Functional Beverages Are Wildly Popular. But Do They Work?

This summer, Adam Terry did something remarkable for a beverage company CEO: He admitted his product didn’t work. Or at least, it wasn’t working the way it was intended to.

Cantrip, which Terry had launched in 2021, sold THC sodas that he’d designed to be social connectors. He figured customers would use these drinks in ways similar to alcohol, to loosen themselves up around friends. But that wasn’t how drinkers were using Cantrip, or other THC drinks for that matter. It turns out, the vast majority of people who drink THC beverages do so primarily in solo settings—to relax after work, to unwind before bed, to help relieve a sore back. Cantrip wasn’t replacing a light beer, necessarily; it was replacing a mug of chamomile tea.

There was consumer data to back this up. But the reality didn’t click for Terry until he found himself at a conference in New York City in May. Even in his capacity as the founder of Cantrip, he realized he didn’t actually want to drink THC beverages in a social environment. “I don’t really feel all that comfortable talking to investors when I’m high,”Terry says. “And that’s from a guy who’s been in cannabis for 15 years.”

Terry still believed in his THC brand, but not as a primarily social beverage. While continuing in his role at Cantrip, he launched a second, wholly separate company to try, again, to crack the code on social drinks. A few months ago, he unveiled On the Brightside, a “feel-good soda.” The key ingredient is Zembrin, a patented extract of a plant native to South Africa called Sceletium tortuosum, better known as kanna. Terry feels certain that the pharmacological differences between hemp-derived THC and kanna make the latter a more effective social lubricant. He’s bullish that not only will it loosen people up, but that it could help solve broader ills like loneliness and isolation. “This beverage is the canned version of what I want out of my life: to be less anxious, connect with people better, to get out of my phone,” he says.

Terry’s pivot is emblematic of the transition phase that today’s burgeoning functional beverage market is in. It’s a category that’s growing fast, while still struggling to clearly define itself. According to consumer intelligence company NIQ, functional beverages have reached $29 billion in annual sales, growing just shy of 13 percent in the last year alone.

But few people outside of the beverage industry would ever use the term “functional beverage.” It generally refers to any alcohol-free drink that markets additional physiological benefits, such as energy, enhanced hydration, mood alteration, cognitive focus, or digestive support. The broadest reading of it includes everything from prebiotic sodas like Poppi to THC drinks like Wynk to adaptogen-spiked mocktails like Recess to new-wave energy brands like Alani Nu. Some multifunctional beverages, like Huel, claim to cover nearly all the bases, from energy to immune support to improved hair, skin, and nail health. No wonder the term feels clunky. It’s a big, bustling, booming tent. And with so many disparate drinks under the canvas, it can be difficult for drinkers to sort the science from the snake oil.

“I started exploring functional beverages as a consumer and was like, ‘What does this mean? What’s 5-HTP? What’s ashwagandha? Why am I drinking magnesium?’” says Emily Heintz, founder of Sèchey, an alcohol-free beverage retailer based in Charleston, South Carolina. Her store carries functional beverages purporting to do everything from calm your nerves to improve cognitive function, with ingredients ranging from mushrooms to THC to kava. In this way, her store resembles a 21st-century apothecary more than a traditional liquor store. She describes it as “a combination of GNC, the Vitamin Shoppe, and Total Wine.”

Though booming, functional beverages are at a crossroads. They benefited from myriad cultural shifts: a trend toward more intentional alcohol consumption, society’s obsession with optimization, and a public increasingly disillusioned with or unable to access traditional healthcare. But the sands are shifting again. Consumers’ budgets are tighter than they’ve been in years. A federal ban, set to take effect in November, threatens to shut down nearly all hemp-derived THC drinks, many of which are likely to morph into non-intoxicating functional brands. Most importantly, as drinkers gain more experience with mushroom teas, weed sodas, and nootropic elixirs, they’re naturally beginning to ask: Does this stuff really work?

“There’s an assumption that if it’s being sold, the government has validated it, which isn’t always the case, particularly with supplements,” says Charlie Alovisetti, a partner at Vicenti LLP, a law firm where he works with emerging consumer packaged goods companies. “With food and beverage, it’s more so the case that the government has [validated a product]. But there’s a misunderstanding among the public about the amount of regulation that occurs.”

No-alcohol and alcohol beverages are regulated by different federal government agencies with distinct approaches to oversight. Alcohol products, including their labels and formulas, must be approved by the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau before they’re sold across state lines. No-alcohol drinks, however, are the purview of the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission. The FDA and FTC don’t approve them for sale, but instead can require them to be pulled from the market if they’re found to contain dangerous ingredients or if they’re making unsubstantiated medical claims. The latter is where Alovisetti sees some functional beverage brands wade into dangerous territory.

“The number-one thing that makes me very uncomfortable is any kind of medical claims,” he says. “You’re asking for a letter [from the government] at that point.”

Foods and beverages can market themselves as having benefits, particularly if there is an ingredient in them that’s clinically proven to create a certain outcome. For example, a yogurt drink’s label can advertise that calcium builds strong bones. Many functional drinks toe the line by stating that their ingredients “promote or “support” effects, such as relaxation or gut health, while also offering a fine-print disclaimer that such statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and that the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. (Hemp-derived THC is in a unique regulatory gray area that varies from state to state.)

The good news for consumers is that almost all functional beverages, especially in mainstream retail, are safe.

