Raising the Bar: Protein Shakes Are Eager to Add Muscle

As a singular product, protein drinks are simple — when the key ingredient is in the name, you kind of know what to expect. But protein drink brands? That’s a whole other story.

While established names like Muscle Milk, CORE Power and Premier Protein continue to rack up sales pumping out the dairy-based whey protein drinks consumers have long been familiar with, others may find little room to grow in adhering so closely to a narrowly defined space. Following a path forged by energy drinks, where straightforward caffeine-boosts have evolved into a dynamic category with its own specific functional brands, SKUs, and use occasions, protein’s profile is changing from a muscle-building ingredient to an essential part of overall health and nutrition, allowing brands to develop innovations outside of the category’s traditional borders. Those developments aren’t just changing the way consumers think about a “protein drink” brand — they’re influencing decisions around everything from product format to audience building to retail positioning and top-line growth strategy.

Formats Flex

If any brand has been particularly aware of changing sensitivities and preferences within the protein category, it’s OWYN (Only What You Need). The company has made plant-based ingredients a founding principle that has remained consistent as it has grown, but greater flexibility in both format and payload are opening up new avenues – and, apparently, instilling further confidence in leadership.

“My 2023 prediction is that this will be Evolve’s last year and Nestle will quickly realize that Orgain will never be successful with RTDs,” wrote OWYN CEO Mark Olivieri on LinkedIn in January. “The next billion dollar nutrition beverage brand has been found.”

Part of that enthusiasm is coming from OWYN’s success in moving from primarily single-serving 12 oz. bottles to multi-packs; in his post, Olivier cited his brand’s velocities at nearly twice that of competitors Evolve and Orgain in 4-packs, which he called “the format that drives the majority of category unit share in FDM.” Since OWYN began offering its core shakes and extra-strength Pro Elite line (32 grams of protein, down from 35 originally) in 4-packs of Tetra Pak aseptic cartons, the format has quickly emerged as a growth driver, amounting for nearly 80% of the total business, the CEO told Beverage Business Insights in April. Multi-packs have helped open up more shelf space at major retail partners like HEB, Walmart and Kroger; buoyed by the warm reception for 4-packs, the brand has moved up into 12-packs at the latter chain.

Where does this leave the likes of Coke and Pepsi? For the latter, it’s a mixed bag: while Muscle Milk continues to be one of the most popular and widely recognized brands in the whey protein space, the other brand it acquired from Hormel Foods – plant-based Evolve (20 grams of protein, 10 grams of fiber per 11 oz Tetra Pak) – has struggled to gain meaningful traction despite overhauling branding and formulation in 2021. It introduced another round of “new and improved” formulations this spring.

Powering Forward

As protein becomes just one more element (rather than the central hub) of the greater conversation around sports nutrition drinks, those drinks may in turn become just one plank in a larger brand platform. It’s not that consumers don’t want protein anymore, but it may not be quite enough to exclusively support a brand with bigger ambitions within the ever-changing world of fitness, health and wellness.

For meal replacement brands, product diversification is also one way of trying to circumvent one of the biggest advantages of the larger companies: their strong connections with the hospitals and health care providers that are among their biggest customers. The likes of Ensure, owned by baby formula maker Abbott, and Boost have long been a part of doctors’ nutrition plans for patients with special needs or medical conditions (both are approved for intravenous feeding), making them difficult for new disruptive brands to dislodge. There have been some success stories: see Kate Farms, which has a presence in stores and in health care. But even when touting superior macros and ingredients, ambitious upstarts targeting the space like Perennial and Choose Health – which is backed by Honest Tea co-founder Barr Nalebuff and celebrity nutritionist Dr. David Perlmutter – have stalled or failed outright.

Avoiding that risk is part of the plan for Don’t Quit!, the Keurig Dr Pepper-distributed nutrition beverage platform backed by celebrity trainer Jake Steinfeld and accelerator L.A. Libations. The company started in 2020 by targeting a single product — its two-SKU line of meal replacement beverages in Tetra Paks — towards Boost and Ensure drinkers, then followed that up with Max Protein (33 grams of protein) in 12 oz bottles in 2021. After merging with with sports-energy drink maker X2 in March and revamping the executive leadership team working under new CEO Mark French, the company is being restaged as a “complete clean sports nutrition brand” able to play in non-protein categories, the first being this summer’s launch of pre-workout energy drinks in 12 oz cans before the meal replacement drinks are later reintroduced in a more focused capacity.

Indeed, energy seems to be exerting the most pull on brands in the protein space at the moment. Though it already has a cold brew coffee SKU in its core line, OWYN is exploring the potential for a more energy-centric product with Double Shot, first teased at the company’s booth at Natural Products Expo West 2023 in March. The coffee shake features the same nutrition profile (20 grams of protein, 5 net carbs per serving) but with a stronger caffeine payload of 180mg. Further afield, even protein-adjacent brands are feeling the need to diversify: see Super Coffee, leaning further into caffeine and less into protein with its new line of energy drinks. Refrigerated player Koia has similarly leveraged its clean-ingredient, plant-based credentials to move into coffee and other functional categories.

For those players who have less impetus to radically change their current product range, there is still plenty of manufacturing muscle to keep building. In response to high demand for RTD products, the Swiss food giant Nestle (maker of Boost) committed to investing $43 million to boost capacity at the Eau Claire, Wisconsin production facility where it makes Tetra Pak-packaged shakes. Elsewhere, BellRing Brands’ Premier Protein is believed to have contracted with SunOpta in Texas for more production capacity for its RTD shakes, which grew dollar sales over 10% across channels in the past year, with the exception of ecommerce. And in New York, Coca-Cola is backing billion-dollar dairy brand Fairlife – producers of dairy-based CORE Power protein shakes and Nutrition Plan meal replacement drinks – to the tune of a new $650 million, 745,000 square-foot facility in the Town of Webster that is expected to go online in late 2025.