Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Superdrug partners with Just Eat for round-the-clock London delivery, Arla scales protein dairy, and Grindr acquires Freddie Health for $250 million.
Superdrug just became an always-on supplement retailer via Just Eat — and Grindr spent $250M to own a healthcare channel. Both moves redefine where health brands must show up.
In this episode:
The Health Marketing Daily is a concise briefing for marketers and founders in supplements, functional food and consumer health, hosted by Marco & Klara. New episode every day.
Enjoying the show? A quick rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify helps other marketers find us.
Also from Marco & Klara: The FMCG Marketing Daily · The Digital Commerce Daily
The daily briefing for professionals in health, nutrition, and wellness marketing. Every episode covers an ingredient of the day, the latest science and regulatory updates from EFSA and beyond, and the brand and market moves shaping the nutraceutical industry. Hosted by Klara and Marco — evidence-based, no hype, no bro-science. Built for formulators, brand managers, regulatory affairs teams, and anyone building in the health and nutrition space.
Marco: Today's packed — four stories worth your full attention.
Klara: We're looking at Superdrug's bold 24/7 delivery move with Just Eat, and what it means for supplement brands trying to get noticed.
Marco: Arla is doubling down on high-protein dairy, alcohol is losing ground to functional drinks, and Grindr just spent $250 million on LGBTQ+ healthcare.
Klara: Let's get into it.
Marco: Superdrug is partnering with Just Eat to offer round-the-clock delivery across London — and it's a bigger deal for health brands than it might first appear.
Marco: Superdrug has always been a high street staple. But the high street has limits — opening hours, footfall, geography. On-demand delivery changes all of that. British consumers are already comfortable ordering food at midnight. Now they can order vitamins alongside it.
Marco: The specifics: Superdrug is launching 24/7 delivery via Just Eat, starting in Brixton and Kingston in London. The catalogue covers around 8,000 products. That almost certainly includes vitamins, supplements, and personal care. If your brand has a Superdrug listing, you may now have an always-on impulse purchase window you didn't have six months ago.
Marco: From a commercial standpoint, this is a distribution unlock. Supplement purchases are often triggered by a moment — a cold coming on, a friend's recommendation, a late-night scroll. On-demand delivery captures that moment. Brands that are in those 8,000 SKUs are now competing in a completely different format.
Klara: I'd look at this differently. Faster delivery doesn't change what's actually in the product. If a consumer is ordering a supplement at 2am because they feel unwell, they need accurate expectations. Delivery speed is irrelevant if the product they're reaching for makes claims it can't support.
Marco: That's a fair challenge. But this is also a visibility battle. If your brand isn't in this channel, a competitor's is.
Klara: Agreed. The regulatory compliance question and the distribution question are separate. Brands need to get both right.
Marco: Let's move on to our next story.
Klara: Arla is ramping up production of skyr and cottage cheese at its German facilities — and it tells us something important about where the protein market is heading.
Klara: Arla is one of Europe's largest dairy cooperatives. It's a household name across Germany, the UK, and Scandinavia. When a company that size starts expanding manufacturing capacity specifically to chase a trend, the trend is no longer niche.
Klara: The protein story has been building for years in sports nutrition. What's changed is the everyday occasion. Consumers aren't buying skyr because they're training for a marathon. They're buying it because it's high in protein, it tastes good, and it's sitting next to the yoghurt in any Rewe or Lidl. Arla is now explicitly scaling to meet that demand across Europe.
Klara: From a science angle, this is actually a positive development. Both skyr and cottage cheese are genuinely protein-dense foods — no added isolates, no proprietary blends, no health claims that need EFSA sign-off. The protein content is simply a factual nutritional declaration. That's clean, honest communication with consumers.
Marco: But here's what keeps supplement brands up at night. Arla can sell a 500g tub of high-protein dairy for under two euros. A dedicated protein brand cannot match that price point. And Arla has distribution in every major European grocery chain already. The supplement sector has spent a decade building the protein consumer — and now a dairy cooperative is harvesting that demand at scale.
