There’s a booming market for food and beverage products — though maybe not the one that brands and entrepreneurs were expecting.
According to a report last month in ModernRetail, the aftermarket for unsold food and beverage products is booming with a surging supply of premium items, a sign that the confluence of rising grocery prices, tight competition in key categories, and the influence of shifting dietary trends is having a material effect on the shelf.
Hauling Junk: Amrita Bhasin, co-founder and CEO of secondary market broker Sotira, told ModernRetail that she’s seen “a big increase in your typical junk food brands” several months ago, and suggested both increased adoption of GLP-1 regulators (Ozempic) and the inflation-driven price hikes enacted by major suppliers has pushed certain items towards resellers.
- At Sotira, chips and cookies inventory has jumped over 50% year-over-year, including higher-ring low-calorie and gluten-free versions. That pivot can be seen in the share of spend on private label products in the category, which rose by 30% in 2024 from the year prior.
- Sotira is reporting energy drink and caffeinated beverage inventory are up 75%.
Brands Under Pressure: Sitting on inventory is a luxury many cash-strapped brands can’t afford, which is how products with over one year of shelf life left are ending up in secondary markets. It’s a reflection of both financial prudence for startups to ensure cash flow, but also of the thin margins for error. It’s not unlike the model at clothing reseller Marshall’s: customers at stores like Martie, an online overstock vendor for premium CPG products, are eager to try new products, but are expecting a discount.
- Sotira’s shoppers are largely rural and regional retailers, giving consumers in smaller markets access to products that might have otherwise gone unseen. That includes dollar stores, where purchases for coffee, candy, and dairy are going up, per InMarket’s 2025 Grocery Staples Report.
- A recent study from the Pew Research Center indicated that 90% of adults said healthy food has gotten more expensive in recent years, with 69% of respondents saying higher prices have made it more difficult for them to eat healthy.
- That’s helped dislodge some level of brand loyalty: a study by Ernst & Young reported 35% of consumers saying that brand considerations no longer play a significant role in their product choices (though not the case for soft drink and alcohol).
Fizzling Out?: Martie co-founder Louise Fritjofsson told ModernRetail that “healthy” drinks (non-alc alternatives, sparkling water) have been appearing more frequently in her warehouse as the market corrects itself and inventory gets liquidated. The reason? “Overproduction and an overestimation of how many brands can succeed,” she said.
Bhasin said she began seeing energy drinks (“specifically athlete and celebrity beverages”) come in last summer, and that influx has since accelerated. That underscores the challenge in transitioning product concepts from a fleeting, online viral trend to a sustainable and functional CPG business, and the dangers of interpreting hype as reality. It’s a strategy that works for value-priced, high-volume formats like powders (as seen with Jel-Sert and Stur) but that’s considerably more dangerous in the slower-moving world of selling RTDs.
For startups and leaders depending heavily on online sentiment, Bhasin’s words should be ominous: “All of a sudden, the TikTok hype went away, and now there’s a ton sitting in the warehouse.”