The Anti-Energy Drink: Why Consumers Want Beverages That Help Them Switch Off
Functional drinks have spent decades helping consumers do more: more energy, more focus, more performance and more optimization. Now a counter-need is accelerating. Calming beverages such as TRIP are designed to help consumers slow down, reset and manage the mental intensity of everyday life, with the category reportedly growing faster than protein, hydration and gut-health drinks in the U.S. As stress becomes an everyday consumer concern, functionality is expanding from changing what the body can do to changing how consumers want to feel.
Why Everyone Is Talking About It: Calm Is Becoming a Beverage Category
Calming drinks are moving rapidly from niche wellness proposition to mainstream functional beverage opportunity. SPINS data cited by TRIP positions calming beverages as the fastest-growing functional drinks segment in the U.S., ahead of established growth areas including gut health, protein and hydration. TRIP itself is described as the country's fastest-growing sparkling drinks brand year-to-date, with the company projecting $200 million in revenue for 2026.
Kendall Jenner's arrival as global ambassador and equity shareholder gives that growth additional cultural visibility. But the bigger signal isn't celebrity endorsement alone. TRIP says Jenner was already a consumer before the commercial relationship began, while the brand's social presence generated more than one billion Instagram and TikTok impressions over the past year. Calm is increasingly moving from something therapeutic and private toward something culturally visible and aspirational.
➡️ Viral Insight: Calm is becoming cool. When relaxation moves into stylish cans, social feeds and celebrity culture, switching off becomes something consumers can actively choose, display and share.
Why Consumers Are Changing: Stop Giving Me More
For years, functional beverages largely responded to one consumer demand: help me keep going. Energy drinks offered stimulation, sports drinks supported performance, protein supported recovery and newer functional beverages promised focus, hydration or other forms of physical optimization. They helped consumers adapt to increasingly demanding lifestyles.
But constant stimulation creates its own counter-need. Consumers surrounded by notifications, screens, caffeine, work, social media and continuous availability don't always need another product promising more performance. Sometimes the desired benefit is precisely the opposite: less intensity, less stimulation and a moment to reset.
➡️ Consumer Insight: Consumers spent years buying products to help them keep up. Now they're also buying products to help them slow down. Functionality is beginning to serve both sides of modern life: activation and recovery.
Who Is Driving This Trend: The Overstimulated Optimizer
The Overstimulated Optimizer still wants to perform, socialize and stay productive. These consumers aren't necessarily rejecting busy lifestyles or abandoning optimization. Instead, they increasingly recognize that continuously operating at maximum intensity isn't sustainable.
That makes calm another form of self-management. A beverage can become a small transition between work and evening, stimulation and relaxation, socializing and sleep, or alcohol and moderation. Instead of completely escaping a busy lifestyle, consumers look for manageable moments that help them regulate it.
Core Motivations: Help Me Slow Down
Calm – Turn Down the NoiseConsumers want to create small moments where everyday stimulation, pressure and mental intensity feel easier to manage.
Balance – Help Me ResetConsumers want to counter periods of activity and productivity with moments that help them feel more balanced.
Control – Let Me Change How I FeelConsumers want to actively influence their emotional state rather than simply waiting for stress or tiredness to disappear.
Convenience – Make Calm EasyConsumers want to access relaxation through familiar everyday formats without requiring complicated wellness routines.
Moderation – Give Me Another Social OptionConsumers want to participate in drinking occasions while having alternatives that don't necessarily revolve around alcohol or stimulation.
Wellbeing – Support My Mind as Well as My BodyConsumers want to expand everyday health beyond physical appearance and performance toward stress, mood, sleep and mental wellbeing.
➡️ Audience Insight: The Overstimulated Optimizer isn't trying to escape modern life — they are trying to manage its intensity. Calm becomes valuable because consumers need ways to move between doing more and recovering from doing more.
Why This Trend Matters Right Now: Mental Wellbeing Is Becoming Everyday Wellness
The definition of health is expanding. Gen Z consumers in the U.S. now rank mental wellbeing above weight loss as a leading health concern, while stress, sleep and mood support sit among the top concerns across the wider population. At the same time, searches connected with stress and mental wellbeing are accelerating, reflecting a consumer need that reaches far beyond specialist mental-health contexts.
Technology may be reinforcing the shift. Wearables increasingly show consumers how sleep, alcohol, caffeine, stress and daily routines affect their bodies, while social media keeps wellbeing conversations continuously visible. Consumers aren't simply being told that recovery matters; they can increasingly see the consequences of overstimulation reflected in their own data and everyday experience.
