Brands Briefing: Daily Harvest relaunches its DTC site as it adapts to changing wellness trends
Daily Harvest has kicked off the new year by relaunching its direct-to-consumer site and unveiling new products as it retools its business for the modern wellness era.
First and foremost, Daily Harvest has dropped its subscription requirement, which it had maintained for the first decade of its existence. Customers can now buy products from Daily Harvest’s website on a subscription or à la carte basis. The company will also continue to introduce new limited-time offerings and curated boxes on its website, such as the 3-day smoothie detox box it trialed last year. In addition, Daily Harvest has introduced some new items, like high-protein smoothies, a line of high-protein oat bowls and “functional elixirs,” which are frozen purées of fruits and vegetables. Daily Harvest is currently offering new customers 25% off their first purchase.
All of these changes, according to the company’s CEO, Ricky Silver, are intended to make it easier for Daily Harvest to play a bigger role in the daily lives of more people. “We believe the simplest path to health is through eating fruits and vegetables and building small, manageable daily habits,” he said. He said these changes were informed by consumer research Daily Harvest conducted with both legacy customers and people who had never bought from the brand before, which found that “consumers are really highly confused and flustered by the wellness advice they’re served on a daily basis, particularly via social media.”
On its newly redesigned website, Daily Harvest’s value proposition is all about how its products are “designed for real life,” with high amounts of fruits and vegetables in each serving and no artificial ingredients or fillers. In a way, it harkens back to the early days of Daily Harvest. The company was inspired by founder Rachel Drori’s struggle to maintain a healthy diet while leading a busy lifestyle, and it launched with smoothie packs.
But over the years — and as Daily Harvest raised more venture capital money, reaching a unicorn status in 2021 — the company started to expand into more lunch and dinner products like flatbreads, soups and grain bowls. Last year, the company was acquired by Chobani for an undisclosed sum.
“I think we’ve always tried to follow what consumer purchasing behavior looks like,” Silver said. He noted that Daily Harvest’s savory items will still be sold in brick-and-mortar stores. Over the past few years, the company has expanded into retailers like Target, Kroger and Wegmans, and next week, it will launch in select Costco stores. But Daily Harvest found that legacy customers were more likely to stock up on smoothies and breakfast items through the DTC site.
In speaking to customers who hadn’t purchased from Daily Harvest before, Silver said the company found that “brand perception was high, but a willingness to try was the primary barrier.” Specifically, customers didn’t want to have to commit to a subscription to try Daily Harvest. But shipping frozen food is expensive, and a subscription component is one way Daily Harvest has historically made that more feasible. Right now, Daily Harvest requires à la carte customers to order a minimum of six items and offers free shipping on orders of 12 items or more.
While the new site has only been live for about a week, Silver said that, so far, about a third of new customers are opting in for auto-replenishment on their first order, which bodes well for the company’s ability to keep building lifetime value among this new cohort.
Back in 2022, Daily Harvest was jolted into headlines for weeks on end when some customers reported getting sick — with some saying they had emergency surgery to remove their gallbladders — after consuming the company’s French Lentil + Leek crumbles. Daily Harvest voluntarily recalled the product, and in response to lawsuits, Daily Harvest and one of its manufacturers agreed to a settlement.
Silver said that, over the years, Daily Harvest has “worked really hard to earn trust with those who had heard about that or who experienced the issue.” But, he added, “we’re now many years out, and we feel like what we’ve seen in consumer engagement and in research is, you know, there isn’t necessarily a barrier to overcome, from a perception standpoint.” Instead, the biggest obstacle to getting more people to try Daily Harvest was the subscription component.
Still, he said, “that doesn’t take away our responsibility from continuing every day to focus on earning and maintaining that trust with the consumers from a quality food safety and, ultimately, taste perspective.”
It’s an interesting paradox that many wellness-focused brands like Daily Harvest face right now. Consumers are more interested in health and wellness and are doing more research on which products to consume, scouring nutrition labels or looking into what vitamins and supplements may be helpful. But the flood of new wellness products and marketing claims is also overwhelming some consumers, making it more difficult for them to decide which brand to ultimately choose, as Daily Harvest’s research attests.
Post-Covid, “more consumers are looking to take greater control of their health,” said Barry Thomas, senior global thought leader at Kantar. The Yuka app, which helps people interpret how nutritious different products are, has grown in popularity, hitting more than 20 million U.S. users last year. Given the brand’s price point, with its smoothies starting at $8.49, he expects Daily Harvest’s revamped DTC offering to still primarily cater to “the upper 20% of the population.
Kelly Chen, an investor with the brand capital fund at XRC Ventures, said the data shows that today’s consumers want to be more informed about their health and wellness, and want information in a way that’s easy for them to understand. She only expects consumers to more closely scrutinize certain products as more people take GLP-1 drugs — the first oral GLP-1 pill just launched in the U.S. this week — and they reshape more parts of their lives. “We are going from Ozempic face to Ozempic everything,” she said.
Daily Harvest, for its part, looks to continue to stand out in the health and wellness space by prioritizing its focus on real ingredients. It’s an approach that other companies in other food categories, like jerky, are adopting as grocery stores are flooded with a new array of high-protein chips and popcorn.
To kick off the new year, Daily Harvest is running an advertising campaign urging people to “eat food, not fiction.”
“We’re really excited to lean into this new relaunch strategy and make sure we are providing the best experience for the new customers coming in, but also maintaining and sort of enticing our existing and loyal customers to stay with us,” Silver said.
The week in wellness news
Beyond the Daily Harvest news, it’s been a week filled with the launches of lots of new powders, bars and juices. Author and podcast host Mel Robbins is the latest celebrity to launch a CPG company, unveiling a line of protein shots. Starbucks is making a high-protein caramel drink part of its permanent beverage menu. Meanwhile, seemingly every fast-casual chain, ranging from Jack in the Box to Chipotle to Playa Bowls, put out press releases touting their high-protein offerings in the new year.
What we’re reading
- Saks is in talks for a $1 billion loan as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to keep doors open, according to Bloomberg.
- Cupcake business Sprinkles suddenly shut down over the holidays.
- Are Jellycats the new Labubus?
What we’ve covered
- Expect skinification to hit mass retail in 2026, as personal care conglomerates like Kenvue plan new hair-care and scalp-care lines that borrow marketing and product principles from the skin-care category.
- In memoriam: Remembering the brands we lost in 2025, including Parade and Haven’s Kitchen.
- Why 2025 was Shopify’s best year yet.