The good news for consumers is that almost all functional beverages, especially in mainstream retail, are safe. Whether they actually do what they purport to, however, varies. On one hand, you have a product like 5-Hour Energy. Throw back one of those, particularly if you’re not a regular energy-drink consumer, and you might feel your bones vibrate inside your skin. Sip a seltzer infused with L-theanine and lion’s mane mushrooms and, well, maybe you feel something?

Kin Euphorics, a line of functional beverages that boasts supermodel Bella Hadid as a partner, is a poster child for how such mood-enhancing drinks market themselves. Using nootropics, adaptogens, and botanical ingredients “rooted in Ayurvedic tradition,” the drinks purport to “provide benefits beyond basic nutrition or flavor, positively affecting bodily functions to achieve an elevated state of health, mood, or well-being.” (Cliffs Notes version: Drink one and you’ll feel good.) Buried in its website’s ingredients fine print is a mix of scientific-sounding claims and New Age assurances: Ingredients will “strengthen the adrenal system,” “support cognitive function, vision, and energy,” as well as “center your spirit.” On a recent episode of the diet- and wellness-focused podcast Maintenance Phase, co-host Michael Hobbes quipped that Kin “sounds all advanced and stuff, and then you look at the ingredients, and it’s just a fucking vitamin.”

Particularly in the mood-management space, the bar for whether these products work generally boils down to whether you feel something, anything at all. Their efficacy may very well be attributable to the placebo effect. “Little treat culture” has taught us that spending $5 on a sleek, vaguely medicinal drink is self-care. And if self-care in the form of Kin Euphorics’ Lightwave beverage makes you feel better about yourself, then maybe that’s enough. Most functional beverage brands offer some assurance that their ingredients have tested, perceptible effects. When discussing On the Brightside’s active ingredient, Terry says the distributor that sells Zembrin notes that 75 percent of people who consume it report an “active feeling.”

“My father called it a buzz. My brother said, ‘Wow, I actually feel something,’” Terry says. “We’re going to put that right on our website.”

Obviously, that distributor, and Terry himself, have incentive to say Zembrin works. (A review of the clinical evidence on kanna published in early 2026 noted “mixed results” on its effectiveness in combatting anxiety and depression, urging “large-scale clinical trials in relevant populations” to provide more clarity.) Some areas of functional beverage have more established science to inform them. Hydration, for example, is relatively understood. When you sweat heavily, your body benefits from the replacement of sodium and other electrolytes. Energy is more straightforward, too: Caffeine, whatever its origin, is a stimulant and boosts physical performance.

But mood, cognition, metabolism, immunity … these can be trickier to discern. Even where studies exist to show the benefits of an ingredient, they often require consistent, clinical doses well above those present in one can of a drink. Adaptogens are called that because your body has to adapt—over time—in response to the substance. Sipping one bottle once probably won’t do much for you. And to pack the clinical dosage of an ingredient like mushrooms into a beverage results in flavors that most people would find off-putting.

This realization presented itself to Tom Eddleston as a lightbulb moment. Eddleston is the founder and CEO of Fabric, a line of zero-proof hop waters, some of which contain THC. Until the end of last year, Fabric had been selling a non-THC functional beverage made with lion’s mane mushrooms, Cordyceps fungi, and L-theanine. In the course of drinking multiple cans of this on a regular basis, Eddleston says he began to doubt whether it actually delivered on its claims. His ingredient suppliers had led him to believe these mushroom extracts were top-of-the-line, in “bioavailable” forms that made them easy for the body to absorb. And yet, his own experience with the drinks said otherwise. “I was like, ‘Where’s the effect that we’ve been promised?’” he says.

Fabric subsequently sold off, at cost, the 8,000 cans it had already produced and went back to the drawing board. The reformulated version, called Fabric Zero, now contains only L-theanine, magnesium chloride, and electrolytes. Eddleston says these have solid science behind them, and are present in Fabric Zero at doses that actually deliver effects after just one can. The 150 milligrams of L-theanine in each, he says, is a dosage that randomized controlled trials have validated. He feels confident that at that threshold, the L-theanine creates demonstrable improvement in attention and memory accuracy. “Consumers are wising up,” he says. “They do the research and realize that they’ve been paying $7 for a can of mushroom water that does nothing.”

Eddleston has been vocal about this stance, writing on LinkedIn that “the functional category is full of sh*t.” Fabric also posted aversion of this message on its own website with a pledge to customers: “If you can’t feel the benefit with one serving, it doesn’t belong in the can.”

That more and more founders of functional beverages, like Eddleston and Terry, are willing to admit to the category’s shortcomings is telling. It’s an acknowledgment that there is some dubious pseudoscience on shelves, and a lot of customers wondering what and who to trust. Right now, like so much related to health and wellness, people’s choices are deeply individual. For some, functional beverages are a worthy alcohol alternative; for others, they’re part of a fitness routine. For still others, they’re an aspirational status symbol that just happens to taste good, like an Erewhon smoothie or smartwater.

“Your mileage may vary” could be the category’s tagline. For retailers like Sèchey, that means there’s no one-size-fits-all product recommendation. Heintz says pointing shoppers toward the right beverage for them requires understanding what they’ve tried in the past and what feeling they hope to experience. “Some people feel things differently,” Heintz says. “We’ll make sure that we try the product first and we try to be careful about any [health] claims, of course. We’re doing the best we can in a category that’s very new.”