Somm helps support sleep. It's that simple. Drink one can 30 minutes before bed. Best of all, you can sleep easy knowing it's gluten-, dairy-, and drug-free.
Campo Grande delivers premium iberico pork that tastes like wagyu beef or filet mignon.
Grocery
Coming soon
Mosaic Foods offers plant-powered vegan and vegetarian food to fuel you and your family's life. Their many recipe options are delivered and ready in 5 minutes with no shopping, prep, or cleanup.
Gobble delivers freshly prepped dinner kits, designed to be table ready in 15 minutes with usually just one pan, so you spend less time in the kitchen and more time with family.
Grocery
Coming Soon
Huel offers nutritionally complete, convenient, and affordable food that provides you with all 26 essential vitamins and minerals, protein, essential fats, carbs, fibre and phytonutrients.
Soylent products deliver complete plant based protein, essential nutrients, healthy fats, and slow-burning carbs in convenient and affordable formats that are both good for you and the planet.
Arey Grey is a brand that offers natural supplements that focus on providing the necessary vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants to support hair color and prevent or slow down the graying process. Though graying hair
Adaptogenic coffee blends, also called mushroom coffee, may contain ingredients such as mushrooms, herbs, spices, collagen, and amino acids, which are thought to promote overall health and wellness. They are touted as a good coffee
Liquid I.V. Sugar-Free Hydration Multiplier is an electrolyte powder mix that uses a unique delivery system, referred to as Cellular Transport Technology (CTT)®, that the company claims helps you experience enhanced hydration, and its benefits,
You started off with the best intentions of eating a healthy diet and losing the extra weight that literally seemed to appear overnight. And for the first couple of days, things went great. You were
Whether it be cosmetics, clothes, plastic surgery, or weight loss programs, anything aesthetics-related has been conventionally geared toward women. Thankfully, that’s changing with the times. After all, men deserve to feel confident in how they
Medical Reviewer: Maryellen Dance, MS, LMHCGlucose trackers are probably not on your radar unless you have diabetes, but you might be excited to learn about the benefits that CGMs could provide for some of us
What's driving the proliferation of nutrition startups?
Compounding trends
Google search trends for topics around healthy eating and improving personal nutrition have a very distinct cycle, generally skyrocketing in January with the setting of new years resolutions and sliding linearly to a low by the end of the year (see Google trends chart below). But peak public interest in nutrition — at least as quantified by search query volume — reached an all-time high earlier this year, having increased much more sharply than ever before. And just as middle men were being displaced in other industries like healthcare and personal hygiene, the current wave of direct-to-consumerization is finally hitting nutrition as well.
Social media influence
The role of social media and the rise of influencers has helped mint many DTC nutrition startups. Rather than focus on moving inventory at grocery stores or increasing sales through a third-party site like Amazon, nutrition startups have figured out how to engage consumers directly through social media. Since influencers play such an outsized role in both beauty and personal nutrition, it’s a prerequisite for DTC nutrition startups to have a strong social media game. Social media has allowed DTC brands to emerge from nothing and amass loyal followings across the globe in months, rather than years.
A wave of personalization
The one-size-fits-all model has been officially dispelled from nutrition. Modern science has shown repeatedly that best practice for one human’s diet is unlikely to be applicable to another. Food charts seem old-fashioned now and all nutritional advice is heavily caveated and qualified based on personal needs. A number of direct to consumer companies focus on personalized nutrition explicitly — think of the example mentioned before, like Ritual and Noom — while others essentially tap into the demand for more convenience, which is a more personally-catered approach in general. A side effect of (or perhaps a direct response to?) the increased demand for personalized nutrition has been the growth of DTC nutrition startups.
Discover the latest nutrition products
And get exclusive discounts!
How are nutrition startups growing so quickly?
Beyond the growing demand for convenience and lower prices, there are several key factors driving the rapid growth of direct to consumer telemedicine startups. Here are three:
Rebranding convenience
The majority of online nutrition startups have merely repackaged common concepts into more convenient and accessible offerings. As an example, all healthy meal prep delivery companies simply make home cooking a couple steps simpler, while online organic markets like Thrive or Grove Collaborative simply remove a bit of guess work around shopping sustainably online. Neither offers a radically transformative service or product that’s changing what people eat.
Similarly, a lot of D2C nutrition startups have rejiggered existing supply chains to improve customer experience for existing goods. Misfits Market, for instance, saves food from the trash by delivering it directly to your door, while alcohol delivery firms Drizly and Saucey sell all the traditional hooch brands you’ve come to love, merely saving you a buzzed jaunt to the corner store.
Overall, startups are growing a ton despite a lack of technological breakthroughs in nutrition. Many claim their products are well supported by science and academic research, but direct to consumerism in nutrition has been – in our humble opinion – mostly driven by innovations in the customer experience than anything else.
Heavy investment in marketing
What’s proved true for new direct to consumer brands in general is also true of D2C nutrition startups: heavy investment in paid media is an effective way to grow brand awareness and acquire new customers. These startups are deploying large ad budgets to stay ahead of the competition, and show a high willingness to pay to acquire new customers. Investor’s dollars are shelled out for social ads, search engine optimization and SEM, as well as robust affiliate programs, and offline channels such as radio and TV.