giving customers a way to taste it without committing to a jar first.

SIDE DISH: All Things Butter crosses the pond

Thomas Straker’s All Things Butter launched three grass-fed butter SKUs across 500 U.S. Whole Foods stores on September 28.

Straker’s butter videos already gave American viewers a reason to recognize the brand. National retail distribution gives them somewhere to act on that recognition. The trip from a saved recipe to the dairy case just got considerably shorter.

WHO’S COOKING: Kendall Toole bottles the drizzle

Kendall Toole’s DRESSi brings four grams of protein per serving to dressing and drizzle, using whey protein isolate and olive oil.

The brand says it grew out of the response to her protein-forward dressing recipes. That makes the product a packaged version of something her audience already wanted to make. Even the salad dressing now has a protein target.

THE CHECK

These are three different ways to turn attention into a purchase: a restaurant collaboration, a national grocery rollout, and a bottled version of a creator’s recipes.

The audience gets convenience. The brands get a chance to turn familiarity into a first taste. Whether people come back will depend on what’s in the wrap, tub, or bottle.

You used to save their recipes. Now you can buy the dressing, grab the butter, and order the lunch.

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🥄 FIRST BITE

The appetizer before we dive in

Graza raised less than $3 million in outside capital. It just hired Lazard to sell the company for as much as $600 million.

Sit with that ratio for a second. Olive oil is one of the oldest commodities on earth. The shelf was crowded, the category was sleepy, and the customer had no reason to care which bottle they grabbed. Graza put it in a squeeze bottle, named the two oils after what you do with them, and turned a commodity into a behavior. Now it throws off around $30 million in EBITDA.

The same week, Costco launched Kirkland Signature electrolyte packets at roughly 50 cents a stick. That’s what the opposite looks like. A functional ingredient that used to command a premium just became something a warehouse club sells under its own label.

And Hoplark, an early mover in sparkling hop water, reportedly filed for Chapter 7.

One brand turned a commodity into a brand. One category is being turned from a brand back into a commodity. That’s the week. Let’s dig in.

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🍊 THE MAIN COURSE

This week’s biggest CPG moves

Graza Hires Lazard, Asks Up to $600 Million

Graza has hired Lazard to explore a sale, per Axios Pro. The company reportedly generates about $30 million in EBITDA and is seeking a 15x to 20x multiple, which puts the valuation somewhere between $450 million and $600 million.

The numbers underneath that ask are the story. Andrew Benin and Allen Dushi founded Graza in late 2020 and launched the first two oils in January 2022. The brand raised roughly $2.85 million in total outside capital. It was valued at $240 million in early 2025, a mark that gave early backer The Cashmere Fund a 10x on paper. Gross sales hit about $48 million in 2024 and are reportedly on track to roughly triple. Investors include BFG Partners, Brand Foundry Ventures, Spacestation Investments and Watchfire Ventures.

So a company that raised less than a typical seed round is asking to be valued like a scaled platform. That almost never happens in food.

Here’s what I think Graza actually got right. It didn’t try to win on olive oil quality, which is invisible to most shoppers. It won on usage. Drizzle is for finishing. Sizzle is for cooking. The squeeze bottle makes olive oil something you grab ten times a week instead of something you ration. We spent all of last issue on frequency beating ticket size, and Graza is a clean example: it took a pantry staple people bought a few times a year and made it a daily tool.

The other thing it got right was not raising money. When you’re profitable, you get to sell on EBITDA instead of on a revenue multiple and a story. A 15x to 20x EBITDA ask is a serious number, and it’s only possible because there’s real earnings underneath it.

A caution worth stating plainly: this is an ask, not a price. Banks run processes to find out what the market will pay, and olive oil input costs have whipsawed this category before. Graza raised prices in 2023 because imports doubled. But even at the low end of the range, this is one of the most capital-efficient outcomes in consumer food in years.

And Graza is having a moment on shelf too. It collaborated with Athletic Brewing this week on Cold Off The Press, a limited non-alcoholic pils brewed with extra virgin olive oil. Brewed with it, not meant to taste like it. When your squeeze bottle is showing up in a beer the same week you hire bankers, the brand is doing its job.

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Costco Turns Electrolytes Into a Kirkland Product

Costco launched Kirkland Signature Electrolyte Drink Mix. A 40-count variety pack runs $19.99, which works out to about 50 cents a stick, in Strawberry Watermelon and Lemon Lime. Each stick carries 500mg of sodium, 400mg of potassium, 640mg of chloride and 40mg of magnesium.

This matters more than a private-label line extension usually would. Hydration has been one of the most crowded branded categories in wellness for three years. Liquid I.V., LMNT, Cure, Nuun, Instant Hydration, Thorne, Momentous, Salud, Magna. We’ve covered brand after brand launching or extending in it this summer.

When the largest club retailer in America decides it can sell the same thing under its own label for half a dollar a serving, that’s the market saying the ingredient story is no longer enough on its own. Electrolytes stopped being a premium. They became a spec.

The brands that survive this aren’t the ones with the best sodium number. They’re the ones with a reason to exist beyond the formula: a flavor people love, a format nobody else has, a community, a price point Costco can’t match on convenience. That’s the same lesson Graza teaches from the other direction. Graza made a commodity into a brand. Kirkland is making a brand category into a commodity. The only defense is being the thing people ask for by name.

Hoplark Reportedly Files Chapter 7

Non-alcoholic brand Hoplark reportedly filed for Chapter 7 and may sue its licensing partner, Brooklyn Brewery. Hoplark was an early mover in sparkling hop water, and revenue reached $9.3 million in 2024.

Chapter 7 is liquidation, not restructuring. And the detail about the licensing partner is the part founders should notice. We don’t know the specifics of the dispute yet, so I won’t guess at who’s right. But any brand that depends on a partner for something structural, whether that’s production, distribution or the right to use a name, is exposed in a way a brand that owns those things isn’t.

Hoplark was early to a category that’s now clearly real. Non-alc is the growth engine of beverage alcohol, Athletic Brewing is making NFL quarterbacks owners, and Diageo just launched half-strength Gordon’s. Being early didn’t save it. That’s worth sitting with.

Crosta Mollica Merges Into a €1 Billion Pizza Business

Crosta Mollica is merging with European Pizza Group, the Nestlé and PAI Partners joint venture that owns Buitoni and Wagner. The combined business will do more than €1 billion in retail sales across ten European markets, with manufacturing in Italy and Germany.

We covered Crosta Mollica exploring this deal back in Issue #45. The number that stands out now is its growth since Perwyn invested in 2024: sales tripled from €90 million to €270 million. James Orr founded it in 2009 around premium, clean-label frozen pizza.

Premium frozen keeps showing up as one of the few places legacy food companies are genuinely buying growth. A founder-built premium brand joining a portfolio with mass-market scale is the same pattern as Barilla buying GOODLES and Ferrero buying Purely Elizabeth.

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Sazerac Moves on Berentzen

Sazerac is poised to acquire German schnapps maker Berentzen-Gruppe at €5.55 a share, a premium of nearly 70% to the unaffected price. The deal would give Sazerac manufacturing and distribution across Europe for its own brands. Sazerac is privately held and does more than $6 billion in annual revenue.

The pattern holds. Turned down twice by Brown-Forman, Sazerac has been buying ever since: Dirty Shirley, Au Vodka, Mr. Fancy with Mike Cessario, and now Berentzen.

More Deals Worth Watching

Extravaganza Beauty acquired British fragrance house Roja. Founder and master perfumer Roja Dove stays on as a consultant, and CEO Audrey Minard remains in place.

Loacker invested in Danish alt chocolate company Endless Food, which makes chocolate alternatives from upcycled ingredients like spent grain and cacao shells. With cocoa prices where they’ve been, every big confectioner is hedging.

💰 THE FUNDING FRENZY

Big checks being written

Bird&Be Raises $13 Million for Fertility, Built for Both Partners

Bird&Be closed a $13 million Series A co-led by BFG Partners and BDC Thrive, with BAM Ventures, Founder Collective, Rejuvenation Ventures and HSR Ventures participating. Samantha Diamond and Breanna Hughes founded it in 2021. It’s now doing eight figures and growing nearly 100% year over year, selling fertility tests and supplements across retail and healthcare.

The detail that matters is who it’s built for. Fertility products have historically been marketed almost entirely to women. Bird&Be sells to both partners. That’s not a feature, it’s a market expansion, and at nearly 100% growth the market seems to agree.

Quick Hits

Arey, the longevity haircare brand from Allison Conrad and Jay Small, raised a Series A led by Unilever Ventures, with Greycroft and Female Founders Fund participating. Hair longevity keeps drawing money, after Belle Brands bought Vegamour and K18 launched a $120 longevity serum.

Jay Shetty joined BIOptimizers as an equity partner and its first global brand ambassador, after using its Magnesium Breakthrough for years. That’s his third consumer equity position we’ve covered this quarter, after IM8 and Sleep or Die. The use-then-invest structure keeps showing up in the celebrity deals that actually work.

