The formats with the loudest launches have the least data. The formats with the best numbers are the boring ones.
Every week brings a new way to take a supplement without swallowing a pill. Protein in a soda can. Creatine in your morning coffee. Caffeine-free focus pouches that look like nicotine tins. Melatonin on a strip that melts on the tongue. Mintel counts ten protein soda launches in the US this year alone, up from virtually none before 2024. Starbucks now puts up to 36 grams of protein in a latte.
Some of this is a genuine shift in how people take supplements. Some of it is press releases. This report separates the formats with sales data from the formats with funding rounds, and then asks the question most format launches skip: is the product still, legally and physically, a supplement?
Start with the scoreboard. Informa’s 2025 Supplement Business Report, summarized by NutraIngredients, has pills back at the top with nearly 34% of US supplement sales, after years of losing share. Gummies hold about 25%, powders about 18%, liquids about 12%.
The growth is in formats that do not make headlines. SPINS data cited in the same article puts US soft chew sales at $253 million in 2025, up 34.4%, with chewable tablets at $473 million. Ready-to-drink supplements passed $7 billion, up nearly 12%. Nutrition Business Journal calls powders the fastest-growing segment and expects that to hold through 2028. Functional chewing gum grew 95% — from a base of under 1% of the market.
The beverage side has produced the biggest exits, and they are food companies selling food. PepsiCo closed its $1.95 billion acquisition of poppi in May 2025. Olipop raised money at a $1.85 billion valuation on 2024 sales the company put above $400 million. Protein soda is following the same path at an earlier stage: Protein Pop’s 30-gram Plus line went into 607 Costco warehouses in February, and SkyPop launched nationally across Target, Walmart, Kroger and CVS in April. What none of these launches have published is sales data.
The buzziest formats have the thinnest numbers. Ultra, a caffeine-free focus pouch, raised an $11 million Series A in January and says it sold a million cans in its first six months — a company claim. NutraIngredients calls mouth pouches one of the fastest-growing CPG categories without putting a figure on it. Dissolvable strips get launch coverage but no sales data at all.
GLP-1 drugs and protein-maxxing. KFF’s November poll found 12% of US adults currently taking a GLP-1 drug and 18% having taken one. People eating less want more protein per calorie in formats that do not feel like a meal, and seven in ten Americans told IFIC they are trying to eat more protein. A 15-gram protein soda is a direct answer to both.
Gen Z and social discovery. poppi was built on TikTok and influencers. Format novelty is content in a way a capsule never will be.
Pill fatigue — visible in the share data, not in a survey. Nutrition Business Journal tracked non-pill formats taking share from pills for most of the last decade; Informa’s 2025 figures (a different dataset) have pills back on top, which suggests the pendulum has limits.
The physics push back. Every format has a dose ceiling. Momentous’s creatine chews take five chews to deliver 5 grams. Creatine breaks down to creatinine in water: Glanbia, which sells an alternative creatine for drinks, reports about 95% of monohydrate converting in a neutral-pH ready-to-drink. Clear protein in a carbonated can is what Mintel calls “a technical leap.” When independent labs have checked creatine gummies, results have been poor: SuppCo bought six creatine gummies on Amazon and found four at under 1% or no detectable creatine — products that had sold around 50,000 units in the prior month. All five powders it tested passed.
The law draws the line at form. A dietary supplement must be intended for ingestion and must not be represented for use as a conventional food. FDA’s 2014 guidance on liquid supplements versus beverages weighs seven factors — name, packaging, serving size, marketing and more — and a 12-ounce can that looks like soda is likely to be treated as soda. Last year FDA made the point bluntly: in a September 2025 warning letter it said a chocolate bar is represented as a conventional food, and neither a “dietary supplement” statement nor a Supplement Facts panel changes that. A July 2025 letter said the same about cookies and brownies. On ingestion, FDA has treated sublingual products as outside the supplement definition, and courts have held the same for a nasal gel. Amazon’s 2026 supplement policy, as reproduced by Food Label Maker, reportedly bars skin patches marketed as supplements or detox products.
They pick a lane — food or supplement — and stay in it. Protein Pop, SkyPop and the protein lattes are marketed as beverages. They are not borrowing supplement framing to make claims a beverage cannot.
They prove the dose. Create co-developed a gummy-specific creatine test method with Eurofins (it is also defending a proposed class action alleging under-dosing, which it disputes). Momentous and Create carry NSF Certified for Sport. In formats where the lab is the weak point, verification is the differentiator.
They use Amazon as the launchpad and retail as the scale-up. RYZE says it became Amazon’s best-selling coffee alternative before its first national retail launch at Target in January. Bulletproof launched its coffee-plus-creatine on Amazon ahead of a Target exclusive.
They put proven ingredients in new formats. Creatine, whey isolate, caffeine alternatives, fiber. The format is the innovation; the ingredient is not an experiment.
If a client or a co-founder wants to launch in a new format, four questions come before flavor and packaging.
Which regulatory lane is this? Run the product through FDA’s seven-factor test before you design the can. If it looks like soda, sells next to soda and is dosed like soda, it is soda — with Nutrition Facts, food-additive and GRAS ingredient rules, and only those structure/function claims that derive from nutritive value.
Can you prove the dose at the end of shelf life? Not at release. Water activity, heat and pH can degrade sensitive actives such as creatine in gummies, chews and drinks. Budget for stability testing before you budget for launch.
Is it ingested? Patches, strips marketed as “sublingual,” and nasal products sit outside the supplement definition. Directions and marketing matter: “dissolve on tongue and swallow” is a different product, legally, from “bypasses digestion.”
What claims does the format invite? New formats pull copy toward drug language: “fast-acting absorption,” “quit nicotine,” “heal your gut.” Pouches in particular will face teen-access questions; do not borrow nicotine-pouch cues.
Before committing to a minimum order, size the niche on Amazon and check the claims. If you want a compliance read on listings in a new format, Verid8 scans titles, bullets and images against Amazon’s supplement rules — start with a free listing scan. For a catalog-wide review, order an audit.
Keep reading: The GLP-1 companion economy · Amazon’s TIC verification, explained · Getting a suppressed listing back
Market Analyses are published the first Tuesday of every month. Figures as of August 4, 2026. Sources: SPINS and Informa via NutraIngredients, Nutrition Business Journal, Mintel, KFF, IFIC, FDA, SuppCo and company announcements; company sales claims are labeled as such. This report is market analysis, not legal advice. The next report looks at protein powder — where the risk has moved from demand to proof.
Subscribe to get every report in your inbox — published the first Tuesday of every month.