The approach that helped Grüns hit a $500 million valuation in 2 years and land at Sprouts, Target and Walmart

So far, that form factor has proven to be a hit with consumers and investors alike. In April, the Information reported that Grüns had raised money at a $500 million valuation. The company confirmed the news last week, announcing a $35 million round led by Headline, and said that it has hit annual recurring revenue in the nine-figure range and now ships 4 million gummies per day. (There are eight gummies in one serving of Grüns).

The brand is now available in Sprouts, Target and, as of April, Walmart. Its influencer partners range from Bethenny Frankel to Jessie James Decker. It also counts celebrities like Anna Kendrick and Shaun White as investors. Grüns works with Plus Capital, which invests in companies on behalf of its celebrity partners. 

It’s a meteoric rise, even in an industry that’s received outsized attention from investors in recent years. Grüns first made its products available for sale in August 2023. By contrast, it took Bloom Nutrition — founded by fitness entrepreneur Mari Llewelyn — three years to land on Target’s shelves. That company hit $170 million in sales by the end of 2023. AG1, founded in 2010, hit $160 million in sales in 2021. 

And like other startups that seemingly came out of nowhere, Grüns is now the subject of much online chatter, with people LinkedIn and X crowing about everything they think Grüns’ has done well, from its website pop-up to its ad copy.

Capital, of course, has been paramount to Grüns’ super-fast growth. The company has raised just over $50 million over the past three years. Grüns’ founder and CEO Chad Janis, was an investor at Summit Partners before starting Grüns. He was a board member at brands like Brooklinen and Chubbies; Brooklinen co-founder Rich Fulop and Chubbies co-founder Kyle Hency have both invested in Grüns.

But the company has also acted quickly on customer feedback — Janis said that Grüns made five changes to its product within the first 12 months on the market. The company is in a space that’s often dominated by hardcore wellness enthusiasts. The brand’s green gummy bears are not only visually striking, but they’re also a form factor that makes it easy for people to share the product with others. Janis told Modern Retail he’s heard stories of Grüns customers taking a pack to their local run club or to the beach to share with friends. 

“I would ask you to name one other supplement that you would see out in public and share person to person,” Janis said in an interview with Modern Retail. “That’s very unique.” 

Now, armed with fresh capital, Grüns has ambitious growth plans for the next 12 months. Janis said Grüns plans to launch a new product in August and roughly one new SKU per quarter after that. The company has recently added a vp of retail to fuel further brick-and-mortar growth. Even though it is in major retailers, Grüns is only in about 5,000 doors, leaving it with plenty of room to grow. International growth will also be a big priority. 

It’s a challenging time for any new company to convince customers to take a bet on an unknown product, as consumer sentiment levels hit near-record lows. Sherry Frey, vp of total wellness at Nielsen IQ, pointed to Nielsen IQ data showing that, as inflation peaked in 2022 and 2023, consumers started to pull back on better-for-you products in favor of private label. But, the upside for a company like Grüns is that, despite the presence of well-capitalized competitors, there’s still a lot of people who have yet to try supplements. Nielsen IQ data shows that the vitamins and supplements category has over 90% household penetration, but specific subcategories like general health and immunity have only 58% and 29% household penetration respectively.

In an interview with Modern Retail, Janis laid out the product and marketing strategy that he believed helped catapult Grüns to where it is today. 

The origin story

Janis’ light-bulb moment came in 2022, when he left Summit Partners to get his MBA at Stanford. He was two days into an attempt to drink a supplement powder every morning and decided there was no way he was going to stick with the habit for 30 days. He was turned off by “the weird frothy sediment at the bottom, the chalky taste,” and having to mix the supplement every morning. 

He thought there had to be a better way, and he eventually settled on a gummy. It took about a year of formulating, speaking with around 20 potential co-manufacturers and doing a ton of R&D to bring the product to life. Some of his classmates at Stanford were the earliest guinea pigs. “Over 25% of my [MBA] class tried the initial product before we launched and provided feedback that ended up directing the product we launched in August of 2023.” 

In its earliest days, convenience was one of the biggest selling points for Grüns. Janis said the copy in the first set of paid ads focused a lot on the fact that this was a product people could take anywhere; they didn’t have to fill up a glass of water every morning and mix a powder to get all the vitamins and minerals. 

Like many supplement brands, Grüns boasts a dizzying array of talking points, with over 60 ingredients packed into its tiny green gummies. Its packaging says it supports everything from gut health to cognition to energy levels. 

Frey from Nielsen said that one of the most interesting things about this current supplement boom is that “a lot of the growth we’re seeing is really through social, and we know a lot of that is impulse purchases.” 

