Someone raised $10 million for alcoholic Gatorade this week.
Tom Brady is now selling protein powder through a clothing brand. Beyond Meat pivoted to beverages after fake burgers failed. Everything you thought you knew about consumer packaged goods categories officially doesn’t matter anymore.
But amid the chaos, I had a conversation with Michael Zabar - yes, from that Zabar family - about his new company Motif, and it reminded me why thoughtful category expansion still beats desperate pivoting every single time.
Sometimes the best opportunities aren’t in the loudest news cycles. They’re in the quiet corners where quality has been compromised for so long that nobody remembers what good looks like.
The Category Convergence Acceleration
Let’s start with the madness, because this week was genuinely unhinged.
SpikedAde, a vodka-based RTD that tastes like sports drinks, raised $10 million. The thesis? Millennials have deep nostalgic connections to Gatorade, and now they want to drink those same flavors at bars instead of gyms. Jason Cohen’s team includes operators from OWYN, Bai, and Diageo - serious people making a serious bet on nostalgic consumption.
NOBULL, the athletic wear brand majority-owned by Mike Repole (BodyArmor, Glaceau) and Tom Brady, launched four protein powders and three electrolyte drinks. They didn’t invent supplements. They didn’t create new categories. They just recognized that their customers want performance nutrition, not just performance clothing.
Beyond Meat launched Beyond Immerse, plant-based protein beverages with fiber, antioxidants, and electrolytes. Only available through their DTC test kitchen, which tells you everything about confidence levels. When your core business struggles and retail relationships strain, beverages offer better margins and easier innovation cycles.
The pattern is undeniable: category walls are crumbling because consumer behavior doesn’t respect arbitrary boundaries. People don’t think “I need a protein supplement.” They think “I want to hit my protein goals.” The delivery mechanism - powder, soda, bar, or beverage - is irrelevant as long as it works.
The Zabar Approach to Category Building
Which brings me to Michael Zabar and why his approach to coffee syrups represents everything smart about thoughtful expansion.
The Zabar family has been synonymous with New York food culture for decades. When Michael looked at the coffee industry, he didn’t see an opportunity to disrupt anything. He saw a quality problem hiding in plain sight.
Coffee shops - even good ones - were using terrible syrups. Artificial flavors, high fructose corn syrup, ingredients you can’t pronounce. Not because they wanted to serve inferior products, but because those were the only options available at scale.
Michael’s insight wasn’t revolutionary. It was obvious: coffee shops need better ingredients, just like restaurants need better ingredients. The Zabar family has been solving that exact problem in different categories for generations.
Motif launched with four naturally flavored syrups: Pistachio, Cinnamon Babka, Vanilla, and Chocolate. No artificial flavors. No high fructose corn syrup. Just better ingredients that make coffee taste better.
Why This Matters More Than Sports Drink Cocktails
Don’t get me wrong - SpikedAde’s $10 million raise is brilliant. Betting on nostalgia plus adult consumption occasions is smart strategy. But it’s also gambling on consumer psychology and distribution execution.
Michael’s betting on something simpler: coffee shop owners want to serve better products, and coffee drinkers want better taste. There’s no consumer education required. No new consumption occasions to create. No regulatory hurdles to navigate.
The coffee shop channel already exists. The demand for quality ingredients already exists. The willingness to pay premiums for better products already exists. Michael’s just connecting supply to demand in a category where quality has been commoditized.
This is the difference between category creation and category renovation. One requires convincing people to change behavior. The other requires giving people better options for existing behavior.
The B2B Ingredient Opportunity
What’s fascinating about Motif isn’t just the product - it’s the channel strategy. While everyone else chases DTC glory or fights for retail shelf space, Michael’s targeting the B2B ingredient market.
Coffee shops are price-sensitive but quality-conscious. They want ingredients that make their products better without destroying their margins. They need suppliers who understand foodservice operations, not just consumer preferences.
This is a massive market hiding behind boring procurement processes. Every coffee shop, every restaurant, every hotel lobby cafe needs syrups. Most settle for whatever their distributor recommends because better options either don’t exist or aren’t accessible.
When you solve real operational problems for business customers, you build moats that consumer brands can’t replicate. Coffee shop owners aren’t switching syrup suppliers because they saw an Instagram ad. They’re switching because the product makes their coffee taste better and their customers notice.
The Convergence Economy Lessons
This week’s news and my conversation with Michael crystallized something important about where CPG is headed.
The winners aren’t the companies with the best innovation labs or the most venture funding. They’re the companies that best understand customer needs across every moment those customers might have them.
SpikedAde understands that Gatorade nostalgia extends to adult social occasions. NOBULL understands that athletic customers want performance nutrition, not just performance apparel. Michael understands that coffee culture demands better ingredients, even if nobody’s talking about it.
But here’s what separates smart expansion from desperate pivoting: the best moves feel inevitable in retrospect.
Of course the family behind New York’s most famous gourmet food destination would eventually improve coffee shop ingredients. Of course the people who built BodyArmor would expand into performance nutrition. Of course sports drink nostalgia could become cocktail innovation.
The moves that feel random or disconnected - like fake meat companies making beverages - might work, but they’re fighting uphill against intuition and expectations.
What This Means for Every Founder
Before you chase the hot new category or pivot desperately away from your core business, ask yourself Michael’s question: “Where are my customers being underserved by existing options?”
Sometimes the answer is obvious once you look. Coffee shops using artificial syrups. Gym-goers drinking chalky protein shakes. Sports drink lovers who want adult versions of their favorite flavors.
The opportunities aren’t always in white space categories that don’t exist yet. They’re often in established categories where quality has been commoditized, where “good enough” became the standard, where nobody remembered that better was possible.
Michael didn’t invent coffee syrups. He didn’t create new consumption occasions. He didn’t educate consumers about problems they didn’t know they had.
He just made coffee taste better. Sometimes that’s enough to build an empire.
What Happens Next
I expect Motif to expand beyond coffee shops into retail within 18 months. Once you prove that naturally flavored syrups work in foodservice, home consumption becomes the obvious next market.
I expect SpikedAde to either scale rapidly or flame out spectacularly. Nostalgic cocktails either hit mainstream or remain novelty. There’s rarely middle ground with concept-driven beverages.
I expect more legacy food families to launch modern CPG brands. When you understand quality and distribution from generational experience, contemporary branding and marketing become the only missing pieces.
Most importantly, I expect more founders to realize that the best category expansions don’t feel like expansions at all. They feel like natural evolutions of what you were already doing, just applied to adjacent problems your customers actually have.
The Uncomfortable Truth
This week’s chaos taught me something important about our industry. We’re so obsessed with innovation that we forgot about quality. We’re so focused on creating new categories that we ignored the broken ones right in front of us.
Michael Zabar’s coffee syrup revolution might not generate $10 million in venture headlines. But it might generate $10 million in annual revenue by solving real problems for real customers who’ve been underserved for decades.
Sometimes the quietest moves create the most lasting impact.
Sometimes better is enough.
What B2B ingredient opportunities are hiding in plain sight in your industry? Reply and let me know what you’re seeing.
- Jonathan