confirmed earlier this month<\/a> that it plans to pull out of the supplements category. <\/p>\n\u201cIt was a hard call to make, because it is such a beloved space,\u201d said the brand\u2019s founder, founder Amanda Chantal Bacon, of the decision to close the store. \u201cBut the daily food production, the daily juice production, all of that requires so much and was not laddering up to where our bigger goals lie.\u201d <\/p>\n
Those goals include US and global retail expansion as well as growth through DTC and Amazon, said Bacon. In August, the brand announced the addition of new CEO Federico Troiani, a former executive at supplements brands Ritual and Bulletproof 360, to guide its DTC and wholesale-specific focus. As it heads into 2026 with this additional leadership, it\u2019s navigating a wellness industry where trends change just as fast as they do in beauty or fashion due to equal parts hype cycle and consumer skepticism.<\/p>\n
The Millennial Gwyneth <\/p>\n
A former fine dining chef with more passion for mushrooms than steak, Bacon was one the top figures of the 2010s wellness wave, helping to popularise trends like adaptogens and functional beverages. She was a public-facing founder, publishing stylish cookbooks, blog posts and social media content about her aesthetically pleasing and aspirationally healthy lifestyle.<\/p>\n
She also emerged as a magnet for controversy. A \u201cwhat I eat in a day\u201d style article published by Elle in 2015 went viral, where she detailed a laundry list of new age-y items like cordyceps, reishi, ho shou wu and quinton shots as the ingredients in her breakfast. A 2016 article in The Cut said that her esoteric wellness regimen \u201cmade Gwyneth Paltrow look like Guy Fieri.\u201d She attracted both die-hard devotees and skeptical detractors, who questioned the validity of the brand\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always been polarising,\u201d said Bacon. \u201cThere was a cute five minutes when people were just charmed by it. Very quickly with the internet, it turned into, \u2018I hate what you\u2019re saying about wellness.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But the controversy generally led to more attention, sales and investors. The brand has raised a total of $10 million, including a $7 million Series C round led by True Beauty Ventures in 2022. Its products are stocked in retailers including Ulta Beauty, Revolve, Free People, Nordstrom and Erewhon. Bacon said she counts herself among those skeptical of certain wellness claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s that broader conversation around people that are going to say, \u2018Wellness is terrible. All supplements are ineffective. Everyone is a snake oil salesman.\u2019 And then you\u2019re going to have the other end where there\u2019s zero discernment, and you\u2019re going to have somebody that\u2019s just buying formulas that are not clean and not going to be effective and hoping for the best,\u201d said Bacon. <\/p>\n
The Next Chapter <\/b><\/p>\n
Cut to today, and the stakes are different for wellness brands. The rise of the MAHA movement and vaccine skeptics has divided the wellness community and turned off left-leaning crunchy types. Besides Sephora, even Goop hardly sells supplements anymore, choosing instead to pivot to beauty and fashion. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that the French understand wellness the way that Americans do,\u201d said Bacon when asked why Sephora might be pulling the plug on supplements. Its other major beauty retail partner, Ulta Beauty, has been expanding its wellness offerings in recent years. \u201cWhen you\u2019re taking on a new category, it takes some years of work and investment to really land that for your customers, and have your customers really trust you and think of you as a space to make those purchases.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, Moon Juice\u2019s top two sales channels are DTC and Amazon. Sales on Amazon in particular ballooned after \u201csleepy girl mocktails\u201d went viral on TikTok \u2014 an ingredient is magnesium; Moon Juice\u2019s Magnesi-Om powder is its top-performing product on Amazon and overall. Bacon claims to be the creator of the trend.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sleepy girl mocktail was a recipe and a name that my team incubated and we seeded out to some influencers,\u201d she said. The term \u201csleepy girl\u201d was trademarked by Moon Juice in 2023 but listed as abandoned as of May 2025, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office.<\/p>\n
While Bacon has clearly shown aptitude at starting trends in wellness, she said she\u2019s not interested in following them. She\u2019s eschewed multiple fads over the years such as the CBD boom and bust, and is not joining the surge toward animal-based wellness powders. Instead, she\u2019s planning to double down on the brand\u2019s signature brain-boosting line of products after suffering a traumatic brain injury herself earlier this year. <\/p>\n
And despite previous reports that Moon Juice was exploring a potential exit, Bacon said it\u2019s not currently in any M&A talks. Her goal is rather to stay for the long haul and make Moon Juice a \u201c100-year-old brand.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always requests that I get from team members and investors that are seeing the trends and getting really excited,\u201d she said. \u201cTypically how people do business is, \u2018There\u2019s a trend. We\u2019ve got to move fast. We\u2019ve got to make it cheaper. We\u2019ve got to spend more money on marketing and blow out the competitors.\u2019 At Moon Juice, we\u2019ve never done that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sign up to The Business of Beauty newsletter<\/b><\/a>, your complimentary, must-read source for the day\u2019s most important beauty and wellness news and analysis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before the Erewhon smoothie phenomenon, there was Moon Juice. The Los Angeles-based wellness label, which opened its first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4318],"tags":[105,4434,32748,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-635540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition","10":"tag-start-ups","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115727932310320173","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}