Let’s be honest: no one is buying oat milk because they just like the taste. In 2025, food is the least interesting thing about food brands. The oat milk in your latte, the granola in your pantry, the frozen entrée in your freezer; they’ve stopped being just groceries and started being identity markers. These products don’t live in the kitchen. They live in your values, your politics, your vibe. If you’re still a “food brand,” you’re already irrelevant. The brands that thrive aren’t on the shelf; they’re in the bloodstream of culture, and have become lifestyle brands.
Take Oatly. On paper, it sells oat milk. In practice, it sells rebellion, self-awareness, climate guilt wrapped in hip fonts, and a nod at the barista counter. Oatly’s packaging reads like a 90’s photocopied zine from a college radio station. Its campaigns don’t compare; they clap back. “It’s like milk, but made for humans” wasn’t just an ad line; it was a gauntlet thrown hard at the very idea of dairy itself. And it worked. Oatly now owns about 21% of the global oat milk market, with revenues hovering around $670 million in 2023. In the U.S., brand awareness sits between 50-64% among oat milk drinkers, and nearly 20% of millennials who drink milk alternatives choose Oatly. Not because of taste. Because they like what Oatly says about them.
This is the sneaky sleight of hand of modern food branding: the food itself fades, the lifestyle takes over. Think about Thrive Market. It’s been called “Costco meets Whole Foods,” but that misses the point. Thrive isn’t about boring bulk groceries in sad containers. It’s about gatekeeping good living, about turning non-GMO, transparency, and social justice into a paywall. Membership doesn’t just give you access to products; it makes you feel like you’re on the right side of history. That’s not groceries. That’s belonging and culture.
Or look at Celsius, the sleek-looking energy drink that refused to play in Monster’s shadow. Celsius didn’t just make a sports beverage; it made itself into an aesthetic. With an 11% share of the $19 billion energy drink market and revenue topping $1.3 billion, Celsius built its empire not on sugar rushes but on aligning with wellness, influence, and aspiration. Their move to acquire Alani Nu, a female-driven wellness brand steeped in influencer culture, wasn’t a beverage play. It was a vibe acquisition. Celsius isn’t competing in your local grocery aisles. It’s taken the lead in Instagram feeds, gym mirror selfies, and podcast ads for people who say “discipline is sexy.”
Even Justin’s, the nut butter company born in a Boulder kitchen, wasn’t acquired by Hormel for $286 million because its almond butter was smoother than Skippy. It sold because it packaged craft, consciousness, and care. It sold because the jars carried major cultural currency.
Beyond Meat knows this game too. After being hammered for being “ultra-processed,” it pivoted. Beyond Ground now shows up with just four ingredients. It’s still food, yes, but more importantly, it’s messaging, and it’s a claim that says, “We hear you. We’re clean now. You can trust us.” The real product isn’t protein. It’s permission.
And here’s the kicker: even when sales dip, lifestyle brands don’t crack. Recent data shows oat milk sales slid 4.4% in 2025 to $2.9 billion, but Oatly doubled down. Instead of hiding, it published a book about processed foods, embedded deeper in barista culture, and leaned harder on climate storytelling. Oatly performed instead of panicking. Because once you’re in people’s lives as a worldview, not just a product, you can bend. You can shapeshift. You’re not left vulnerable to the whims of a category.
It’s why Saffron Road is halal-certified cultural access, disguised as frozen food,and is on the shelves in 25,000 U.S. stores. It’s why Udi’s gluten-free empire sold for $125 million. They weren’t peddling bread. They were selling an identity. That’s the distinction between a product and a lifestyle brand: products fade when trends do. Lifestyle brands shift with the culture.
The brands that can’t keep up? They collapse under their own hype. Just look at the millennial darlings, like Casper, Glossier, Warby Parker, and SmileDirectClub. Not long ago, they seemed invincible, but they were called out recently by Business Insider for sleepwalking into irrelevance. They leaned on buzz, on Instagram filters, on influencer partnerships without putting down deeper roots in culture. Marketing gimmicks are not a long game. Oatly isn’t still standing because of a cool font. Thrive isn’t growing because of one viral TikTok. Celsius isn’t an $11 billion giant because it made one cool can design. They are surviving and thriving because they’re ecosystems. They’ve built entire lifestyles around their products.
And consumers reward them for it. Oatly enjoys 76% consumer loyalty rates, a number most conventional food brands could never dream of touching. That kind of loyalty isn’t about whether it tastes better in coffee. (It’s doesn’t.) It’s about trust, alignment, and about who people believe they are when they reach for that carton.So let’s kill the illusion: you don’t sell oat milk, or protein shakes, or nut butter. If you’re a food and beverage brand, you sell permission to belong. You sell politics, aesthetics, aspirations. You sell culture. And if you’re not willing to? Then you’re just another food brand. And in 2025, that’s not enough to survive.