DASH raised $1.5 million for fresh-frozen dog food, with a former ButcherBox operations leader running the supply side. Fresh pet food is capital intensive, so operators who’ve already run a cold chain are the right hire.

Sol Rise launched as a new consumer investment firm from Shaun Wilson, co-founder of Bondi Sands, which he sold to Kao for A$450 million in 2023. Another founder with a completed exit turning into a backer.

🆕 PRODUCT LAUNCHES & INNOVATION

This week’s innovation circus

Before Beat Tom’s, and Tom’s Responded

Before, the modern oral care brand, launched nationwide at Whole Foods in the US with two fluoride-free toothpastes and two mouthwashes in North America’s first plastic-free, fully home-compostable mouthwash bottle. It launched at Whole Foods Canada a year ago and overtook Tom’s of Maine for the top-shelf position there.

The same week, Tom’s of Maine launched a fluoride-free hydroxyapatite toothpaste at $11.99 a tube.

I can’t tell you one caused the other. But the bathroom counter has clearly entered its ingredient era, and the challenger took the incumbent’s shelf before the incumbent took the challenger’s ingredient.

Wellness Keeps Moving Into Things You Already Use

Lucy launched Revive, its first nicotine-free product: a mint gum with no caffeine, marketed for energy through nootropics and micronutrients. The positioning isn’t proof of an energy benefit, but the strategy is sharp. Lucy is using the gum habit it already owns to reach customers who’d never touch the core line.

CON-CRĒT is expanding into Target and CVS, with creatine gummies landing in 5,036 CVS stores. Creatine has now fully completed the trip from gym bag to drugstore.

Abbott is pairing its Lingo glucose tracker with Berry Street dietitians. A graph is one thing. Someone qualified to help you interpret it is another, and that’s the missing piece in most consumer health tracking.

Arrae, which passed $100 million in revenue this year, launched Hair Protein, developed with celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton and his daughter Kitty-Blu. Tmrw, from the team behind Simply Nootropics (which does $50 million a year), launched an 88-ingredient longevity drink mix at $119 a month or $89 on subscription. Zenwise launched Beauty, an 8g collagen stick built around the gut-skin connection. Little Spoon launched its first multivitamin for kids 2 and up, coming to Amazon in October.

Beauty

SKIMS Beauty launches next year, per Kim Kardashian. SKIMS was valued at $5 billion late last year. KAYALI enters China on October 15 across 300 Sephora locations. LeNOSE, from three former Bubble executives, launched $10 soap de parfum on its site and TikTok Shop, with Amazon coming in October. Sofie Pavitt Face launched single-use facial towels, a category Clean Skin Club pioneered to more than $100 million in 2024. Elm Biosciences launched a peptide lip serum.

Food and Beverage

Mid-Day Squares added Apple Cinnamon to its No Bread PB&J line, which remains some of the best IP in snacks. BOLD BAR launched from Sean Jagermann with 20g protein, honey-sweetened, in caffeinated and caffeine-free versions, hitting Sprouts nationwide today. NEAP relaunched its 20g protein, 90-calorie gel with a smoother formula and new packaging. Brekki launched Protein Oats and Protein Pudding at 17g each.

Bloom is adding Lemon Freezie, Cotton Candy and Strawberry Shortie next year. Nello added four energy drink flavors. Stateside Brands is launching Purple Tiger, a 10% ABV vodka hard grape soda, in October. Dos Hombres opened a branded bar at SoFi Stadium with Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul pouring. Willie’s Remedy+ launched 5mg THC Snap Packs.

Whole Foods named its 2026 LEAP cohort, including Cotto, HEYDOH, Joon Pistachios and üm, each eligible for a $25,000 investment. And 7-Eleven opened applications for its eighth Brands with Heart program, looking for functional beverages, protein, better-for-you snacks and fresh meals. Last year drew more than 700 applicants.

📊 THE DATA DIGEST

Numbers that matter

Milo’s passed $1 billion in annual retail sales. It started as a single Alabama restaurant in 1946, is now sold in more than 65,000 stores, and has more than doubled since 2022. It’s run by chair and CEO Tricia Wallwork, the founders’ granddaughter.

Lemme is the top-selling wellness brand at Ulta, accounting for about 40% of the category’s in-store sales in August. The rest of the top ten includes Nutrafol, Love Wellness, MaryRuth’s and, oddly, TheraBreath.

ALDI says its fall price cuts will save shoppers an estimated $86 million, with Honeycrisp apples and family packs of chicken breast both at $1.99 a pound. Put that next to Kirkland electrolytes and the private label pressure on branded CPG is building from every direction.

NO CAP! Soda Pop is reportedly the top-selling modern soda at a national convenience chain with more than 2,000 stores.

Men’s wellness is projected to reach $2.8 trillion by 2030, up from $1.4 trillion in 2024. Pinterest searches for “running club” are up 749% and “fragrance wardrobe” up 159%.

🏪 DISTRIBUTION DOMINATION

Everyone’s everywhere

7-Eleven: Final Boss Sour launched at 8,000 stores, two weeks after entering the Walmart candy aisle at 500. That’s how fast a trial becomes a national footprint when the velocity is there. CVS and Target: CON-CRĒT creatine gummies. Whole Foods: Before and Loonen both went nationwide. Target: Leisure Hydration and oHy went nationwide, and Realsy landed select stores. Kroger: Bizzy Coffee went national. Walmart: Rotten expanded. Erewhon: Caliwater went storewide. Total Wine: Years launched in 30 markets. Costco: De La Calle launched in California and Arizona. And Bites by Sweden passed 10,000 doors including Walgreens and World Market.

👋 PEOPLE MOVES

Recess hired Matthew Sztab as Chief Commercial Officer after nearly a decade scaling Health-Ade through its acquisition, and Graham Goeppert to lead digital commerce and media after five years at Poppi. That’s a team built by people who’ve already sold a functional beverage brand.

Olaplex named Christoph Kaul CEO. He spent five years at L’Oréal before joining Henkel in 2013, and Henkel bought Olaplex for $1.4 billion earlier this year.

Kylian Mbappé signed with On as the running brand enters football, helping develop future footwear and apparel.

🔥 THE HOT TAKE

My unfiltered opinion on this week’s madness

Every category is somewhere on a line between commodity and brand, and this week showed things moving in both directions at once.

Graza started at the commodity end. Olive oil is about as undifferentiated as food gets. It built its way up the line with packaging, naming and usage: two oils defined by what you do with them, in a bottle that changes how often you reach for it. It raised almost no money doing it, because a brand that people ask for by name doesn’t need to buy its way onto the shelf. Now it’s asking to be valued at up to twenty times earnings.

Electrolytes went the other way. Three years ago a hydration packet was a premium wellness product. Then a dozen brands crowded in, the ingredient spec converged, and this week Costco put it in a Kirkland box at 50 cents a stick. When the club store can sell your category under its own label, the category has slid back toward commodity, and every brand in it now has to justify its premium with something other than the formula.

Most founders think about their brand as a fixed thing. I think it’s more useful to think of it as a position on that line, and to ask which direction you’re moving.

The forces pulling you toward commodity are real and they never stop. Competitors copy your formula. Retailers launch private label. Ingredient specs converge. Input costs rise and squeeze your premium. Your hero claim becomes table stakes.

The forces pulling you toward brand are the ones you have to build on purpose. A name people say out loud. A format that changes behavior. A reason to exist that a spec sheet can’t capture. Graza has one. Before has one, which is how it took Tom’s shelf at Whole Foods Canada. Milo’s has one, eighty years in, which is how a sweet tea from a single Alabama restaurant does a billion dollars.

And watch the capital lesson hiding in here. Graza raised under $3 million. Milo’s is family owned. Neither needed to raise their way to scale, because demand pulled them there. Hoplark was early to a category that’s clearly real now, had real revenue, and still ended up in Chapter 7. Being early is not the same as owning your position.

So here’s the question I’d actually ask about your brand this week. If Costco launched a Kirkland version of your product tomorrow at half your price, what would your customer still come back to you for?

If you can answer that in a sentence, you’re moving toward brand. If you can’t, you’re closer to commodity than you think, and the private label is coming either way.

Build accordingly.

🎙️ COMING TUESDAY

Unpackaged Goods Episode

Graza raising under $3 million and asking up to $600 million. Costco turning electrolytes into a Kirkland product. Hoplark’s Chapter 7 and what early movers get wrong. Milo’s passing a billion dollars eighty years after its first restaurant. And Before taking Tom’s shelf at Whole Foods Canada.

🥫 ONE MORE THING...

Before you close this tab

Milo’s started as a single restaurant in Alabama in 1946. The sweet tea was just what they served with the burgers.

Eighty years later it’s a billion-dollar brand in 65,000 stores, run by the founders’ granddaughter, and it has more than doubled since 2022.

