5 minBusiness
Caffeine Moves Into Everyday Foods as Functional Demand Grows
Caffeine is spreading beyond coffee and energy drinks into chocolate, trail mix, beef jerky, gummy bears, and water, as food and beverage companies chase consumer demand for focus and productivity. Market research points to steady growth in caffeinated products through 2030, while regulators and packaging designers adapt to the shift.
Caffeine is moving out of the coffee cup and into a widening array of everyday foods and drinks, from caffeinated chocolate and trail mix to beef jerky, gummy bears, and flavored water. The shift reflects a broader consumer turn toward functional foods and beverages, where shoppers seek specific benefits such as energy, focus, or productivity rather than simple enjoyment.
Food futurist Liz Moskow, principal of the consultancy Bread & Circus, describes the trend as part of «the optimization of everything.» A piece of chocolate is no longer just a treat; it is expected to improve gut health, memory, or some other outcome. Caffeine fits that demand because it is a cheap additive that boosts metabolism and delivers a quick, noticeable effect, Moskow said.
The modern energy drink market helped set the stage. Red Bull arrived in the United States in 1997, followed by Monster five years later. More recently, Celsius has taken a leading position. According to Morgan Stanley, U.S. spending on caffeinated beverages is projected to grow 6% annually through 2030, a faster pace than the overall food industry, with energy drinks driving much of the expansion. The investment bank also notes that energy drinks, unlike many other food categories, benefit from consumers who use GLP-1 medications.
Sally Lyons Wyatt, chief advisor for consumer goods and food service at market research firm Circana, said the growth is tied to shoppers looking for «benefits and outcomes.» In her view, consumers are not really shopping for coffee. They are shopping for focus and productivity.
That logic led the founders of Orka Beverage to develop a caffeinated water brand. Co-founder Michael Moriarty said existing energy drinks felt like «a super-sweet soda» and that the obvious question was why the caffeine could not simply be put into water. Orka’s clear can displays 150 milligrams of caffeine on the label and is designed to look like a wellness product rather than a traditional energy drink.
Packaging is shifting along with the products. Matt Sia, executive creative director at the brand agency Pearlfisher, said most energy drinks use a certain «level of intensity» with fluorescent colors and lightning bolts. He expects that approach to change because it clashes with wellness and health benefits that consumers now weigh more carefully. The category, he said, is becoming less in-your-face and more like a supplement.
Sia pointed to Awake, a caffeinated chocolate brand, as an example of a company that broke the mold. Its packaging uses rich but not lurid colors and features a wide-eyed owl instead of lightning bolts, making it feel less manufactured and less artificial. On the shelf, Awake competes against chocolate brands rather than other energy enhancers.
Adam Deremo, who co-founded Awake in 2012 and serves as its CEO, said the driving insight was that functionality is the number one trend in all of food and beverage. Consumers not only understand that functional benefits are possible from food and drink choices, he said, they have started to expect them. Deremo and his co-founders looked for grocery products that were not yet delivering on that front and settled on chocolate, which is consumed in the vast majority of households and is, in his words, «the most fun, best-tasting delivery platform there is.»
When choosing which function their chocolate should provide, Awake picked energy over relaxation or protein because repeated market research found that people wanted more energy in their daily routines. Deremo also cited the attention economy, saying people have never had a greater need for focus. The company’s most popular product is a bite-sized chocolate piece containing 50 milligrams of caffeine, roughly equivalent to half a cup of coffee. It accounts for about 90% of Awake’s chocolate sales. Earlier this year, Awake entered 2,000 7-Eleven stores.
Awake has also expanded beyond chocolate bars and bites. When cocoa prices surged and the chocolate market became volatile, Deremo said the company asked how else it could use its chocolate. The answer was trail mix, which includes caffeinated chocolate chips along with nuts, pretzels, and dried fruit. Each individually packaged bag contains 80 milligrams of caffeine.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has taken notice of caffeine’s creep into new products, signaling that regulators are watching a market that continues to blur the line between food, drink, and supplement.
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