A note from our CEO

Hi everyone,

March kicked off with two of our biggest tradeshows of the year happening simultaneously: Expo West in Anaheim and the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, OH.

Both events were packed with celebrity sightings, new products, and a lot of great conversations. More on both shows below, but since I attended Expo I figured I’d give you my personal reflections on this year’s show:

🙂 Overall, less weird than expected. Protein and fiber were everywhere, but in sensible formats. Nothing too “out there.”

🥤 Protein shakes are the dominant format. The well-documented whey shortage has brands exploring new sources with better taste: milk protein, filtered milk, yeast extract. Also a lot of clear protein options including several protein sodas.

📷 Our own Chris Devlin was spotted in the Cravings booth helping Chrissy Teigen and John Legend plan a ‘90s themed sleepover for their kids.

🍸 High design, “stage caliber” booths like Levels, Tenkara, and Bibigo that rivaled a cool bar or restaurant. Brands are way more plugged into the creator economy than Hollywood is, and entertainment is heading that direction. It sends the signal: “we’re a good place to collab.”

📸 On that note, creators weren’t shooting much content compared to previous years. The dynamic has shifted; brands now need to show what they bring to the table for creators (and/or pay to play).

🍬 Gummies EVERYWHERE with a huge variety of flavors and ingredients/benefits. Always cool to observe that tech can inspire innovation.

💪 Creatine started showing up in food products. Not as much as I expected given the supplement’s general popularity, but brands that did bring creatine products said they were the most popular SKUs of the show.

👜 Flashy swag bags all over the place.  Still the cheapest ad buy at Expo, but like all great ads…competition is rising! You could argue bags might be “over”.

 🟡 This year’s winning color: bright yellow. Simple Mills, Hormble Chormbles, and others grabbed attention with bags and booths alike.

🥛 Milk, not meat; dairy was everywhere. Meat was scarcer outside a couple big brands. Fake meat and fish? Present, but rare.

🩸 Hormone support was a common callout.  I think we’re seeing the downstream effects of consumer blood-testing companies like Function Health and Levels telling people to self-optimize.

☕ Caffeine, not adaptogens — the functional stuff was still there, but the promises felt quieter. The “calm, sleep, focus” trifecta was still around, but it didn’t headline like it used to.

🍝 Italian and pizza abounded. Pasta! Lots of tomato sauce! Mamma Mia!

🌏 Foreign platforms, sometimes government-backed, especially from Asia, brought brands that didn’t feel localized for the US market. Cool that there’s an impression the opportunity here is worth showing up for.

More takeaways from the team below, but I’d love to hear your Expo stories too (you can just reply to this email and it’ll go to my inbox). I’ll close by saying that meeting up with my team and getting some facetime with all the cool CPG folks I’ve met over the years remains my favorite part of the show. Lots of great conversations with smart people.

See you at the next one,

Chris

Last Month’s Sales and Ad Spend Numbers

Expo West & Arnold Sports Festival Recap

The Cartograph team laced up our best trade show sneakers and descended on two of the biggest events in food and fitness last week. Here's what we saw (and ate).

Natural Products Expo West

The Super Bowl of better-for-you CPG did not disappoint on scale; there were thousands of booths, a sea of swag and samples, and enough protein to easily hit your macro goals just by grazing throughout the day.

Observations from the Team:

• From Glynn: Dates and pistachios were everywhere. As a candy alternative (sour candied dates were one of the more divisive samples among the Cartograph team), a snack, and an ingredient. 

• From Melanie: There was a large focus on women's health and hormonal support, particularly menopause-related products. One of our directors, Melanie, proposed this may be due to the rising use of GLP-1 among older women. There's a growing conversation about whether hormonal imbalance is actually the underlying root of the obesity issue in that demo, and CPG brands may be seeing that as an opportunity to get involved.

• From Max: On the flip side, creatine was big, but there was less innovation than expected. We thought there would be a lot of “Existing Product + Creatine = $$$” at the show, but the supplement mostly stuck to its traditional powdered form.

• From Sam: Korean and Japanese foods and flavors were extremely prevalent this year, especially kimchi and matcha. 

• From Lily: Baking mixes are getting a glow-up. Think Cravings and its ilk; a new wave of elevated, better-for-you options.

• From Steve: Tortilla chips and beef tallow were also ubiquitous. Tallow looks to be positioning itself as the new bacon fat, and tallow-fried snacks seemed to be a big hit. 

• From Chris Devlin: Overall the show felt a bit light on innovation this year. Are we entering the world of late-stage CPG, or was 2026 just a lull?

The Team’s Top Samples

• From Chris Devlin: MAMAME tempeh chips

• From Jeanne: 4th & Heart’s ghee-fried grilled cheese (sorry, beef tallow)

• From Glynn and Max: Simple Mills’ cinnamon pops (possibly the most talked about sample of the whole show)

• From Glynn the Snack Queen again: Little Latke latkes

• From John: Spindrift's new tea line  (their first non-carbonated offering, but fruit-forward as ever)

• From Melanie: Good Culture cottage cheese with granola and honey

Arnold Sports Festival

Toni’s Observations from the Show:

• New creatine products weren’t as ubiquitous as anticipated. It felt like most of the attendees are already on the supplement and prefer it in pure, unflavored formats. That said, a brand called Soar had the only creatine + protein bar at the show, and their booth had a steady flow of interest from the crowd.

• Fiber once again stole the show. Arnold Schwarzenegger himself was signing bottles of Momentous' new fiber supplement. [Insert Creatine saying “I’ll be back” meme here.]

• Protein is still the main character for the bodybuilding and powerlifting world. Barebells unveiled new protein shakes and sodas. Maybe the coolest innovation at the show, NutraBio launched "Protein Now,” a 21g protein shot in a 5-hour Energy-style format. 

• Making healthy/diet food taste better was a big focus. One of the busiest booths was Taste Flavor Company with their low-calorie sauces that have been blowing up on TikTok. 

• The Arnold show is a different beast from a pure trade show. A significant portion of the floor was dedicated to apparel, gym equipment, and live competitions, which made the vendor density lower than expected. 

The Takeaway

Two very different shows, but a few themes echoed across both: protein is hot right now, fiber is second in command, and creatine is cool and popular but seems to be “solved” for the time being. While there wasn’t a ton of innovation this year outside of “Can we put protein and/or fiber in it?,” there are still plenty of new products and spins on classic archetypes to look forward to coming out of the CPG industry this year.