Klara: That's where I'd disagree slightly. There's still a meaningful gap between food-format protein and targeted supplementation. Bioavailability, dose precision, specific amino acid profiles — those distinctions still matter for performance consumers.
Marco: They matter if you communicate them clearly. Most brands don't.
Klara: And that's the real problem. Now, let's move to our next story.
Marco: New European data shows health-conscious shoppers are actively reshaping what goes in the drinks aisle.
Marco: This matters because the drinks category is enormous. It sits across every major grocery retailer in Europe — Rewe, Carrefour, Tesco, Albert Heijn. Shifts here happen at serious scale. When the data starts moving, brands need to respond quickly.
Marco: The headline numbers: drink sales across Europe's six largest grocery markets grew 2.9% last year. But that growth wasn't from people buying more drinks. It came from people spending more per drink. Shoppers are cutting alcohol volumes and trading up into premium alternatives — functional beverages, low-alcohol options, wellness-positioned drinks. The report is careful to say alcohol isn't going away. What's emerging is a split market: occasion drinking still exists, but a growing sober-curious segment is spending real money elsewhere.
Marco: Commercially, this is a clear signal. That 2.9% value growth is essentially consumers redirecting spend. Functional drink brands sitting in Carrefour or dm right now are benefiting from a structural shift, not a fad. The premium positioning opportunity is significant — if your brand can credibly connect taste, health narrative, and quality, you are capturing spending that used to go to wine or beer.
Klara: I'd slow down slightly on the health narrative piece. "Wellness-positioned" doesn't automatically mean the health claims hold up. Drinks making energy, digestion, or immunity claims still need EFSA-authorised backing — that's the EU regulation governing what you're allowed to say on a label. Plenty of functional drink brands are skating close to the line there.
Marco: That's a real constraint. But the consumer demand is measurable and it's sitting at the shelf today. Brands that get the compliance right alongside the positioning will move fastest.
Klara: That's the order to do it in. Get the science right first, then build the story around it.
Marco: Let's move to our final story for today.
Klara: Grindr just spent $250 million to become a healthcare company — and that should make every health marketer pay attention.
Klara: Grindr built its user base as a social and dating platform for gay and bisexual men. But that community has historically faced real barriers to sexual health services — stigma, underfunding, inconsistent access. Freddie Health was already addressing that gap with digital-first PrEP access and sexual health care. PrEP is a medication that significantly reduces the risk of HIV transmission.
Klara: The deal is Grindr's first major acquisition. $250 million, and what they're buying is clinical infrastructure — a regulated healthcare delivery service — embedded directly into an existing community of millions of users. This is not a wellness content play. This is a company moving into actual healthcare provision.
Klara: From a science and regulatory standpoint, that distinction matters enormously. PrEP is a prescription medication. Freddie Health operates within clinical and regulatory frameworks — not the looser world of supplement health claims. Grindr isn't bolting a wellness section onto its app. It's acquiring something with real clinical credibility. That credibility is the asset.
Marco: Commercially, this is one of the sharpest moves I've seen in a while. Grindr already has the audience trust. Freddie brings the healthcare delivery layer. Together, they create a direct-to-consumer health channel that no generic wellness brand can replicate — because it's built around a specific community identity, not a broad demographic.
Klara: Which is the lesson for European brands. Generic wellness messaging is losing ground. Consumers want health products and platforms that feel built for them.
Marco: LGBTQ+-focused health remains significantly underdeveloped across European retail and digital channels. Brands that move early into genuine community-specific health positioning — with the science to back it up — are looking at real white space.
Klara: The emphasis there being on genuine. Slapping a rainbow on a label is not a strategy. Serving an underserved community with something clinically meaningful — that is.
Marco: Today's through-line is clear — health is now an infrastructure play, not just a product category.
Klara: And whatever infrastructure you build, your claims still have to hold up to scrutiny.
Marco: Convenience, protein, sobriety, community — four different stories, one direction of travel.