➡️ Why It Matters: Wellness is moving beyond optimizing what consumers can achieve toward helping them regulate how they feel. As mental wellbeing becomes part of everyday health, calm becomes something products can increasingly be designed around.
Viral Potential: Switching Off Becomes Aspirational
Calming drinks have a powerful cultural advantage: almost everyone understands the feeling they're trying to solve. Stress, overstimulation, poor sleep and the desire to switch off are immediately relatable experiences, giving the category a much broader conversation than any individual ingredient.
Celebrity involvement can amplify that behavior when the partnership feels connected to an existing lifestyle. Kendall Jenner describing TRIP as part of her routine helps transform the proposition from specialist wellness into an aspirational everyday ritual. Instead of showing consumers an ingredient, the brand can show them a desirable emotional moment.
➡️ Viral Potential: STRESS → NEED A BREAK → SIP → RESET → SHARE. Calm becomes socially powerful when consumers recognize the feeling before they even understand the functional ingredients.
Marketing Strategy: Design for How Consumers Want to Feel
The opportunity for functional brands is to move beyond ingredient-led innovation and start designing around emotional occasions. Consumers don't necessarily wake up wanting magnesium or botanicals — they recognize moments when they want to feel calmer, more focused, energized or ready to sleep.
Strategy Area | Opportunity |
Product – Build for Emotional States | Develop functional products around recognizable needs such as calm, focus, reset, social relaxation and sleep rather than relying only on ingredient benefits. |
Pricing – Make Calm an Everyday Ritual | Create accessible formats that allow consumers to incorporate functional relaxation into regular routines rather than treating it as an occasional premium wellness purchase. |
Promotion – Sell the Feeling | Lead with relatable moments such as switching off after work, taking a break or relaxing socially, then use ingredients and evidence to support the promise. |
Distribution – Follow the Reset Moment | Expand calming products across channels and occasions where consumers naturally transition between work, socializing, relaxation and evening routines. |
Innovation – Build a Mood-Based Portfolio | Create products addressing different emotional and functional states across the day, allowing consumers to choose beverages according to how they want to feel. |
➡️ Strategic Insight: Don't only design beverages around what consumers need to do — design them around how consumers want to feel. Emotional occasions can create entirely new functional categories.
Trend Snapshot: Functional Drinks Are Moving From Performance to State of Mind
TRIP's growth illustrates a larger evolution in functional beverages. Consumers still want energy, hydration, protein and physical performance, but the category is expanding toward products designed for stress, mood, relaxation and mental wellbeing. Functionality is becoming emotional as well as physical.
Trend Dimension | Insight |
Broad Trend – De-Stimulation | Consumers increasingly seek products, experiences and environments that provide relief from the constant stimulation of modern life. |
Industry Trend – Drinks That Help You Switch Off | Functional beverages are expanding from energy and performance toward calm, relaxation and emotional reset. |
Lifestyle Trend – Everyday Reset | Consumers build small moments of recovery into ordinary routines instead of waiting for dedicated wellness occasions. |
Strategy – Design for How Consumers Want to Feel | Build products around recognizable emotional states and everyday moments rather than communicating functionality only through ingredients. |
Consumer Motivation – Help Me Slow Down | Consumers want accessible ways to manage stress, overstimulation and transitions between different parts of their day. |
Business Opportunity – Turn Calm Into an Occasion | Brands can create new consumption occasions around after-work decompression, alcohol alternatives, social relaxation and everyday reset moments. |
Innovation Outlook – Mood-Based Beverages | Functional portfolios can increasingly span energy, focus, calm, social relaxation and sleep, allowing consumers to select products according to desired states. |
➡️ Trend Snapshot Insight: STIMULATION → OVERLOAD → NEED FOR CALM → RESET → RE-ENGAGE. Functional beverages are beginning to serve both sides of modern life: products that help consumers switch on and products that help them switch off.
Final Thoughts: The Next Functional Benefit Could Be Doing Less
Modern consumer culture has spent years helping people maximize their time, energy and performance. But optimization creates an inevitable counter-market: products that help consumers recover from everything they are optimizing. Calming drinks make that need tangible by turning something as abstract as slowing down into a familiar everyday beverage occasion.
The larger opportunity extends well beyond one drink or ingredient. Food, beverage, hospitality, travel, technology and entertainment can all respond to consumers seeking relief from overstimulation. The next generation of wellness may therefore be less obsessed with helping consumers achieve more and increasingly interested in helping them feel comfortable doing less.
➡️ Final Insight: Consumers don't always need another boost — sometimes they need a brake. As mental wellbeing becomes part of everyday wellness, products that help consumers slow down can become as relevant as those designed to speed them up. The next frontier of functionality may be less about performance and more about managing state of mind.
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