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Dupe culture - born in beauty aisles and amplified on TikTok - has arrived in beverages, and it is accelerating a structural shift in how retailers approach product development, private label investment and competitive differentiation. Andreas Schneider, co-founder and EVP at FedUp Foods, argues that dupe demand is converging with a deeper generational realignment: shoppers are becoming loyal to retailers, not CPG brands, and that shift is rewriting the rules for the entire beverage aisle.

Walk into any grocery store, and you’ll see it happening in real time: the lines between premium brands and private label are blurring, and fast.

Private label now accounts for roughly 19-20% of total US CPG dollar sales, according to NielsenIQ, and in some beverage subcategories, it’s growing even faster. At the same time, food-at-home prices remain elevated, up more than 25% cumulatively since 2020, based on US Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Out of necessity, consumers have recalibrated how they define value. And that’s where 'dupe culture' enters the conversation.

The loyalty inversion

For previous generations, brands ruled grocery. Shoppers were loyal to Coca-Cola, Campbell’s and Nabisco, and retailers competed to stock those brands at the best price. The landscape featured dozens of regional chains, largely interchangeable in assortment, differentiated mainly by location and weekly circulars.

That landscape is fundamentally changing. Retail consolidation and the rise of e-commerce have produced a handful of dominant players, with a smaller number of regional grocers and speciality insurgents carving out durable competitive moats through distinctive store experiences. The result is that retailers have become the brands.

For Gen Z and Millennial shoppers (now the fastest-growing private label adopter segments), this inversion feels entirely natural. According to McKinsey, 62% of Gen Z consumers would consider alternatives even when they have a favourite brand. They are not disloyal; they are loyal to a different thing. Dupe culture is the consumer expression of this shift: the willingness to try a retailer’s alternative is an extension of trusting the retailer itself.

R&D at retail speed

The dupe dynamic has fundamentally changed what retailers expect from manufacturing partners. What started on TikTok as a hunt for luxury lookalikes has evolved into something much more meaningful in food and beverage: a willingness to experiment, compare and ultimately switch, if the experience holds up.

When a functional beverage goes viral, whether through a celebrity endorsement, a TikTok trend or a Super Bowl ad, the window for a retailer to have a comparable product on shelf is measured in weeks, not quarters. Traditional branded R&D pipelines, stretching twelve to eighteen months from concept to commercialisation, cannot match that cadence.

This is where co-manufacturing partnerships become strategic assets. Contract manufacturers with modular formulation platforms and flexible production lines can move a retailer from trend identification to shelf-ready product up to three times faster than a conventional pipeline. Leading manufacturers have expanded their technical toolkit, enabling store brands to match quality claims that once belonged exclusively to premium independents. The retailers gaining the most ground treat private label as an innovation lab: launching limited-time offerings, iterating based on sell-through data and graduating successful SKUs into permanent assortment.

Value and values: the dual mandate

One of the most striking dynamics of the current market is that cost-conscious shopping and values-driven purchasing are no longer in tension. Younger consumers expect affordability, clean labels, sustainability commitments and transparent sourcing from the same product. A lower price is the entry point; the ethical and functional proposition closes the sale.

For retailers, this creates a powerful flywheel. A store brand that delivers genuine functional benefits with transparent ingredients reinforces consumer trust in the retailer, which makes them more receptive to the next private label launch. Legislation is accelerating this cycle in Europe and in the United States. Retailers who treat clean-label reformulation as a brand investment rather than a compliance cost are crafting the strongest moats.

Where dupes meet differentiation

Here is the paradox at the centre of this trend: dupe culture starts with imitation, but the retailers winning the most are using it as a launchpad for genuine differentiation. The most compelling innovation in beverage aisles today is not retailers copying branded products. It is retailers leveraging demand signals to develop products that branded competitors have not yet brought to market. With point-of-sale data, loyalty programmes and direct customer feedback, retailers have insight into shopper behaviour at a granularity most CPG companies cannot match.

Consider multi-benefit formulations, what some in the industry call 'functional stacking.' Consumers want beverages that deliver on multiple fronts: a prebiotic soda that supports energy, a protein coffee with adaptogens, a hydration drink fortified with collagen. Branded players pioneering these combinations get the headlines, but retailers with the right manufacturing partners can move faster, test more aggressively, and scale what works.

The new competitive map

The beverage aisle is being reshaped by two converging forces. Dupe culture has normalised the idea that a store brand can match or exceed a national brand. And a generational shift in loyalty means retailers (not CPG companies) increasingly own the consumer relationship. Together, these forces are creating a competitive map in which retailers compete through the distinctiveness of their own brands, while CPG brands compete to prove they still deserve shelf space.

For B2B professionals across the supply chain, the strategic imperative is clear. The dupe effect is not a passing social media trend. It is one surface expression of a deeper structural realignment in how value, innovation and trust flow through the grocery channel. The companies that build infrastructure to meet this moment – fast formulation, flexible production, transparent sourcing – will shape what comes next.