New DTC toolkit   //   October 7, 2025

Bobby Parrish’s supplement brand FlavCity launches at Target

FlavCity, founded by creator Bobby Parrish, is making its retail debut this week by launching its protein smoothies line nationwide at Target. 

This year, the company is on track to grow its revenue upward of 100% year-over-year. It hopes to be the latest creator-founded better-for-you brand to make a splash on retail shelves.

Parrish began making YouTube videos about 12 years ago and currently has over 10 million followers on the platform, along with 3.4 million followers on Instagram and 1.7 million on TikTok. He is known for videos largely focused on his grocery store finds, and often breaks down the ingredients of trending food and beverage items based on their nutritional value. Parrish is also known for developing the “Bobby-Approved” food scanner app; the free app highlights harmful ingredients, like preservatives and dyes, and suggests healthier alternatives.

Shawn Bushouse, co-founder of FlavCity, told Modern Retail the company hopes Parrish’s long history as a nutrition-focused creator will differentiate it from the slew of creator-founded CPG brands. “We’re aligning ourselves with the general population and not just one demographic,” Bushouse said.

Bushouse did not disclose exact revenue but said the company has reached a large enough scale to comfortably invest in expansion at a gradual rate, as opposed to entering a bunch of retailers too quickly. “Because we don’t want to go in there and fail, that’s just not an option,” he said.

A brand differentiator, Bushouse said, is that when looking at one of the FlavCity product labels, customers can pronounce the ingredient list. “So the vanilla has vanilla, strawberry has strawberry, the lemonade has lemons,” he said. “This element of real ingredients makes [FlavCity] a little more trend-proof.”

“Bobby is an everyday guy known for going into the grocery store,” Bushouse said. “So there is this straight line between his content and the brand.” Some of Parrish’s most popular videos discuss the inclusion of ingredients like preservatives and artificial dyes in many popular grocery items. “He was talking about seed oils, grass-fed and pasture-raised products 10 years ago,” he said. Bushouse added that, thanks to a bigger investment in Parrish’s content and growing interest in clean-label content, Parrish’s subscriber count is up 45% since October of last year.

Bushouse said the FlavCity marketing strategy focuses largely on ingredient and nutrition education, and will continue to do so as it expands into retail stores. 

“We generally don’t push a huge percentage of FlavCity products in our content,” Bushouse said. “We love to tip our cap to other brands, including private labels that are disrupting the space.” He hopes this approach to product recommendations will create more organic interest in the brand’s products. “FlavCity is here to fill the gaps where we’re not seeing other brands doing so, but you won’t see us expand wildly into the categories,” Bushouse said.

Bushouse said the company intentionally waited a few years to grow online before entering retail. The smoothies have been selling on the brand’s DTC and Amazon store for about two years. FlavCity plans to eventually expand its other products into Target after testing them online.

The newest FlavCity line is Café, a line of instant lattes launched in September on the brand’s own site and Amazon. Bushouse said this line goes after the coffee drink ritual and expensive coffee shop trips Americans like to indulge in. “A lot of those drinks are often very high-calorie and high-sugar,” he said. The coffee drink line is meant to give customers better-for-you versions of popular drinks like vanilla lattes and salted caramel macchiatos. 

That said, Bushouse said, “Bobby will be doing some fun in-store activations and will be very visible in Target stores.”

Another launch initiative is the FlavCity Golden Shaker contest, a play on the golden ticket concept. The contest will reward customers by randomly placing winning tickets inside 10 bags of FlavCity’s Target-exclusive strawberry shortcake flavor — winners will each receive $10,000 and a golden smoothie shaker. The brand will also be featured on Target endcaps in the coming weeks. “[Target] has made a great commitment to us,” he said.

Katie Thomas leads the Kearney Consumer Institute, an internal think tank at global management consulting firm Kearney. She acknowledged that, while “many new creator-led brands have a strong first year, it can be much more challenging to sustain repeat purchase, a key CPG metric, in the subsequent two-to-three years.” Once the hype around the initial launch dies down, she added, typical metrics such as taste, quality and price are the leading purchasing factors for consumers. “Fandom of the creator will often not sustain purchase,” Thomas said. 

Recent examples of this trajectory include Jake Paul’s Prime hydration brand, which started off strong before hitting a snag due to its marketing being geared at young people. On the other hand, Thomas said, “These ‘ankle-biter’ brands do force larger CPGs to evolve their playbook; these brands often steal share from them, even if only temporarily.”

Bushouse, for his part, said, “We’re seeing how important the authenticity component is” to ensuring creator-led brands survive in the long run. “That is why a lot of influencers, creator and brands are running toward it now.”