Walk through any major food trade show right now — Expo West, Fancy Food, or regional CPG expos — and a clear pattern emerges.
Many of the most exciting products on the floor are also the hardest for consumers to immediately understand.
Categories like: Bone Broth, Seaweed Snacks, Mushroom Coffee, Functional Beverages, Electrolyte Powders, Adaptogenic Drinks are growing quickly, but they share the same structural challenge:
For emerging CPG brands, that confusion can slow down trial, limit retail velocity, and make it harder to build lasting consumer relationships.
The brands that succeed in these categories usually solve one key problem first:
they move beyond pure product explanation and build a brand story that makes the product feel familiar, desirable, and easy to adopt.
Traditional food categories are easy to understand.Consumers already know what to expect when they see:
But many modern health and wellness products introduce new behaviors, ingredients, or benefits that require explanation.
For example:
Bone broth
Is it a soup? A protein drink? A health supplement?
Seaweed snacks
Are they a salty snack, a health food, or an ingredient?
Mushroom coffee
Is it coffee? A supplement? Something else entirely?
If consumers cannot quickly answer those questions at shelf or online, they often default to a simple behavior: They skip the product. Even highly innovative brands can struggle with this early-stage consumer hesitation.
In emerging categories, brand storytelling becomes a core growth driver. This doesn’t simply mean explaining the product’s ingredients or functional benefits.
Effective brand storytelling helps consumers answer three deeper questions:
The faster a brand answers those questions, the easier it becomes for consumers to move from curiosity to purchase. When the story is unclear, even excellent products can remain stuck in the trial phase.
Functional beverages provide one of the clearest examples of this challenge. My experience working with Olipop reinforced a lesson that applies across many emerging CPG categories: the challenge wasn’t just communicating health benefits. It was building a brand story that made the product feel familiar, fun, and easy to adopt. Early on, much of the messaging focused on the functional benefits: gut health, prebiotics, and reduced sugar. Those benefits remain a core pillar of the brand today. But part of what helped Olipop break through was that the brand didn’t rely on health messaging alone. Instead, the product was wrapped inside a more emotionally resonant brand story: a nostalgic soda experience that felt familiar, fun, and culturally recognizable.
We were buying the experience of drinking soda again without the guilt. We were celebrating the nostalgia of flavors like Grape, Orange and that ultimate soda flavor. That storytelling shift helped make a new type of product feel instantly understandable.
For emerging CPG companies, storytelling has to work across more than just ads or social posts. Consumers build their understanding of a product through a series of brand touchpoints, including:
Packaging
Packaging is often the first and most important storytelling surface. It has to communicate both what the product is and why it matters within seconds.
Retail Shelf Messaging
Shelf talkers, retail displays, and in-store signage can help consumers quickly understand unfamiliar categories in a crowded retail environment.
Sampling and Demonstration
Sampling remains one of the most effective ways to reduce hesitation around unfamiliar products. Trial can turn curiosity into understanding almost instantly.
Brand Activations
Pop-ups, experiential moments, founder-led tastings, event booths, and community-based activations can help consumers engage with a product in a more memorable and emotional way. For emerging categories, these activations often do more than build awareness. They help make the product story tangible.
Digital Experiences
Websites, landing pages, social content, and email flows help deepen the story once a consumer becomes curious.
Connected Packaging
Some brands are also exploring connected packaging experiences — QR codes or digital touchpoints that extend storytelling beyond the package and into recipes, sourcing stories, usage ideas, or brand education.While connected packaging isn’t necessary for every brand, it can be especially useful in categories that require deeper storytelling.
Retail buyers often evaluate products based on shelf velocity (how quickly products sell once placed in stores). Products that require heavy explanation can struggle early on if consumers don't understand them quickly. Brands that succeed in emerging categories typically focus on reducing friction at the moment of decision. Clear storytelling helps consumers move from: confusion → curiosity → trial. And trial is often the most important milestone for new food products.
Many of the most exciting food innovations today introduce new ingredients, formats, or health benefits. But innovation alone is not enough. The brands that win in unfamiliar categories often share one common trait:
they build stories that make new products feel intuitive and culturally recognizable. When brands clarify the story early like through packaging, retail communication, and digital touchpoints, they remove the biggest barrier to consumer adoption. n emerging CPG categories, the first challenge is rarely product quality. More often, it’s helping consumers understand why the product belongs in their basket.
As more functional and health-oriented food products enter the market, the need for strong brand storytelling will only increase. For founders and operators building new CPG brands, one question is worth asking early: If a consumer encounters your product for the first time, will they understand not just what it is — but why they should care? Because in emerging categories, the brands that win are rarely the ones with the most complicated innovation.They’re the ones that make something new feel instantly familiar.