Graza did its version of this in under four years. Milo’s did it across three generations. Different speeds, same underlying move: take a thing people already drink or cook with every day, make it the one they ask for by name, and let the demand do the scaling.

Not every great brand is a rocket. Some are just a very good sweet tea that nobody ever stopped buying.

Until next Monday, Jonathan Deeter Your CPG-Obsessed Friend

P.S. Prediction ledger check. Back in July I said electrolytes were the new protein. This week they became the new Kirkland. I’ll take partial credit for calling the trend and zero credit for predicting where it ended up. Pickle protein powder by Q1 2027 remains outstanding. At this rate Costco will launch it first.

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TODAY’S SPECIAL: Lucy tries a different kind of buzz

Lucy launched Revive, its first nicotine-free product: mint gum made with nootropics and micronutrients, without nicotine or caffeine. The company calls it “non-stimulant energy gum.” That describes the pitch, not independent proof of an energy benefit. Taking stimulants out of a product does not, by itself, establish what the remaining ingredients will do.

Still, the move is interesting. A nicotine company is selling a familiar format to people who may want nothing to do with nicotine. Same chewing habit, very different expectations. The packaging can introduce the idea; the experience has to give someone a reason to buy another pack.

SIDE DISH: Tom’s puts a premium ingredient on the sink

Tom’s of Maine launched fluoride-free hydroxyapatite toothpaste at $11.99 a tube. Hydroxyapatite is a mineral found in tooth enamel. It is also a mouthful of a word for a product you use with your mouth. Your bathroom counter has officially entered its ingredient era. The price makes this more than a routine toothpaste restock. It asks shoppers to care enough about a specific ingredient to pay a premium. But an ingredient story is not the same as proof that a particular formula performs equivalently to fluoride toothpaste. Those are separate questions.

WHO’S COOKING: Creatine gets a drugstore address

CON-CRĒT is expanding into Target and CVS, with its creatine gummies reaching 5,036 CVS stores. That puts a gym-associated supplement into a familiar shopping trip, in a format that needs neither a scoop nor a shaker. A gummy is an easy format to understand, even if evaluating the dose and the product still takes more than recognizing the ingredient on the front.

THE CHECK

Gum, toothpaste, gummies. These launches put wellness propositions into routines people already recognize. That makes the products easier to introduce. It does not make every promise equally convincing. The useful question is still wonderfully unglamorous: what am I paying for, and what supports the claim?

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TODAY’S SPECIAL: Graza’s squeeze bottle meets the six-pack

Graza and Athletic Brewing launched Cold Off The Press, a limited-time non-alcoholic pils brewed with Graza extra virgin olive oil. Six-packs went on sale through Athletic’s website today, while supplies last. Before you picture salad dressing with a head: Athletic says the brew is not intended to taste like olive oil. The oil helps nourish the yeast during brewing; the finished pils has floral, herbal, and lemon aromas. The appeal is the unexpected pairing. Graza gets a new place at the table, and Athletic gets a collaboration that makes people ask what’s actually in the can. That earns curiosity. Whether anyone wants another six-pack still comes down to the drink.

SIDE DISH: ALDI puts a price on the fall grocery run

ALDI says its latest price reductions will deliver an estimated $86 million in shopper savings. The more useful numbers for dinner: Honeycrisp apples and Kirkwood chicken breast family packs are both $1.99 per pound. The reductions begin today and run through at least November 3. ALDI also says nearly one-third of its everyday assortment is priced lower than last year. There’s no new ritual to learn here. Lower prices on recognizable staples make the offer immediately understandable. Sometimes the most compelling wellness proposition is being able to afford the ingredients.

WHO’S COOKING: Lingo gives the glucose graph some company

Abbott is partnering with Berry Street to connect Lingo glucose insights with registered dietitian support, including virtual one-to-one appointments and recommendations informed by glucose trends. That addresses a practical question for people using a continuous glucose monitor: what should I do with this information? A graph can show a change. A qualified professional can help put it in context. The partnership’s promise is not more numbers to watch, but help deciding which changes are worth making.

THE CHECK

Today’s stories land in the same daily routine: deciding what to buy, what to drink, and what to eat. One brings novelty. One lowers the bill. One adds guidance. None needs a grander explanation than that.

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Jonathan Deeter sits down with Marc Seguin, CEO of NextFoods, the company behind Cheribundi and GoodBelly, to unpack the decisions behind their next stage of growth.

Marc explains how Cheribundi built its sports-team business, why availability matters as much as awareness, and how NextFoods is bringing two brands together under one team. They also explore GoodBelly’s innovation pipeline, college-athlete partnerships, and building a shared vision inside a private equity-backed company.

In this episode:
• Taking Cheribundi from the locker room into broader retail distribution
• Developing products the team actually wants to use
• GoodBelly’s plans for functional beverages and postbiotics
• Turning college-athlete relationships into affiliate partnerships
• Building a team that believes in the business

Before the interview, Jonathan breaks down the week’s consumer news, including Real Good Foods, L’Oréal, Puig, Diageo, and the latest funding and product launches.

The Marc Seguin interview begins at 14:14.

Unpackaged Goods covers the people and news shaping consumer health, wellness, and packaged goods—for founders, operators, and investors.

Follow the show, leave a review, and subscribe to The Deeter Digest for more consumer-brand news.

Hosted by Jonathan Deeter. Presented by Deet’s Eats Media.

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Bird&Be makes room for both partners

Bird&Be raised $13 million in a round led by BDC Thrive and BFG Partners. The fertility brand sells at-home tests and supplements for both male and female fertility, with funding earmarked for product development, clinical research, and expansion across retail and healthcare providers. That last distinction matters. A product on a store shelf and a product discussed with a clinician enter someone’s life differently. Expanding into both means making the offer easy to understand without implying that buying a supplement guarantees an outcome. The “both partners” approach gives Bird&Be a clear position: fertility is not a one-person assignment. The work is carrying that message responsibly into more places.

SIDE DISH: DASH takes sourcing experience to the dog bowl

DASH announced a $1.5 million seed round led by Voltage Ventures. Founder Bobby Quirk was ButcherBox’s first hire and former VP of Operations; ButcherBox founder Mike Salguero is joining DASH’s board. That is a specific operating connection, not just a familiar name in the announcement. Fresh-frozen dog food involves sourcing, cold-chain delivery, and keeping a subscription worth renewing.

DASH calls its approach “table-grade.” That is the company’s positioning, not proof of nutritional superiority. The useful test is whether its sourcing experience produces food owners trust, dogs tolerate, and households keep ordering.

WHO’S COOKING: Roja London keeps the founder’s nose in the business

Extravaganza Beauty acquired Roja London, WWD reported September 18. Financial terms were not disclosed. Founder Roja Dove will become a consultant, while CEO Audrey Minard stays in her role. The buyer plans to support product development and growth, including the brand’s Middle East presence. Keeping both the CEO and the founder’s creative guidance offers continuity during that transition. For a fragrance house carrying its founder’s name, continuity is part of what customers are buying. New ownership needs to grow the business without making its identity feel interchangeable.

THE CHECK

These deals touch different kinds of trust: reproductive health, feeding a pet, and personal taste. Capital can expand distribution and fund development. It cannot substitute for the reasons customers believed in the product in the first place.

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The appetizer before we dive in

On September 15, L’Oréal became the most valuable listed company in France. It passed LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton, Dior and Tiffany.

That’s the first time since 2017 that a non-luxury company has held the top spot on the Paris bourse. L’Oréal closed around €203 billion against LVMH’s €201 billion. L’Oréal shares are up roughly 5% this year. LVMH is down about 35% and has fallen out of Europe’s ten most valuable companies entirely. Bernard Arnault lost the title of Europe’s richest person to the founder of Zara.

The explanation analysts keep reaching for is the lipstick effect: when money gets tight, people don’t stop indulging, they just indulge smaller. A €40 serum gets bought every month. A €4,000 handbag gets postponed.

Now look at the rest of the week. Puig spent $1.4 billion buying the rest of ISDIN because skincare was only 11% of its sales. Diageo launched 20% ABV versions of Gordon’s, Captain Morgan and Smirnoff. Energy drink volume grew 5.7% while prices rose 3.7%.

Frequency is beating ticket size everywhere right now, and it’s the most useful lens I’ve got for this week. Let’s dig in.

🍊 THE MAIN COURSE

This week’s biggest CPG moves

Beauty Passed Luxury

L’Oréal overtook LVMH at the close of trading in Paris on September 15, with a market cap around €203 billion ($234 billion) versus LVMH’s €201 billion. Per LSEG data, it’s the first time since 2017 that a non-luxury company has topped the French market at a day’s close.

The divergence is the story. L’Oréal is up about 5% year to date. LVMH is down roughly 35% to 37% depending on the source, has dropped out of Europe’s top ten by market cap, and its chairman has ceded Europe’s richest person to Amancio Ortega of Zara. ASML holds the European top spot now.

