CPG Week Podcast: A Kardashian, a Makeover and a Lawsuit

[00:00:05] Monica Watrous: Welcome to the CPG Week Podcast by BevNET and Nosh. I'm Monica Watrous, here with my co-host, Lukas Southard. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe on your listening platform of choice. Here's the latest in food and beverage industry news. Reality star turned entrepreneur Kim Kardashian has officially entered the beverage world, joining Paraxanthine Powered Energy Drink Update as a co-founder, ahead of its national rollout to Walmart stores this spring. Kardashian, who discovered the brand on her own in 2023, has taken a hands-on role in updates, rebranding, reformulation, and packaging updates, according to co-founder and CEO Daniel Solomons. He declined to disclose whether Kardashian has invested in the company. Update is relaunching in five core flavors, including berry, grape, peach, mandarin, and pineapple. On its refreshed directed consumer website and beginning March 1st, the brand will launch in over 4,000 Walmart stores in an exclusive variety pack and single cans. Founded in 2022, UPDATE built its science-backed formula around parazanthine, the primary metabolite of caffeine, claiming it provides a more consistent alternative to other energy sources and affects consumers more uniformly. UPDATE claims this differentiates the product by helping consumers avoid the spike and crash cycle associated with traditional energy drinks. The revamped look trades bright colors for a pastel palette and features a smaller vertical logo, now in white font instead of black. The brand also removed the tagline, Energy Evolved, from the front of its can, moving it to the back as part of a product positioning blurb. In the energy space, where products often feature hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine branding, Update chose a design that falls somewhere in the middle to appeal to the quote, modern samurai, as the brand has coined its target consumer. Someone who is calm amidst chaos and looking for uncompromised energy, according to Solomons. Of course, Kim is not the only Kardashian making waves in the food and beverage industry. Her sister Khloe is behind Cloud Foods, the maker of protein-enhanced popcorn that has rapidly expanded over the past year since its launch.

[00:02:22] Lukas Southard: As much as Kim Kardashian addition to Update is probably the biggest part of this news, or not probably is the biggest part of the news, I'm more interested in learning a little bit more about how Update is really positioning around parazanthine.

[00:02:41] Monica Watrous: Yeah, I was not familiar with this ingredient prior to reading our colleague Shauna Golden's story about this new partnership, but Update is putting that front and center in its messaging and in its science and as a point of differentiation in the crowded energy set.

[00:02:57] Lukas Southard: Yeah, I mean, this ingredient is something I've seen before. It's just part of this general move away from caffeine that we've seen in beverages and these new ingredients kind of bubbling up as a way to be a counterpoint to the heavy sugar, heavy caffeine that we've come to associate with energy beverages. It's a new day for chickpea snack brand, Hippies. After 10 years in market, the brand has made its most dramatic packaging design change. While it is keeping its signature golden yellow hue, it has restructured the front of pack to, quote, assert ownership of its hero ingredient. One of the major shifts was moving the brand name to the top of the package. The Hippies brand will now be more prominently displayed, along with the smiling mouth that Hippies leadership said was somewhat lost on the previous packaging design. Most importantly, the brand is calling out the high fiber and high protein content of its snacks, and providing large photos of the products on the front of package, so grocery shoppers can immediately know what to expect from Hippies' various snack formats. Along with the new packaging, the brand is charting a path forward with a higher protein platform and new innovation planned to come later this year. CEO Cesar Melo told me that there is still, quote, a massive opportunity to grow the brand in the better for you snack category. Currently, Hippies has about three and a half to 4% household penetration. Anecdotally, my kids and I are big hippies people, so I'm excited to see how this new packaging adds momentum to the brand.

[00:04:40] Monica Watrous: Moving on to the ready to drink tea category, functional iced tea brand Half Halfday Tonics has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit taking aim at the brand's stated prebiotic benefits despite containing just six grams of fiber per 12 ounce can, which the complaint claims is not nearly enough for consumers to feel any effect. The lawsuit was filed in a New York federal court last week by a consumer represented by New York law firm, Genove PLLC. According to the complaint, if a consumer were to drink enough of Halfday's teas to gain meaningful benefit from the fiber content, the amount of sugar in the beverage, which is five grams per can, would supposedly outweigh any gut health benefits. The complaint also takes issue with multiple slogans used on Halfday's cans and marketing materials, including good for your gut and the description of prebiotic iced tea. Gut health and prebiotic claims have been hot targets for class action lawsuits in recent years. In 2025, Poppy settled a class action case for $8.9 million. That lawsuit similarly argued that the drinks contained far too little of its key gut health boosting ingredient, agave inulin, to make a meaningful difference in consumers' health. Halfday's teas use three ingredients for soluble fiber, including cassava root fiber, fructan fiber, and agave inulin, each of which the complaint argues is insufficient to make gut health claims. The plaintiff is seeking damages from Halfday and a demand for the brand to cease making those claims. As we've talked about on this podcast before, we were talking about the Poppy lawsuit a year ago. I don't think consumers are reaching for these beverages for the gut health benefit, but

[00:06:26] Lukas Southard: I totally agree. I mean, I am obviously no lawyer, but it smells a little opportunistic to me. I mean, I think it's just crazy to think that consumers are going out and buying half day or poppy primarily to support their gut health or to get their daily dose of prebiotic fiber. What these modern soda or better for you iced tea brands are aiming for is just a healthier or updated version of the sugar laden soft drinks that we grew up on.

[00:06:55] Monica Watrous: Right, and five grams of sugar per can of half day is pretty low when you compare it to a can of conventional soda.

[00:07:05] Lukas Southard: In other ice tea news, Just Ice Tea just closed a $9 million Series B funding round. It has set its sights on the goal of expanding its retail footprint by 40% this year. The brand hopes to hit around 17,000 doors by the end of 2026. Helping accomplish that goal are some of the brand's recent investors. Contributing to Just Ice T's Series B round were Total Wine & More co-founder Robert Trone, Taste Tomorrow Ventures, Polar Strategic Ventures, and executives from New York DSD house, Big Geyser. The Canned Tea brand was launched by Honest Tea founder, Seth Goldman, soon after his former brand's owner, Coca-Cola, decided to discontinue Honest in 2022. Just Ice Tea has moved quickly to fill the void left by Honest Tea's closure and is currently in over 12,000 doors. While the brand is already in big name grocery chains like Kroger, Publix, and Albertsons, it will be leaning on a network of 100 new regional distributors coming online to expand its business further. The list includes DSDs like Reyes in South Carolina, Florida, and Indiana, Hand Family Companies in Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and Odom in the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, and Alaska. Want more of the tea? Expect to see Just Ice Tea at next week's Expo West, sampling its newest flavors, watermelon, lime, white tea, and a just sweet enough peach white tea.

[00:08:46] Monica Watrous: Looking forward to that. Here are some other notable bits of news from the week. Breakfast biscuit brand O'Leary Foods has secured $3.5 million in debt refinancing, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Form D filed last week. Afghan-inspired food company Mazza has raised a $2 million seed round with participation from existing investors, as well as three family offices based in the brand's hometown of Minneapolis. And finally, seaweed tech company Aquathion has raised a $13 million seed round with $5 million specifically dedicated to the business's first beverage application, Umi. For these stories and more, become an insider at BevNET and Nosh. That wraps up this edition of CPG Week by Bevhna and Nosh. Thank you to our audio engineer, Joshua Pratt, our director is Mike Schneider, and our designer is Aaron Willette. If you enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe on your listening platform of choice, and we will see you next time.