Welcome back to another episode of The Curious Consumer! This week we sit down with Daniel Solomons, CEO of Update—the caffeine-free energy drink that caught Kim Kardashian’s eye organically before she became a full creative partner. We break down the science behind paraxanthine, the surprise of 4,000+ Walmart doors, and what it means to build a brand around a completely new ingredient. We also cover every Kardashian-Jenner in CPG this week (yes, all of them)—Kylie’s pivot from vodka soda to beauty hydration powder K2O, Khloe’s new Khloud protein tortilla chips, and Lemme finally launching a multivitamin after 17 other SKUs. Plus: the Hershey reformulation saga, McCormick’s $45B acquisition of Unilever’s food business, goPuff’s surprisingly successful private label expansion, and Mars Men—an 18-month-old testosterone supplement brand already at $100M run rate. Let’s get into it!The Breakdown 00:00 Intro 0:05 Interview with Daniel Solomons (Update Energy) 20:28 Kylie&#x27;s K2O Beauty Hydration Powder 27:20 Khloud Protein Chips 30:39 Lemme Launches a Multivitamin (Finally) 32:50 The Hershey/Reese&#x27;s Reformulation Drama 44:43 McCormick Buys Unilever&#x27;s Food Business ($45B) 47:50 goPuff&#x27;s Private Label Expansion 50:10 Mars Men: $100M Testosterone Supplement Brand 58:26 Wrap-up 🎧 Love the show? Subscribe to The Curious Consumer wherever you get your podcasts! New episodes drop weekly. 📧 Get the inside scoop Subscribe to Express Checkout, our newsletter packed with consumer insights, trends, and exclusive content straight to your inbox at expresscheckout.co. 🗣️ Let’s connect! Follow us for behind-the-scenes content, quick tips, and more: @expresscheckout 💬 Join the conversation Have a product you’re curious about? DM us your questions or drop them in the comments—your topic could be featured in our next episode! If you have any thoughts/questions/suggestions, feel free to email us at hello@expresscheckout.co :) ⭐ Help us grow If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps other curious consumers find us! Get full access to Express Checkout at www.expresscheckout.co/subscribe

Keeping up with the Kardashians…CPG launches

The Curious Consumer

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** The Curious Consumer

## Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of The Curious Consumer. I'm Nate Rosen. I'm Jenna Movsowitz. And today with us, we have a very special guest, my twin. If you are watching this video, you can see that we look very much alike. Daniel Solomons, the CEO and co-founder of Update. Welcome, Daniel. Thanks for having me. Of course. It's really good to see you. It's cool to see this brand. From when we first met, we were at a friend's office.

I was trying the samples you brought in an indescript bottle with just like a piece of tape on it. It's so cool to see you go from that to Kim Kardashian and 4,000 plus Walmart doors. You've been around from day one from bad tasting product, exploding cans. I don't know what else.

Oh my God. But now to some new branding, some new distribution, new formulation a little bit. All of the above. Well, let's back up a little bit. What are we talking about here? Daniel, can you give us a quick intro? Who are you? What is Update? And why are we talking about Kim Kardashian right now? I'm Daniel Solomons. I moved to New York seven years ago from Australia and had a crazy idea that an energy drink should be an easy-ish thing to do.

And a few years later, I guess I'm sitting here thankful for being naive because here we are having just relaunched Update with Kim. I thought energy drinks were a really interesting thing to get into. You basically have this space where everyone needs energy, but all the energy drink offerings to me felt out of reach.

They were either branded really hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine. Often people gave them a bit of a stigma that I would feel a little bit embarrassed kind of holding, walking around with, drinking. They were just packed with so much caffeine as well that a lot of the formulas are basically caffeine plus more caffeine. And none of this really gelled with me. I never actually have drunk an entire energy drink before except for an update. I have sipped others for flavor comparison, but that's about it.

And so I thought, imagine if you can have an energy drink, but you correct the stigma to it. And then on the science side of things, what was kind of interesting is roughly one in two people, albeit they consume caffeine, they process it a lot more slowly than others. So that's, you know, the people who are looking at their watch. It's like 2 p.m. If I have a coffee now, I'm going to be up all night. Or it's the person who's going to the gym in the afternoon, needs to pick me up. But if they have an energy drink, they're going to get antsy or anxious or jittery.

So if we could correct the stigma and come up with a way to give you the energy you want without those side effects, we thought we would have some kind of a winner. Fast forward several years, a lot of trial and error, six different formulas along the way, every single ingredient test under the sun. And we ended up with update as it is today. What's really...

Keeping up with the Kardashians…CPG launches

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.

Keeping up with the Kardashians…CPG launches

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.