Two forces are doing the work. The first is China, where a prolonged slowdown hit LVMH directly because so much of its revenue came from Chinese consumers. Some analyses estimate repeated price increases have pushed 60 million people out of the global luxury market over three years.

The second is the one that matters more for anyone reading this newsletter. Beauty benefits from small price tags and repeat purchases. A handbag is a decision. A serum is a habit. When the economy gets uncertain, the habit survives, and the decision gets deferred.

I’d add a third thing the coverage mostly skips. L’Oréal is not really a beauty company in the way people mean it. It’s a distribution and formulation machine that happens to sell beauty, with brands spanning drugstore to luxury and the R&D infrastructure to keep feeding all of them. That’s a CPG business model, not a luxury one, and this week the market priced it accordingly.

Puig Pays $1.4 Billion for the Rest of ISDIN

Puig acquired the remainder of ISDIN for $1.4 billion. The dermocosmetics company was founded in 1975 by the Esteve and Puig families, combining science and beauty expertise, and did just over €647 million in revenue in 2025.

The reason is right in Puig’s own numbers. Skincare accounted for just 11% of the company’s €5.2 billion in sales last year. Puig is heavily weighted toward fragrance, which is a good business, and it just spent $1.4 billion buying its way into the category that’s compounding faster.

Put it next to the L’Oréal news and the logic gets clearer. Fragrance is a considered purchase, often a gift, and frequently seasonal. Dermocosmetics is a routine. You finish the bottle, and you buy another one without deliberating.

Caudalie made the same bet at a much smaller scale this week, acquiring Talm in the first acquisition in the company's history. Kenza Keller, formerly Global Marketing Director at Byredo, founded it in 2020 for sensitive skin, and Caudalie had invested back in 2022.

Three beauty acquisitions in eight days if you count Belle Brands taking Vegamour last week. The category is consolidating at speed while luxury contracts.

Diageo Cuts Its Own Spirits in Half

Diageo is releasing mid-strength versions of Gordon’s, Captain Morgan and Smirnoff at 20% ABV, rolling out across the UK in the coming days.

I’ve been tracking the moderation thesis in this newsletter for three months, and this is the clearest signal yet. The largest spirits company in the world just put half-strength versions of three flagship brands on the shelf. That’s not a test brand or an acquisition. That’s Gordon’s.

The commercial logic is the same frequency argument running through this whole issue. A 40% ABV gin is a Friday. A 20% ABV gin can be a Tuesday. Lowering the strength lowers the commitment, which raises the number of occasions the product can plausibly enter.

And the field is filling in fast. Demi, a mid-strength brand from the creators of Quarter Proof, launched last week. Recess added Apple ‘Tini and Espresso ‘Tini to its Zero Proof range at Target, H-E-B and Amazon. Athletic Brewing made two NFL quarterbacks equity owners. BERO put non-alc beer in glass bottles. Herb Light launched a 1mg THC beer. Fool’s Fix is selling the drink after the drink.

The occasion that used to be one product is now a spectrum, and the biggest incumbent in the category just validated the middle of it.

Hain Celestial Sells Its International Business

Hain Celestial divested its international business for approximately $323 million in cash to Aurelius, a global private equity firm. Brands in the transaction include Joya, Natumi, Hartley’s and Ella’s Kitchen. Proceeds go toward reducing debt.

Ella’s Kitchen is the notable one. It’s a genuinely strong baby food brand in the UK, and Hain is selling it to pay down leverage.

That’s the fourth carve-out we’ve covered in six weeks, after Nestlé’s $1 billion vitamin sale to Yellow Wood, Sauer selling spices to Watkins, and Nestlé’s water joint venture with Platinum Equity. The pattern is consistent enough now to state plainly: mid-size public consumer companies are shedding geography and category to fund focus, and private equity is absorbing everything they drop.

If you’re a founder wondering who your eventual buyer is, it may not be the strategic you’re picturing. It may be a PE firm that bought your category from that strategic two years earlier.

Riff: A Michelin Chef Builds a Shelf-Stable Meal Kit

Daniel Humm, the chef behind Eleven Madison Park, teamed up with Mark Ramadan, co-founder of Sir Kensington’s, to launch Riff. It took 20 months to develop. The product is a premium 20-minute meal designed to bridge convenience and scratch cooking, and it’s live online and nationwide at Target with five varieties.

The framing Riff is using is the interesting part: a quality, shelf-stable meal kit that gives ingredient-conscious shoppers a reason to shop the center store again.

That’s a real white space. Meal kits mostly died as a subscription business because the economics of shipping refrigerated boxes weekly never worked. Shelf-stable removes the cold chain, removes the subscription, and puts the product where people already are. And center store has been losing share to perimeter for a decade, so a retailer has every reason to want this to work.

The pairing is also well constructed. Humm brings culinary credibility that can’t be bought. Ramadan has actually built and sold a CPG brand, which is the skill that usually goes missing when chefs launch products.

💰 THE FUNDING FRENZY

Big checks being written

Sol-ti Raises $30.3 Million

Sol-ti secured $30.3 million in equity funding per an SEC filing, from Cambridge SPG, Charlie Walk, Connect, Grays Peak Capital and Volchek Capital Partners. Ryne O’Donnell founded the California wellness shot brand in 2014, and it also sells functional juices and drink mixes. Pawan Kalra, formerly CEO of Pressed Juicery and CFO of Pinkberry, has been CEO since July 2023.

The wellness shot category is quietly having a year. Bansk Group acquired So Good So You. Suja Life went public. Nomio raised $4 million led by Collab Fund. And the format itself is a frequency play: two ounces, a few dollars, consumed daily rather than considered.

Lioness Gets a $5 Million Line of Credit

Lioness secured a line of credit worth up to $5 million from JPalmer Collective. The functional fruit snack brand is designed specifically for women, and founder Nicky Jackson previously co-founded RangeMe and was an executive at PepsiCo. Lioness launched in June and has already scaled to more than 2,000 doors, including Target and Sprouts.

Two thousand doors in three months is fast, and the structure here is worth noting. A line of credit is not a valuation event; it’s working capital, which is exactly what a brand needs when distribution outruns cash. Wizard Wellness raised $1 million against a similar problem this week. Scaling into retail consumes money long before it produces any.

Quick Hits

Sleep or Die added Jay Shetty to its cap table. Lauren Sudeyko founded it in 2025, starting with sleep tape before launching fast-dissolving Sleep Strips formulated with L-Theanine, GABA, 5-HTP and melatonin. True Beauty Ventures put in $1 million in May, and their portfolio includes K18, Crown Affair, Dieux and Jupiter.

Punchy took a strategic investment from Belvoir Farm, which has manufactured Punchy’s RTD line for the past three years. Paddy Cavanagh-Butler founded the certified B Corp in 2018, selling hydration mixes and RTDs through Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Holland & Barrett, Boots and Ocado. Actor Ncuti Gatwa joined the cap table earlier this year. A co-manufacturer taking equity in a brand it already produces is an underrated structure, because the supply relationship is already proven.

Wizard Wellness secured $1 million from Pave Health Ventures, Vanquish Equity, True Beauty Ventures and Barrier Island Capital. Lorne Lucree founded the allergy care brand this year and it’s already past 4,000 doors at Target, Walmart and CVS. August was its largest DTC month and its repeat customer rate more than tripled over two months.

Sazerac is reportedly pursuing German schnapps maker Berentzen, which did over €162 million in revenue in 2025 and also produces Puschkin Vodka and Tres Países Rum. That’s Sazerac’s third appearance in this newsletter in six weeks after the reported £500 million Au Vodka deal and the Mr. Fancy launch with Mike Cessario. Brown-Forman turned them down twice, and they've been spending ever since.

Crédit Agricole took a minority stake in Miraval Provence, the wine label once linked to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, via two private equity subsidiaries. And Juanita’s Foods, backed by Apex Capital, acquired a 120,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Santa Fe Springs, California.

🆕 PRODUCT LAUNCHES & INNOVATION

This week’s innovation circus

Fiber Arrives

Grüns launched Müves, a separate fiber-focused gummy brand delivering 10 grams of fiber per pack in Strawberry Kiwi, with a no-sugar-added variety.

Note that Grüns didn’t add fiber to its existing line. It launched a new brand around it. That’s a bet that fiber is big enough to stand alone rather than function as a callout.

Ally Mamalider of Organic Traditions called this on the podcast two weeks ago: everyone counts protein and forgets fiber, and for GLP-1 users the gap causes real digestive problems. She predicted fiber gets added to everything and becomes protein 2.0.

This week alone: Flings launched Protein Crunch at 10g protein and 6 to 7g fiber. TRUBAR’s Cha Cha Matcha collaboration carries 12g fiber. B.T.R. Nation’s Kosterina bar has 7g. Müves is the first one treating it as the whole product.

