☠️ The Fear of Functional ☠️
I was recently educating myself on US vitamin brand Grüns $1.2 billion acquisition to Unilever – metrics founders will dream of, especially as this brand was only founded in 2023.
Having seen this product around for a few years, I feel no pull to it at all, I find the colours strange, I don’t like the brand illustrations and find them clumsy and ugly, I don’t understand the name and can’t be bothered to learn to understand it.
So how come I find myself on their homepage immediately trying to buy the product and pricing up the subscription and if they ship to the UK yet?
This is the “Fear of Functional” in effect…
- We shop these functional products with primal low-level anxiety of mortality – we are inherently trying to fix things within ourselves which we can’t quite put our finger on
- A vague awareness of gaps which we can’t quite name – brain fog, sleep, digestion, anxiety, inflammation
The proof is in the data. Alantra’s Food & Beverage Fast 50 revealed an all-functional top five for 2026 – Dirtea, Goodrays, Tonic, Trip and Spacegoods with the average growth rate across those five brands hitting 190% CAGR, the highest ever recorded in the ranking’s history.
When the fastest-growing brands in UK food and drink are all selling anxiety relief, cognitive support and gut health, that’s not a “trend” – it’s a structural shift in what consumers are actually buying and the fears we all have.
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