Challenger brands are having a moment in consumer packaged goods. The past few years have seen a raft of high price tag acquisitions as legacy conglomerates try to modernize and better appeal to younger consumers, including through a larger focus on health and wellness.
While deal volume has steadily been on the decline, total deal value doubled in Q1 2026 compared to the year-ago period, speaking to the hefty amounts CPGs are ponying up for ankle-biter savvy. Noteworthy transactions so far this year include Barilla buying better-for-you mac and cheese maker Goodles; Ferrero buying breakfast foods marketer Purely Elizabeth; Unilever buying gummy supplement startup Grüns; Procter & Gamble buying health and wellness company Thorne; and Constellation Brands buying nonalcoholic sparkling water brand Hopwtr. Graza, which has shaken up olive oil by selling its products in squeeze bottles instead of traditional glass containers, is also exploring a sale, Axios reported in September.
Even when a deal hasn’t yet materialized, the influence of challengers on legacy companies can be seen in evolving approaches to marketing, packaging and formulation.
“We were known initially — or maybe still — for our green squeeze bottle, a huge innovation [where] we just did what chefs always do in the restaurant,” Alex Edelstein, vice president of marketing at Graza, said at Advertising Week New York earlier this month. “Now there's at least a few dozen squeeze bottles on shelf, including private label, and [from] much larger businesses than ours.”
A surge in copycats hasn’t dented Graza’s momentum, which Edelstein attributed to a mix of strong product and branding that has allowed the venture capital-backed business to expand into areas like mayonnaise and chips without losing its audience. Upstarts in the vein of Graza have also commanded the marketing conversation despite far smaller media budgets compared to multinational CPGs. Look no further than Liquid Death, which frequently draws accolades for its outside-the-box creative ideas and approach to collaborations.
Marketing Dive below has assembled stories from 2026 that capture the changing face of the challenger CPG market, examining these brands’ use of artificial intelligence to act with greater speed, their growing investments in paid media and how they identify partnerships that drive cultural impact:
