Today’s crystal ball is spinning with innovation insights and retail revelations that may signal a prosperous future for select beverage segments. Let’s take a closer look at market researcher SPINS’ 2025 predictions.
Among the state of innovation, beverages are leading the charge. Of the top five categories seeing the highest rates of innovation, three of those were in the beverage set including (in this order) energy/sports drinks, RTD tea and coffee, and kombucha and functional brews.
Those high-innovation categories also spell an exponential increase among naturally-positioned iterations as natural products gained share in all retail channels including natural (6.6%), regional/independents (1.1%), conventional (4.4%) and c-store (5%).
- In contrast, conventional products have lost share across all channels except in conventional (though growth was slow at just +1.1%)
- Notably, regional and independents have been hit hardest by the shift away from conventional items, notching the only overall sales decline (-1.9%) due to a 3.1% drop among conventional products and offset by growth among natural products (1.1%) and specialty and wellness products (1.2%)
Producing Products With Staying Power: Consumers will always want to optimize their health and will remain keen on the concept of “biohacking,” the report claims. Supplements and diet modifications are the most common practices to “biohack” a path to overall better health and lends itself well to the growing, supplement-aligned functional beverage space.
Today, consumers can sip everything from vitamin-infused Throne Sport Coffee (with a seal of approval from founder and Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes) to an L-theanine-laced energy liquid from Gorgie, purporting B vitamins, biotin and no sugar (and just closed a $19.8M funding round… but more on that below)
Nutrient density and protein also remain of utmost importance. On an ingredient level, animal protein (+180% growth) is still preferred over plant-based alternatives (+59%).
- However, rice-derived plant-based proteins are having a moment, up 176.7% while whey/casein combinations saw the highest growth in the animal segment at 120%.
- Functional ingredients such as magnesium, creatine, colostrum and kratom are rising in the ranks and are expected to make greater leaps from supplements to beverages in 2025.
- Hemp, Cannabis and other euphorics are also on the rise as they pull momentum from the mindful consumption movement and find shelf space in the convenience channel.
Functions falling out of favor? Energy, weight loss, sleep and immune support are fading among consumer preferences as they turn greater attention to hydration, mood support, performance, PMS and hangover remedies.