Beverage

La Colombe is releasing an RTD matcha latte line later this month using lactose-free whole milk from Michigan and single-origin Japanese matcha, in Vanilla, Strawberry and Everyday. Matcha sales at La Colombe cafés are up 188% since 2023, which is the number that justified the launch. Chobani acquired La Colombe for $900 million in 2023, and KDP just sold its Chobani stake back for $800 million, a position that traced to its original La Colombe investment.

Happy Dad is entering the ade category with non-carbonated LemonADE, debuting February 2027 with a 12-count variety pack in Strawberry, Mango, Blueberry and Pink LemonADE at 1g sugar and 100 calories. That’s the second ade entry we’ve covered after Good Boy Vodka’s LYTE.

Cove Soda partnered with Good Humor on a limited-edition Strawberry Shortcake prebiotic soda, exclusive to Target. Renais, Emma Watson’s sustainable spirits brand, expands into vodka October 1 in the UK via its site and Majestic for three months exclusive.

Snacks and Pantry

SMACKIN’ launches a cashew line September 22 in Backyard BBQ and Cinnamon Churro. Brian Waddick and Cole Schaefer started the sunflower seed brand in 2019 and it’s now an eight-figure business at Target, Albertsons, Kroger and 7-Eleven. We covered them in August at 25 million bags sold, almost entirely bootstrapped.

Momofuku Goods released five cooking sauces, including Chili Crunch Sauce, Momoyaki, Sweet & Spicy, Sweet & Sour, and Miso Ginger, rolling into Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Target in the coming months. Philadelphia teamed with Mike’s Hot Honey on a Hot Honey Whipped Cream Cheese, a Walmart exclusive, expanding in January 2027. Little Spoon added Homestyle Mini Pancakes and Chicken Maple Sausages at Target, expanding the brand to two full shelves in frozen.

TRUBAR partnered with Cha Cha Matcha on a Matcha Latte bar with white chocolate coating, 12g plant protein, 12g fiber, and 10mg caffeine.

Wellness and Beauty

Mars Men launched Ignite, a daily drink mix for focus and memory with 80mg natural caffeine and 13 cognitive actives including Alpha-GPC, Lion’s Mane and L-Theanine, in Intergalactic Orange and Cosmic Berry. That’s their second product after hitting a $100M run rate and going nationwide at GNC.

Ju Rhyu, co-founder of Hero Cosmetics, is back with Vize, a K-beauty-inspired suncare brand co-founded with board-certified dermatologist Dr. Aimee Paik, debuting September 22 with Cloudwear Daily SPF 30. Another second-time founder with a completed exit, after Nancy Twine’s Soulstice this month.

Divi entered styling with Growth Care Hairspray in Soft Finish and Strong Hold. The Absorption Company launched Hair, promising reduced shedding in a month and visibly thicker hair by month three. Thorne added Blackberry, Grapefruit and Strawberry Lemonade to Daily Electrolytes. Momentous launched Daily Hydration, NSF certified with 2g functional carbs for absorption.

📊 THE DATA DIGEST

Numbers that matter

Energy drink volume grew 5.7% with a 3.7% average price gain for the four weeks ending August 22, per NielsenIQ. Volume growth alongside price increases is the strongest demand signal a category can produce. People absorbed the price and bought more anyway.

Real Good Foods has generated over $1.2 billion in lifetime retail sales since entering the channel in 2018, per Nielsen, across more than 16,000 stores. Worth noting, the protein source is meat, which insulates them from the whey constraint reshaping powders and bars right now.

Open Water is approaching 250 million cans sold, with 150 million of those in the past two years. Nicole Doucet and Jess Page founded it, and it just made Inc.’s fastest-growing private companies list for the sixth time. It’s also now the official still and sparkling water partner of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Neuro secured nationwide Costco distribution after debuting in 235 locations three months ago, a fast-track out of what’s typically a six-month regional test. Ryan Chen and Kent Yoshimura founded the functional gum and mint brand in 2015. It passed $100 million in revenue last year and is in 60,000 doors.

🏪 DISTRIBUTION DOMINATION

Everyone’s everywhere

Target: PRÉS launched its protein coffee nationwide at 20g protein and 1g sugar, after debuting at Sprouts in late 2025. Wild Alaskan Company went nationwide. Costco: Neuro landed nationwide. Kroger: Lemme is now available nationwide. Sam’s Club: Smash Kitchen arrived. Publix: FitJoy launched in the deli section. Sprouts: Tuff Pops went nationwide and Flings launched Protein Crunch. Whole Foods: Habiza launched across SoCal, Arizona and Nevada. Ulta: Midi Health launched online and in store. Raley’s and Gelson’s: Sipwell Wine Co. launched.

👋 PEOPLE MOVES

Perelel hired Ashley Murphy as Chief Marketing Officer, previously CMO at Rare Beauty with prior roles at Moon Juice, Pressed Juicery and Hourglass. Perelel raised $27 million in November from Prelude Growth, Unilever Ventures, Willow Growth and Selva Ventures.

Ju Rhyu returns to skincare with Vize, three years after building Hero Cosmetics.

🔥 THE HOT TAKE

My unfiltered opinion on this week’s madness

A €40 serum beat a €4,000 handbag, and I think that’s the most useful thing that happened in consumer this week.

L’Oréal passing LVMH is being covered as a luxury story, which it partly is. China slowed down, luxury raised prices too aggressively, and some analyses figure 60 million people got pushed out of the market entirely over three years. Fine.

But the more portable lesson is about purchase architecture, and it shows up everywhere in this issue once you start looking.

Puig spent $1.4 billion buying ISDIN because skincare was 11% of its sales and fragrance was most of the rest. Fragrance is a gift, a season, a decision. Dermocosmetics is a bottle you finish. Diageo launched 20% ABV Gordon’s because a full-strength gin is a Friday and a half-strength one can be a Tuesday. Energy drinks grew volume 5.7% while raising prices 3.7%, which only happens when a product has become a habit rather than a treat. Wellness shots are having a year, and a wellness shot is two ounces and three dollars consumed daily.

The common thread isn’t price. Plenty of expensive things are doing fine. It’s frequency, and specifically whether the purchase is a decision the customer makes once or a routine they stop thinking about.

Routines survive downturns. Decisions get postponed.

So here’s the question I’d actually ask if you’re building something. Not what your margin is, not what your AOV is, but how many times a year does a real customer buy this without deliberating? If the answer is two or three, you’re in decision territory, and you’re exposed to every wobble in consumer confidence. If it’s twenty, you’re in routine territory, and you’re comparatively insulated.

And the interesting corollary is that you can often move between the two deliberately. Diageo just did it by cutting the ABV. Grüns did it by launching fiber as a daily gummy rather than a callout. La Colombe is doing it by taking a café ritual people already have 188% more often and putting it in a can they can buy at a grocery store.

None of those are new products, exactly. They’re existing propositions re-engineered for a higher-frequency occasion.

The thing I’d caution against is the lazy version of this, which is slapping a subscription on something people don’t want that often. TMPL8’s $190 monthly haircare and Cymbiotika’s $74 beauty sachets are both testing whether a category can carry that cadence, and the honest answer is we don’t know yet. Frequency has to be earned by the product, not imposed by the billing.

But when it works, it’s the most durable thing in consumer. Nobody postpones the thing they’ve stopped thinking about.

Build accordingly.

🎙️ COMING TUESDAY

Unpackaged Goods Episode

L’Oréal passing LVMH and what the lipstick effect means for anyone selling something. Puig spending $1.4 billion to get into skincare. Diageo putting 20% ABV Gordon’s on shelf and the moderation thesis becoming undeniable. Hain selling Ella’s Kitchen to pay down debt. And a Michelin chef building a shelf-stable meal kit for Target.

🥫 ONE MORE THING...

Before you close this tab

Open Water is about to hit 250 million cans sold. A hundred and fifty million of those came in the last two years.

The product is water in an aluminum can. That’s it. No adaptogens, no electrolytes, no functional claim, no celebrity. Nicole Doucet and Jess Page built it on a single observation, that plastic bottles are a problem and aluminum is infinitely recyclable, and then spent a decade putting it in front of institutions that buy water by the pallet.

Six appearances on Inc.’s fastest-growing list. This week they became the official water of an NHL arena.

We spend every issue covering brands that added something. It’s worth remembering that one of the fastest-growing beverage companies in America got there by changing the container.

Until next Monday, Jonathan Deeter Your CPG-Obsessed Friend

P.S. Habiza partnered with Good Girl Snacks on a pickle hummus, now at Whole Foods across Arizona, Nevada and California. I have been running a pickle prediction ledger since July, and while this is not technically pickle protein powder, it is pickle hummus, which I did not have on the board at all. Outstanding call remains pickle protein powder by Q1 2027. Three months left. The hummus people are clearly closer than I am.

TikTok | Instagram | Newsletter | Pickle Advisors

This newsletter is finished with Trophy Wife Finishing Salts, elevating every bite since 2025.

