Edible Cogitations
we've prepared a banquet!
Snaxshot is a newsletter on upcoming food and beverage trends that offers a curation of brands and aesthetics written by Andrea Hernández.
Edible Cogitations: Weekly Wrap-Up
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Welcome back snaxers, we’ve prepared a multi-course meal for you today, considering it’s a long weekend, we thought you could use a little extra nosh. Sit back, bibs up, and get ready to slurp on these edible cogitations!
Snax’n Beauty
We’ve been tracking the blur between beauty and snack aisle for a while now, we even unpacked this in a previous deep dive (see below)—as well as speaking to the New York Times about it. From beverages promoting “beauty” as function that can be found at the aisles of Erewhon, to Sephora now offering “beauty” in the form of snack like its latest debut of SOURSE in retail stores ($15) —it’s a new frontier for edibles and beverage supplements. Chains like Urban Outfitter’s are another example of just how much beauty and food and beverage are intertwined, searches for “beauty” in UO’s website will yield results that are a combination of skincare, haircare and emerging brands like Eat Gold Organics chocolates, SuperMush “flow” mints, PYM “mood chews”—and even Psychedelic Water, a kava based beverage.
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SOURSE is positioned as an edible supplement, they even have a “treatments” section where you can find a combination of products and their benefits, packaged as a month long supply, their GLOW treatment literally is combined with a Joanna Vargas daily serum. Beyond beauty counters you can also find them in the aisles of Whole Foods and the like, but with a retail price like theirs, they benefit much more from distribution in beauty aisles, where there’s less crowded shelf space, but also the expectations around price are much more expected, dropping $15 for something that can be perceived as a functional treat at a grocer is much different than at a place like Sephora. Supplements continue to evolve beyond their “usual” formats hence the rise of “vita-edibles” and powders shifting to RTD. We also deep dived on this below
And speaking of evolving formats, drinkable jelly is popularized in Asia, from konjac pouches to AYLA, a rip and bite type of jelly snack, aimed to be consumed right before bed. The functional pouch drink is catching on in the US, BellyBrain is a brand that comes to mind, available at grocers like Erewhon and wellness studios like Remedy Place. The rise in these types of formats have come from Millennials and GenZ’s snackification of everything, meets commodification of wellness, we want our health, and we want it now, instant gratification generation. And though brands like AYLA’s “Before Bed Jelly” are yet to be seen in the US, that doesn’t mean we won’t soon be finding more of these pop up in this side of the world in the next few years.
As regulation continues in the “functional claim” space, do these benefit from remaining as “dietary supplements” see drinks like Kin Euphorics, and does the beauty counter become a sort of new frontier, and a more welcoming environment than a traditional grocer? I’ll let you sound off in the comment section.