Social listening during the pandemic gave The Vitamin Shoppe a window into how consumers were talking—and talking more—about creatine. So much so, that the retailer recognized the ingredient’s growth by establishing July 9 as National Creatine Day back in 2022.
“I love to talk about creatine,” Muriel Gonzalez, president of The Vitamin Shoppe, told NutraIngredients during the recent IPA World Congress + Probiota in Dublin.
“2025 wasn’t just the year of creatine, we really exploded in 2021-2022. Creatine has been a staple of our business for many, many years. Always very steady, and we began to see through social media that the audience was increasing. It wasn’t just traditional guys going to the gym wanting to bulk up a little bit, it was really going much broader.”
Creatine Central in TVS stores has begun to expand the different delivery forms, with powders, soft chews, gummies and other alternative forms, with a liquid creatine touted to be launching soon.
“We’re very excited about how important creatine has continued to be,” she said. “This was not just a fad. We’ve see a lot of those. This is something that’s really been tremendous growth, and we expect it to continue to be important for many, many years.”
Many consumers remain ‘creatine curious’, Gonzalez said, because they’ve heard a lot about it, and it has been around for a while. On the other hand, peptides are a much more recent phenomenon.
“A lot of consumers have heard or read about peptides, in a lot of cases, because of beauty,” she said.
“They first heard the terminology within beauty or with collagen, and now we’re beginning to see it become more widespread, but still very early compared to where we are with creatine. What we have seen is that any brands or items that we have that had peptide in it really, really took off, and that really happened in ’25 so we knew we had something there.”
The Vitamin Shoppe continues to grow its peptides assortment and recently brought the ingredients into its BodyTech brand and has other peptide products on shelves from AN Performance and MuscleTech.
“I think we’re just in the early stages, but we believe in it and we expect it to continue to grow,” Gonzalez said.
On-the-go functional food and beverages
Another growth area for The Vitamin Shoppe is around functional food and beverages, much of which is driven by consumer demand for protein.
“We see that a lot of customers coming in frequently for a bar,” said Gonzalez. “That business has been explosive, starting with Barebells and following up with David, which gives you 28 grams of protein for 150 calories.”
“This customer is very valuable to us because they come in frequently, and that gives us a chance to really understand them, understand their needs, and really expose the entire breadth of Vitamin Shoppe to that customer. So, we love that.”
Functional drinks is a category with a lot of innovation, she added, with the category going from energy drinks to hydration drinks, then some probiotic drinks, and now TVS is seeing a growth in protein.
Watch the video for the full interview.