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Jay Shetty bets on bedtime

Jay Shetty has invested in Sleep or Die, which makes fast-dissolving sleep strips. A man known for a calming podcast voice backing a brand called Sleep or Die is a fairly dramatic way to say goodnight. The interesting part is the format. Sleep is already a crowded shelf of gummies, capsules, powders, and promises. A strip gives the brand something concrete to explain beyond another ingredient list. Shetty can help get people to notice it. Whether they buy it again is a different question. An endorsement is not evidence that a sleep product works.

SIDE DISH: La Colombe puts matcha in the fridge

La Colombe’s new canned lineup includes Everyday, Strawberry, and Vanilla Matcha Lattes, made with Japanese matcha and lactose-free whole milk. The company says matcha sales at its own cafés have grown 188 percent since 2023. That last detail matters. This is an existing customer behavior moving into another format, not just a coffee brand discovering green drinks on TikTok. The opportunity is to serve the morning when someone wants matcha but is not stopping at a café. The test is whether the can delivers enough of that experience to stay on the shopping list.

WHO’S COOKING: On heads for the pitch

On is entering football with Kylian Mbappé, who will work with its teams on developing and testing future footwear and apparel. Thierry Henry is also joining as Director of Football after working behind the scenes on the entry. This is bigger than putting a famous face in running shoes. On is taking its performance reputation into a sport where it still has to prove the product. Mbappé supplies both attention and an elite player’s feedback. Neither makes execution optional.

THE CHECK

Bedtime, the morning drink, the football pitch: three very different places to earn repeat use. Celebrity gets the introduction. Convenience gets the trial. The product has to give people a reason to return. Subscribe to Deeter Digest for more on the brands, products, and business decisions shaping what we buy.

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COUNTER SERVICE | September 17, 2026 Counter Service is our daily 60-second serving of consumer news; here, we go one level deeper into what the headlines mean for the brands behind them.

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Sol-ti’s next test is the fridge

Wellness-shot brand Sol-ti raised $30.3 million, according to an SEC filing. That is serious money behind a very small bottle. Funding is the headline, but it is not evidence of repeat purchase. The commercial question is whether a wellness shot becomes something shoppers replenish or something they grab when they feel a cold coming on. Those are different shopping habits, and they support different businesses.

The raise gives us a financing fact. It does not, by itself, tell us which habit Sol-ti has earned.

SIDE DISH: ALL THINGS skips the blender

ALL THINGS launched smooth cottage cheese in the UK. The brand says 70–80% of the tagged recipe content it analyzed involved people blending its cottage cheese. That is not a survey of all its customers. It is still a useful signal: people liked the ingredient enough to buy it, then did extra work to change the texture. A smooth version removes that step. The interesting test is whether it attracts people who currently avoid cottage cheese, rather than simply moving existing buyers from one tub to another. Less washing-up is a decent starting pitch.

WHO’S COOKING: Cerebelly buys more snack occasions

Cerebelly acquired freeze-dried snack brand Fresh Bellies. The companies say the brands will retain their separate identities, product lines and formulations. Fresh Bellies gets access to supply-chain infrastructure intended to support larger, more frequent retail orders. Cerebelly gains opportunities to develop more snacking products. For a small food brand, getting a retailer’s attention and reliably filling its orders are separate achievements. This deal addresses the second one, too.

THE CHECK

Wellness gets attention. Products people enjoy eating, can actually find, and keep buying are what make it a business. Sol-ti has new capital. ALL THINGS is removing a texture objection. Fresh Bellies is getting operational support. The useful question after each headline is what changes on the next grocery trip.

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Subscribe to Deeter Digest for more on the food, health and wellness businesses behind your shopping basket.

The appetizer before we dive in

American supermarkets now carry an average of 38,708 products advertising protein content, according to NielsenIQ. Seventy percent of Americans say they want more protein, up from 59% four years ago.

And the ingredient underneath most of those products is running out.

Whey protein concentrate is trading at levels roughly six times where it sat a year ago. The USDA said in late August that supply remains limited and demand keeps outpacing it. Some suppliers are reportedly sold out through the end of 2026. BellRing, which owns Premier Protein, has called prices historic highs and is weighing whether to pass them along.

Now look at what actually launched this week. Thorne released a product whose entire job is helping you absorb more from the protein you already eat. Optimum Nutrition put pea and rice protein in a non-alcoholic beer. Marrō built a protein drink out of bone broth and collagen. SidePiece’s Dunkaroos tribute is vegan. Equip’s kids line last month was explicitly whey-free.

Nobody is announcing a whey shortage. They’re just quietly building around one. Let’s dig in.

🍊 THE MAIN COURSE

This week’s biggest CPG moves

The Protein Boom Hit a Wall, and It’s a Processing Plant

Let me lay out the constraint first, because most coverage of this treats it as a pricing story when it’s actually a capacity story.

Raw milk supply in the US has been broadly stable. What’s maxed out is the downstream processing capacity that turns whey, historically a cheese byproduct, into whey protein concentrate and isolate. That filtration and drying infrastructure was built for a world where whey was surplus material. It was not built for a world with 38,708 protein-labeled products on shelf.

The numbers vary by source and by grade, so treat any single figure carefully. Ever.Ag had WPC 80% above $13 a pound in June, up roughly 250% year over year. Vesper Tool put WPC 80% around $32,000 per metric tonne earlier this month, up nearly six times from the same period last year. NOW Sports says WPC costs are up 108% over two years and isolate up 139%. USDA data has prices up more than 50% since January alone.

Different methodologies, same direction. And the direction is steep.

Two demand shocks arrived at once. The protein-maxxing trend pulled protein into categories that never carried it, from cereal to soda to candy. Then GLP-1 users became a second, structurally hungry customer base, because preserving lean mass on those drugs requires protein intake that’s hard to hit when your appetite is suppressed. That’s not a fad cohort. That’s millions of people with a clinical reason to buy.

Analysts now describe whey as a constrained commodity rather than an abundant byproduct. And because the bottleneck is physical plant, it doesn’t resolve with a good quarter. It resolves when someone builds capacity, which takes years.

Here’s why I’m leading with it. Every week this newsletter covers brands adding protein to something new, and I’ve mostly written about it as a marketing question. It isn’t only that anymore. It’s a sourcing question, and the brands that locked in supply early are about to look a lot smarter than the ones that didn’t.

Thorne Sells Absorption Instead of Grams

Thorne launched Protein Optimizer, a probiotic and enzymatic formula designed to improve protein digestion and amino acid absorption. The pitch is helping you get more out of the protein already in your diet. Thorne is aiming it at two groups: athletes on high-protein diets, and GLP-1 users whose protein intake has dropped.

Sit with the timing on this one.

P&G paid $3.8 billion for Thorne five weeks ago, partly because roughly a quarter of its revenue was creatine and its customers skew under 40. Thorne’s first notable launch since is not more protein. It’s a product that makes existing protein work harder.

In an abundant market, you sell more grams. In a constrained one, you sell efficiency. I’m not claiming Thorne built this in response to whey pricing, because a probiotic enzyme formula takes longer to develop than this shortage has been acute. But the product arrives at a moment when the value proposition has quietly inverted, and that’s worth noticing.

The GLP-1 angle is the commercially interesting half. That customer has a medical reason to care about protein and a physical reason they can’t just eat more of it. An absorption aid is a genuinely better answer for them than another shake, and it’s a category that barely existed two years ago.

Athletic Brewing Makes Two NFL Quarterbacks Owners

Athletic Brewing signed multi-year agreements with Patriots quarterback Drake Maye and Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, both taking equity as athlete-owners. The announcement landed September 9, as the NFL season kicked off. Their first campaign, called Athletic Fits, runs on social and uses misdirection: it looks like the crowd is watching the quarterbacks, then reveals everyone’s actually looking at the beer.

Athletic was valued at roughly $800 million in 2024 and is the largest dedicated non-alcoholic brewer in America. Its athlete and celebrity investor roster already included J.J. Watt, Justin Tuck, Naomi Osaka, David Chang, and Blake Mycoskie.

The structural detail worth pulling out: these are equity stakes, not endorsement fees. We’ve spent two months in this newsletter watching the difference between those two things decide outcomes. Alex Cooper’s Unwell had an enormous audience on a paid basis and shut down. Alix Earle used Cymbiotika for years and then bought in. James Watt gave 10% of Fool’s Fix to customers specifically because he thinks celebrity equity is the wrong trade.

Athletic is betting the middle path works: give athletes ownership so the advocacy is durable, but pick athletes whose actual lives fit the product. A starting NFL quarterback not drinking during the season is a credible spokesperson for non-alcoholic beer in a way a paid post never is.

And the sports land grab continues. Monster took the Big 12 in July. Celsius took College GameDay last week. The Farmer’s Dog became the NFL’s first official pet food partner. Now Athletic has two starting QBs. Football is getting expensive fast.

