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8 functional beverage trends from SupplySide West 2024
From menopause drinks to direct-to-can printing, our on-the-ground reporter saw big changes in functional beverages on the SupplySide West and Food ingredients North America show floor.
5 Min Read
Bryan Beasley Photography
At a Glance
- There’s a growing demand for functional beverages that feature globally inspired flavors.
- Consumers are increasingly focused on understanding the sources of their ingredients.
- While functional beverages have been marketed towards men and athletes, there is a growing focus on women’s health needs.
Functional and wellness beverages are exploding, with a seemingly endless array of health benefits, flavors and use case scenarios. And a major theme at SupplySide West this year was figuring out how to meet consumers’ seemingly endless thirst for beverage innovation.
Global functional flavors with long histories
At times, the aisles of the expo floor looked and smelled like an exotic spice market: full of bright yellows, deep reds and ingredient names you might associate with your kitchen’s spice rack. According to Candace Smith-Lee, senior beverage scientist at ofi, this reflects an increasing demand for ingredients that have been both known to be functional and flavorful for thousands of years.
Spices like turmeric and beverages like chai tea are generally recognized as being ‘functional beverages’ and having benefits,” Smith-Lee explained during a functional beverage-focused education session. “I see a lot more of those coming out.”
Sources are becoming as important as nutrients
The show floor is never short on technical jargon if that’s what you’re seeking out. But a common trend this year was a focus on the specific food-based sources that all those amino acids, enzymes and micronutrients are coming from. Why? Because consumers are demanding to know exactly that.
“Ingredients that consumers can pronounce and that seem like real food are going to be really big,” Jeffrey Dietrich, founder and CEO of Rarebird Inc., explained. “We are slowly moving away from ‘medicine for health’ or even ‘supplement for health.’ We really do want ‘food for health,’ and functional ingredients that come from sources that are easy to pronounce.”
Photo courtesy of Bryan Beasley Photography
Packaging needs to tell the story
“Gen Z is really influenced by packaging of products, whereas older generations, they’re more influenced by price point and what the product can do for them,” food scientist Nadia Kemal, partner at brand development firm Topi Ventures, said. So, what story does that packaging need to tell to really speak to these younger consumers? An honest one.
“They really buy through the packaging, and then the traceability and sustainability aspect,” Kemal explained. “A lot of companies are doing QR codes on their packaging so consumers can learn more about their traceability process and their supply chain process and [how they’re] being more transparent. I think this is the future of consumer trends.”
Interestingly, several experts indicated that this focus on transparency creates something more important than a sale: lasting loyalty. “It may not help as much with purchase, but it helps with repurchase,” Diane Ray, VP of strategic innovation at the Natural Marketing Institute, said.
“Functional” doesn’t end with young men, gamers and athletes
A common refrain among food and beverage trend watchers is that functional beverage trends usually grow out of supplement trends. This was evident on the show floor, where women’s health was a major focus of the supplement side, which is gaining ground in food and beverage ingredients as well, according to Smith-Lee.
Photo courtesy of Bryan Beasley Photography
“A lot more beverages are coming out to help some of the life cycles of women, such as for lactating women and then also menopause as well,” she explained. “Helping those different states that have been neglected over the years. They’ve been more in the supplement area and now moving into functional beverages.”
Purified extracts for easier formulation
One pain point for working with plant-based ingredients is getting an efficacious dose, which can require multiple grams of materials, full of bulk and nonactive ingredients that can create taste and texture problems in beverages. Many booths offered lighter, more focused alternatives in the form of purified plant extracts.
“A big trend is looking to purified extracts of a lot of the plant-based materials we’ve been using today,” Smith-Lee said. Yes, these extracts can be more expensive, but the upside is that “you can actually focus on the active ingredient,” she added. Because today’s consumers are also more critical of dosage than ever.
There’s a time and place for … bitterness?
A consistent trend at SupplySide West was that taste is still king, but that there are times where the king willingly steps down from the throne. The rise in nutritional “shots” and health-focused beverages has created an expectation among younger consumers in particular that not everything needs to taste sweet and familiar. Some things should taste bitter, earthy or downright weird in order to feel authentically “healthy.”
“A lot of times, a consumer's perception of the efficacy is just as important as the efficacy itself,” Dalton Honoré, founder of the fermented coffee company Dreamland Koffucha, said. “If they don’t feel as though they’re drinking or eating something that’s healthy, even if it actually is, then they may not want to come back and purchase again.”
Photo courtesy of Bryan Beasley Photography
The minimum protein target: 8 grams
It’s a huge question: How many grams should a protein-focused beverage contain? For certain consumers, the answer will always be “the more, the better.” But on the show floor, the comparison point for plant-based ingredients was just as commonly “more than milk.” And Smith-Lee said that’s a benchmark that increasingly resonates with consumers.
“You’re seeing all these companies coming out with 8 grams of protein [per serving], which is the same as milk,” she explained. “Or I’m seeing hybrid milk and nut or oat and pea [in order] to get above 8 [grams].”
Digital can printing is changing how beverages are made
Not that long ago, getting your new functional beverage into a run of aluminum cans required months of wait time and minimum orders of 200,00 units or more. Recent advances in digital printing, however, are quickly revolutionizing beverage product development, according to Mike Bedrosian, COO of the canmaker Fast Track Packaging.
“With new technology, you can print directly on the can,” he explained. “That means no minimum quantity and delivery in two to four weeks.”
Not only does innovation allow brands to trial and launch new beverages with less expense on the front end, it also opens the door to a world of direct-to-consumer (DTC) options for maximizing social media accounts, like special releases and influencer collaborations.
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