Fiber's Big Moment, the Cocoa Hangover, and Formulating for a Smaller Appetite
Three questions we've been fielding from brand founders this summer — answered from the manufacturing floor.
Q: Every 2026 trend report is calling fiber "the next protein." Is that real, or is it a hashtag?
It's real enough that PepsiCo's CEO said it out loud on an earnings call, and Frito-Lay opened the year with two fiber-forward launches while Whole Foods put fiber near the top of its 2026 forecast. The demand signal is genuine — roughly 95% of Americans miss their fiber target, so unlike the protein boom, this one is chasing an actual nutritional gap. Where it gets complicated is that "fiber" isn't an ingredient: chicory root inulin, soluble corn fiber, resistant starch, oat beta-glucan and konjac each behave completely differently in a bar matrix, and picking the wrong one is how you end up with a product that hardens on shelf and a consumer whose stomach talks them out of a second purchase.
Q: Cocoa has fallen a long way from its 2024 peak. Is the chocolate coating problem over?
Not really — it's just changed shape. Cocoa is down sharply from the record near $13,000 per metric ton in December 2024, but it has spent this year swinging between roughly $2,800 and $8,950, and a coating cost you can't forecast is arguably harder to build a business around than one that's simply high. The bigger story is that much of the reformulation done during the spike has quietly become permanent: brands moved from real chocolate to cocoa-butter-replacer compound coatings, and several well-known bars in the UK had to relabel as "chocolate flavour" once cocoa content dropped below legal minimums — which is a trade a better-for-you brand should think hard about, because a palm-and-shea compound saves money in the one place your clean-label story is most visible.
Q: What actually changes when a brand asks you to formulate for GLP-1 users?
The whole design constraint inverts. Instead of asking how to make a snack irresistible, you're asking how much complete protein, fiber and micronutrition you can fit into a few bites that someone with a suppressed appetite and a touchy stomach will finish — which pushes you toward smaller formats, denser nutrition per gram, gentler fiber systems, lower fat and much less sweetness than a conventional bar. The other half of the job is claim discipline: this is nutritional support for people using these medications, and the language on the wrapper needs to stay there.
Working through a fiber load, a coating swap, or a GLP-1 companion format? That's what our Innovation Center is for. Get in touch.