Sauer Sells Its Spices to Go Deeper on Condiments

Sauer Brands is selling its spices and seasonings division, including Kernel Season’s and Spice Hunter, to The Watkins Company, a 150-year-old flavor business. Sauer, which owns Duke’s Mayonnaise and Mateo’s Gourmet Salsa, is divesting to concentrate on condiments. Advent International bought Sauer from Falfurrias Capital in January 2025.

This is the same instinct we watched at Nestlé last week, just at a fraction of the size. A PE-backed platform decides it can’t be excellent at two adjacent things, keeps the one with the stronger brand, and sells the other to a specialist who wants it more.

Duke’s is the asset here. It has genuine regional devotion of the kind almost no condiment brand has, and if you’re Advent, every dollar and every hour of management attention spent on popcorn seasoning is a dollar not spent extending Duke’s. Watkins gets brands that fit its core competency. Both sides get more focused.

The pattern is now unmistakable across every size of deal this quarter. Conglomerates and platforms are trading breadth for depth, and specialists are the buyers.

Belle Brands Adds Vegamour

Belle Brands, the beauty platform Windsong Global built, acquired longevity haircare brand Vegamour for an undisclosed sum. Vegamour launched in 2016 around clean, plant-based haircare and raised an $80 million minority growth investment from General Atlantic in 2021. Belle also owns JVN Hair, Pipette, and KVD Beauty.

We covered Belle buying Versed back in July, so this is their second acquisition in about eight weeks. They’re assembling a multi-brand beauty platform quickly and quietly, and the through-line is brands with established shelf presence rather than concepts.

The Vegamour piece is interesting on its own terms, because hair longevity is genuinely having a moment. K18 launched a $120 longevity serum in August. Nancy Twine’s Soulstice arrived this month. There’s real money forming around the idea that hair, like skin, is something you maintain preventatively rather than fix reactively.

💰 THE FUNDING FRENZY

Big checks being written

System Raises $20M to Make Peptides Legitimate

System, a vertically integrated peptide platform connecting patients with licensed US clinicians and compounded treatments, raised $20 million. Patron Fund, Will Ventures, Vine, Courtside, Daybreak, SV Angel, and RiverPark Ventures participated. Adam Steinle founded and leads it. The stated goal is bringing trust and transparency to peptides.

Peptides keep showing up in this newsletter, and the trust problem keeps being the story. Feel Peptides raised $3 million in May, trying to make the category feel less gray-market. Hims is preparing a peptide launch while Wall Street stays skeptical. The ingredient is arriving considerably faster than the infrastructure around it.

What System is selling is the boring part: licensed clinicians, controlled sourcing, a paper trail. In a category where most of the volume currently runs through channels nobody wants to describe precisely, that’s the actual opportunity.

One caution on the framing. The $163 billion market figure that circulates in peptide coverage refers to the global peptide therapeutic market, which is dominated by established pharmaceuticals including GLP-1 drugs. It is not the size of the consumer wellness peptide opportunity, and the two get conflated constantly.

Protein2o Hires the Alani Nu Operator and Raises

Protein2o, an early mover in clear protein, made two announcements. It named Mark Rappaport CEO and board director, and it secured a new growth investment for brand building, retail development, and innovation.

Rappaport was most recently Global Chief Commercial Officer at Congo Brands, where he helped scale Alani Nu to its $1.8 billion acquisition by Celsius. Before that he spent nearly eight years at Red Bull North America.

His line on the category: consumers are beginning to realize that getting more protein doesn’t have to mean something heavy, milky, or filling.

Read that against the whey situation. Clear protein formats typically use whey protein isolate, which is the grade that’s risen fastest, so this isn’t an escape from the constraint. But the positioning is the point. Protein2o is selling protein that doesn’t announce itself as protein, and hiring the operator who scaled a brand on exactly that kind of category repositioning.

Feisty Takes Its First Outside Money

UK protein soda brand Feisty secured an investment from Btomorrow Ventures alongside strategic angels, its first outside round. Vy Cutting founded it in 2024 with her mother, Dr. Hong Huynh. The brand’s positioning is unapologetically “not for gym bros,” combining culture-led branding with food science. The funding coincides with a relaunch, reformulated recipes, and a new lineup: Wild Strawberry, White Peach, and Red Cherry.

Btomorrow’s portfolio includes HOPWTR, AWAKE Chocolate, Caliwater, and More Labs.

“Not for gym bros” is the most efficient positioning statement I’ve read this month. It tells you the customer, the competitive set, and the design language in four words.

Quick Hits

Petit Pot closed a seven-figure Series A co-led by Éclair Partners and Terri and John Penshorn. Michelin-starred pastry chef Maxime Pouvreau founded it in 2014, and it self-manufactures in Emeryville with distribution at Whole Foods, Costco, Sprouts, Wegmans, Publix, and Target. In a week full of protein callouts, someone raised money to make dessert taste good.

Dippi is raising £200K ahead of a January launch and running a Kickstarter. Miia Paavola’s high-protein dip mixes turn plain yogurt or cottage cheese into something with 10g of protein and 3g of fiber per serving, across Tomato & Chilli, Sour Cream & Dill, and Cheddar & Onion. Pre-seed backers include the founders of Absolute Collagen, Little Moons, and Mindful Chef.

The Equity Studio and Makers Mindset opened a second round of grants for female founders in beauty and wellness, awarding $50,000 in equity-free funding plus mentorship. Last year’s winners included Viv, Squigs, Gently Soap, Cranel, and Alodia.

🆕 PRODUCT LAUNCHES & INNOVATION

This week’s innovation circus

Protein Keeps Disguising Itself

Five launches this week, and not one of them looks like a protein product.

SidePiece is building a functional Dunkaroos. Gluten-free crackers and frosting with 10g of protein and 11g of fiber per serving, vegan, launching February 15 via DTC and Amazon before retail, in Chocolate Peanut Butter, Vanilla Birthday Cake, and Cinnamon Churro. Chris and Kelsie Annoual founded it, branding by Truffl.

Sweet Addison’s reformulated its Creatine Chocolate Chip Cookie using Promix creatine. Each cookie carries 15g of protein and 5g of creatine, gluten-free, dairy-free, grain-free, no seed oils or refined sugars.

Marrō launched a sparkling bone broth RTD with 12g of dairy-free protein plus collagen, amino acids, and electrolytes, in Blackberry Lime, Peach Mango, and Blueberry Lemonade. Nick and Heidi Foreste founded it.

Misfits rebranded, and the description in the trade coverage is the tell: bolder, brighter, and more akin to candy than protein bars, with more emphasis on flavor. Refresh by Interact Brands.

Dippi is protein in dip form.

Cookie, dip, Dunkaroos, bone broth, candy. The category has decided that looking like a protein product is a liability, which is a remarkable place to land three years into a boom. And note the protein sources: dairy-free, collagen, vegan, plant. Very little of this is whey.

Everything Else

Grüns dropped two Shrek SKUs with a Berry Far Far Away flavor across its Adults and Kids lines. That’s the third licensed character partnership we’ve tracked from them after OLIPOP and Popsicle, plus TRUBAR’s Minions deal. Licensed IP in the kids’ supplement aisle is now a real strategy.

Tower 28 partnered with JELL-O on a limited-edition lip collection in classic dessert flavors, exclusive to Sephora. Food-to-beauty crossovers keep coming, after Brach’s candy corn fragrance last week.

Khloud is expanding into Canada at Costco, Walmart, Circle K, Loblaws, and Starbucks, after reaching more than 32,000 US doors in roughly a year. We first covered Khloud in May at $15 million raised and 29,000 doors, so that trajectory is holding.

Fathers Brewing expanded to Philadelphia, its first market outside California, partnering with Penn Beer Sales & Service plus Gopuff delivery. Eagles legend Lane Johnson is an investor and ambassador. The company says it’s pacing 672% year-over-year growth, which is a brand-reported figure worth treating as such.

Farm Girl, the top-selling cereal brand at Costco Canada, officially entered the US, with a portfolio expanding into granola and baking.

H2Tab launched a Pineapple flavor and says it’s approaching nine figures in revenue in under two years. Willie’s Remedy+ released a Lemonade and Iced Tea RTD collection, DTC only. And Rorra launched a stainless steel and glass Filtered Pitcher.

📊 THE DATA DIGEST

Numbers that matter

JonnyPops has generated more than $170 million in sales over the past twelve months per a WSJ report. Erik Brust and Connor Wray founded it in a dorm basement. It’s now in nearly 30,000 doors, self-manufactures in Elk River, Minnesota, and makes organic, vegan popsicles free from the top nine allergens. A dorm-basement popsicle company self-manufacturing its way to $170 million is one of the better stories in frozen right now.

Sweet Loren’s crossed $100 million in revenue, per founder and CEO Loren Brill Castle.

Fever-Tree grew H1 brand revenue 8% to £183 million with adjusted EBITDA up 9% to £20 million. It returned to growth in the UK at 3%, while Europe rose 13% and the US climbed 7%. Molson Coors took an 8.5% stake for $88 million in early 2025 alongside a long-term distribution agreement, and that US number suggests the partnership is doing what it was supposed to.