In other words, much of the supplement boom isn’t being driven by people who are overtly visiting health and wellness stores to pick up one very targeted supplement that was recommended by their doctor. Rather, it’s being driven by people who are influenced to buy a supplement after reading Reddit reviews or because they saw their favorite influencer post about it. Many of today’s shoppers, Frey said, are also looking “at supplements for a lot of factors” — not just to improve one thing like their sleep or heart health. 

But when asked about Grüns’s biggest selling points compared to products on the market, Janis pointed to taste. He said that’s the attribute that comes up over and over again in reviews. “All of us have been inundated with ads telling us that products taste amazing,” he said. “Then we buy them. We try them. They do not taste good. And so when you buy a product that, seemingly for the first time, actually matches the ad in terms of how good it tastes, you’re shocked, and you’re going to write about it, right?” That, he said, has helped drive word of mouth.

In terms of the specific benefits people seem to be looking for when they try Grüns, Janis said, gut health is something that comes up again and again. A serving of Grüns contains six grams of fiber. 

Janis said Grüns also tried to act quickly during its first year on the market to make tweaks in response to customer feedback that came through social media and emails. For example, one of the first changes Grüns made was to start sourcing methylated minerals instead of non-methylated minerals, as they can be more readily absorbed by the body. 

These days, Grüns’s firehouse of ad creative focuses on everything from comparing its products to AG1’s ubiquitous powder to highlighting the digestive benefits it provides to addressing those on GLP-1 supplements. 

A rocketship in retail 

If its first year was all about tweaking its hero product, Janis said the second year of Grüns was focused on new product development and retail launches. Grüns has both low-sugar and sugar-free lines of gummies for adults. Then, in July 2024, it introduced a line for kids called Grüns cubs, and, in December 2024, it rolled out a line of nootropics gummies called Nütrops. 

Also in December, Grüns launched with its first retail partner, Sprouts. Janis said Grüns’s pitch to retailers centers around the fact that “the vast majority of our consumers are completely net new to the category,” he said, adding, “They’re not even taking supplementation currently, so we’re expanding this market in a really interesting way.” 

When Grüns launched at Sprouts, it launched with just its low-sugar and no-sugar lines of gummies. Then, because the velocities were so good, it brought in Grüns Cubs within two months. Two months after that, it brought in the Nütrops line. 

Sprouts is a good example, Janis said, of what Grüns hopes to achieve with its retail partners going forward. “In five months, we’ve gone from one launch to, now, our full SKU assortment already launched with them. … So, I think that’s what you can expect from us: more retail partners, more doors, more activations, more SKUs and new product innovation.” 

In February, Grüns launched in Target, and it is already in more than 1,600 of its stores. In April, Grüns launched in 1,900 Walmart stores.

What has also been paramount to convincing new retail partners to take a chance on Grüns, Janis said, is the size of the team; Grüns currently has about 60 employees. “When we share that with a retailer, they have the confidence that we’re going to deliver on the inventory [and] on-time shipments — all that they need to run their business.”

Currently, Grüns runs ads on Facebook and Google, and also does YouTube, podcasts and influencer partnerships. Soon, the company will launch TV advertising. Grüns also recently announced its first sports partnership, serving as the “official foundational nutrition partner” of Gotham FC, an official women’s soccer team. 

As Grüns looks forward to its next phase of growth, one of the things Janis is most excited about is that Grüns has appealed to an even broader demographic than he initially imagined. He said there’s no one specific influencer partnership that performed head and shoulders above the rest — the company tries to appeal to everyone, from moms to influencers to hard-core athletes to gamers. 

It’s a very different approach than many other supplement brands have taken in their early days. As Kat Cole, CEO of AG1, put it to Glossy, the company has historically been known as a “beautiful green drink trusted by athletes.” But, she recognized that more of the wellness industry had started to organize itself around ingredient research, so now AG1 is investing in clinical studies. AG1 is also releasing smaller individual travel sticks and is looking to expand into retail to reach more people. 

If Grüns is able to keep up its appeal to multiple demographics, it could give the company a serious edge in the fast-growing wellness space. But, as Janis acknowledged, it’s also a challenge. As he put it, Grüns, “means a lot of different things to different people.” It results in a greater addressable market — but it also sets up the potential to disappoint more people if someone tries Grüns and feels like it doesn’t live up to the taste or the health benefits they personally were expecting.

“One of the hardest parts of this business is not siloing,” Janis said, “and ensuring we meet each of our consumers’ needs.”