Functional Beverages Are Having a Moment. Here's What Brands Need to Know

The functional beverage conversation is bigger than the category itself

One of the clearest findings from our analysis is that consumers aren't necessarily talking about “functional beverages” as a category.

They're talking about the needs and interests surrounding them.

Our hashtag analysis reveals a strong concentration around terms including #guthealth, #guthealthmatters, #probiotics, #prebiotics, #prebioticsoda, #fermentedfoods and #fermentation.

The opportunity for brands is to understand these adjacent conversations, not just track mentions of their own products.

Social listening can help identify the communities and topics surrounding a category, revealing where consumer interest is building before it necessarily translates into direct brand mentions.

Gut health is one of the key territories driving the conversation

Among the themes emerging from our analysis, gut health stands out.

Terms such as #guthealth, #guthealthmatters, #probiotics and #prebiotics sit alongside functional beverage conversations, demonstrating how closely the category is connected to the broader wellness conversation. This has implications for how brands approach positioning.

A beverage may technically belong to the soft drinks category, but its social audience may be found within wellness, nutrition or gut health communities.

That means category-level analysis can only tell part of the story.

For communications and marketing teams, understanding what consumers associate with a product can be just as valuable as measuring how often they mention it.

A social listening platform can help brands identify these associations at scale, from recurring keywords and hashtags to the communities and accounts driving them.

TikTok is changing how beverage brands earn attention

Our TikTok analysis reveals another important characteristic of the category: functional beverages are increasingly appearing in content that isn't explicitly about beverages.

One TikTok featuring Poppi in a back-to-school shopping challenge generated more than 2.8 million views, 308,000 likes and 4,000 shares.

Another creator post featuring Poppi generated more than 2.1 million views and 313,000 likes.

What's notable is the context.

These aren't conventional product demonstrations. The beverage appears within shopping, family, entertainment and creator-led content. This is increasingly how products travel on social platforms.

For brands, it means measuring product mentions alone isn't enough. A useful social listening strategy should also capture who is talking about the brand, what type of content it appears in and what other topics or brands are appearing alongside it. The context can reveal opportunities that a simple volume metric cannot.

Brand relevance can come from unexpected places

The same dynamic is visible on Instagram.

One Love Island post featuring Poppi generated more than 11,000 likes and almost 300 comments in our analysis.

The significance isn't necessarily the individual post. It's what the example demonstrates about the category's expanding cultural footprint.

Functional beverage brands are no longer confined to wellness influencers or health-focused content. They can appear alongside entertainment, shopping, family content, fashion and lifestyle.

For communications teams, this creates a useful question: Where does our brand naturally belong in culture?

Social listening can help answer that by revealing the topics, creators, communities and conversations where a brand is already appearing, as well as the spaces where competitors are gaining traction.

What does this mean for beverage brands?

The functional beverage boom provides a useful case study in why social listening needs to go beyond brand monitoring. For communications and marketing teams, there are several questions worth asking:

• Which conversations are growing?

Tracking emerging keywords, hashtags and topics can help brands identify shifts in consumer interest and spot new opportunities.

1. Who is driving the conversation?

Creators, communities and influential accounts can have a disproportionate impact on how a product or category is perceived.

1. Where are competitors gaining attention?

Competitive social listening can show which brands are winning engagement, and importantly, what type of content is generating it.

The functional beverage trend illustrates a broader shift in how brands can use social listening. The value isn't just in knowing that people are talking about a product.

It's in understanding what is driving the conversation, who is shaping it and where the conversation is going next.