Final Boss Sour entered the candy aisle at 500 Walmart stores after a 2,000-store trial, with six flavors. We covered their $4 million round in July, which included Mondelēz’s SnackFutures. The trial-then-aisle sequence is the same pattern as Wandering Bear and Ancient Crunch.

🏪 DISTRIBUTION DOMINATION

Everyone’s everywhere

Fresh Thyme: Sourmilk launched storewide. Albertsons: Once Upon a Coconut went nationwide. Harris Teeter: Bio.me rolled out. Super Target: ‘ndulge landed 220+ locations. Sprouts: Day/Dream launched nationwide. Walmart: Final Boss Sour moved into the candy aisle at 500 stores. And Khloud went international across five Canadian banners at once.

👋 PEOPLE MOVES

Mark Rappaport takes over as CEO of Protein2o after scaling Alani Nu at Congo Brands to a $1.8 billion exit, with eight prior years at Red Bull North America.

Drake Maye and Dak Prescott became athlete-owners at Athletic Brewing.

Lane Johnson is an investor and ambassador for Fathers Brewing as it enters Philadelphia.

🔥 THE HOT TAKE

My unfiltered opinion on this week’s madness

For the last year I’ve written about protein as a marketing decision. Put it on the label, watch velocity improve, move on. That framing is now incomplete, and this week is where it broke.

Whey processing capacity in the United States is maxed out. Not milk supply, which is fine. The filtration and drying infrastructure that turns a cheese byproduct into a premium ingredient. That infrastructure was sized for a world where whey was surplus, and it’s now feeding a world with 38,708 protein-labeled products on American shelves. Prices are up somewhere between 50% and 250% depending on grade and source, some suppliers are sold out through year-end, and BellRing is openly discussing passing costs to consumers.

You cannot market your way out of that. It’s physics and capital expenditure.

So watch what brands actually did this week instead of what they said. Thorne launched absorption rather than addition. Optimum Nutrition used pea and rice in its non-alcoholic beer. Marrō built its protein from bone broth and collagen. SidePiece went vegan. Equip’s kids line last month was explicitly whey-free and used grass-fed beef. Protein2o hired an operator whose whole skill is repositioning a category rather than out-spending it.

None of these companies announced they were dodging a whey shortage. Some of them made these choices for entirely unrelated reasons, and I want to be honest that I’m reading a pattern across decisions that had their own individual logic. But the aggregate is hard to miss, and the timing is not coincidental.

Here’s what I think happens next, and I’d hold this loosely.

The protein claim stops being free. For three years, adding protein to a product was a cheap velocity lever. Now the ingredient has a real and volatile cost, which means the claim has to earn its margin. Brands with locked-in supply contracts and brands using non-whey sources are about to have a structurally better year than brands that assumed whey would stay abundant.

Second, the alternatives get their moment for unglamorous reasons. Pea, rice, beef, collagen, and egg have spent years being sold on ethics or novelty. They’re about to get adopted on availability and price, which is a much more durable reason to switch. Once a formulation moves, it usually doesn’t move back.

Third, and this is the one I’d watch closest, efficiency becomes a category. Thorne’s Protein Optimizer is early, but the logic is sound and the GLP-1 customer makes it commercially real. If protein stays expensive, “get more from what you eat” competes directly with “eat more,” and it does so at a much better margin.

The practical version for anyone building right now: go look at your supply contract. If you have protein on your label and you haven’t talked to your supplier about 2027 allocation, that conversation is more urgent than your next flavor.

The trend isn’t over. The cheap part is.

Build accordingly.

🎙️ COMING TUESDAY

Unpackaged Goods Episode

The whey shortage nobody’s connecting to the product news, and why processing capacity is the real constraint. Thorne selling absorption instead of grams five weeks after P&G bought it. Athletic Brewing making two starting NFL quarterbacks equity owners. Sauer selling its spices to protect Duke’s. And JonnyPops going from a dorm basement to $170 million.

🥫 ONE MORE THING...

Before you close this tab

Whey used to be garbage.

For most of the history of cheesemaking, it was the liquid left over after the curds formed, and producers paid to dispose of it or fed it to pigs. It had negative value. Then filtration technology got good enough to concentrate the protein out of it, and a waste stream became a premium ingredient.

This week it’s trading around six times last year’s price with suppliers sold out through December.

There’s something genuinely worth sitting with there. The most valuable ingredient in the American food economy right now is a byproduct that used to cost money to throw away. Somebody looked at the waste stream and saw the product.

Every category has one of those. Wasted is making pasta out of surplus bread. UNREAL just made a $425 handbag out of its wrapper interior. The thing you’re currently paying to dispose of might be the thing.

Until next Monday, Jonathan Deeter Your CPG-Obsessed Friend

P.S. Sweet Addison’s is now selling a cookie with 15 grams of protein and 5 grams of creatine in it. I closed the prediction ledger last month when Create merged creatine and electrolytes into one sachet, and I want to formally note that a creatine cookie is somehow further than I thought this would go. Outstanding call remains pickle protein powder by Q1 2027. Given where whey pricing is heading, whoever builds it should probably use pea.

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COUNTER SERVICE | SEPTEMBER 9, 2026

Counter Service is our daily 60-second consumer-news rundown; here, we go one level deeper on what these moves mean for brand builders. Today’s pet edition has a familiar cast of marketing tactics: a sports sponsorship, a seasonal snack, and functional-health claims. The products are for dogs. The purchase decisions are very human.

TODAY’S SPECIAL: The Farmer’s Dog gets the NFL

The Farmer’s Dog is becoming the NFL’s first official pet food partner through a multiyear deal. The launch features Giants running back Cam Skattebo and his rescue dog, Duke. The interesting part is the setting. Football already gathers people around food, shopping, and weekly rituals. The Farmer’s Dog is putting pet food into that existing routine rather than asking people to pay attention to another explanation of what goes in the bowl. League recognition can introduce the brand. It cannot tell us whether the sponsorship will produce customers who stick around.

SIDE DISH: Blue Buffalo gets the tailgate

Blue Buffalo has game-day Nudges available now, with football-shaped Bacon, Egg & Cheese treats arriving November 2. Where The Farmer’s Dog buys an official relationship, Blue Buffalo puts the occasion directly into the product. You have snacks for kickoff. Here’s something for the dog. That gives shoppers a reason to add a bag without needing a new feeding habit. The commercial question is whether those purchases are incremental—or simply replace the treats already on the list.

WHO’S COOKING: Champ’s gets the wellness aisle

Champ’s Pet Kitchen is bringing its full treat lineup to Chewy, with high-protein recipes marketed around gut health, joint support, and other functional benefits. If that language sounds familiar, check your own pantry. Pet treats are borrowing the vocabulary of human wellness, giving owners more specific reasons to choose one bag over another. Those are marketing claims, not proof of outcomes. Clear substantiation matters when a snack is being sold on what it might do beyond tasting good.

THE CHECK

The opportunity isn’t another feeding occasion. It’s getting dog products into the rituals people already spend money on: football, snacking, and looking after their health. All three brands are giving owners a reason to include the dog. Whether that becomes a repeat purchase is the next test.

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Counter Service is the daily 60-second consumer-news rundown. Here, we go one level deeper into what the headlines mean for the people building brands.

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Kendall buys into calm

Kendall Jenner is joining TRIP as an equity investor and global ambassador. Terms weren’t disclosed. The calming-drinks brand says it expects $200 million in revenue this year, a forecast rather than a completed sales milestone. The founder of 818 Tequila now has a financial interest in a very different drinking occasion. That’s a more interesting story than another famous person holding a can. TRIP can use Jenner to make the brand familiar to more shoppers. But recognition only gets the first can into the cart. Taste, price, and whether the drink fits an actual occasion determine what happens next.

SIDE DISH: Rodan + Fields opens more doors

Rodan + Fields is expanding from 150 to 400 Ulta Beauty stores and launching on Amazon Premium Beauty. Its affiliate and direct businesses remain part of the mix. The shift gives consumers more ways to encounter the brand without first knowing someone who sells it. An Ulta shopper can discover it alongside competing skincare. An Amazon shopper can find it while already looking to buy. That access comes with a trade-off: the product has to earn attention without the personal explanation that relationship-driven selling provides. More doors create opportunity, not automatic demand.

WHO’S COOKING: Haircare gets a monthly bill

TMPL8 debuts with more than $3.2 million raised and a $190 monthly haircare subscription.

At that price, the comparison isn’t just another bottle of shampoo. It’s everything else competing for a recurring spot in the customer’s budget. A subscription makes replenishment predictable for the brand. It also gives the customer a regular reason to reconsider. The routine has to feel worth keeping, not merely exciting to start.

THE CHECK

Wellness is selling a daily routine. TRIP is buying recognition, Rodan + Fields is expanding access, and TMPL8 is asking for an ongoing commitment. None of those replaces the hard part: earning the next purchase.

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