Why “protein-plus” retains subscribers 36% better than protein alone

Protein is the defining macronutrient of 2026.

It’s in the coffee, the water, the cereal, and the candy, and it’s no longer enough.

Which is why nearly every health brand is racing to stack a second benefit on top of it to stand out (Food Dive). Most of that coverage reads protein as the obvious win: get on the trend, put it on the label, ride the demand.

But the recurring cart tells a more useful story.

Protein won the shelf, but plain protein is the leakiest functional claim we can see; the brands earning more reorders are the ones stacking a second function on top of it. “Protein-plus” is our name for exactly that: a protein product that also names a second benefit on the label, like collagen, gut health, or electrolytes, rather than protein on its own.

Across our health and wellness and food and beverage brands, plain protein reorders on just 47.5% of its renewal cycles and loses one in five subscribers to active cancellation (the worst retention of any functional claim we track). But add a second function and protein (paired with collagen, gut health, electrolytes, and the like) reorders at 64.5% with roughly half the voluntary churn.

Yet the money keeps flowing into plain protein: its subscription sales grew 3.6 times since 2023 while “protein-plus” slipped from 49% to 31% of all protein sales.

Our take: the repurchase rate, not the initial sale, is the scoreboard that matters.

Is protein actually winning in the subscription space?

Protein grew to 6.6% of health and wellness and food and beverage subscription sales in 2025, up from 5.2% in 2023, with sales up about 2.6 times.

In dollars, protein was a $365.8M subscription category across Recharge’s health and wellness and food and beverage brands in 2025, up from $138.7M in 2023, and it keeps taking a bigger slice of these verticals’ recurring revenue.

Year	Total H&W + F&B subscription sales	Protein (plain + plus)	Protein share	“Protein-plus” share within protein
2023	$2,685.5M	$138.7M	5.2%	49.0%
2024	$3,833.6M	$196.1M	5.1%	39.9%
2025	$5,580.8M	$365.8M	6.6%	30.9%

The 6.6% share is modest on its own, and we won’t dress it up. The story here is in the growth rate, and in the last column, which is where the story turns.

So why’s everyone buying the wrong protein products?

From 2023 to 2025, protein-only subscription product sales grew 3.6x . “Protein-plus” subscription sales grew just 1.7x over the same period.

Which means “protein-plus” fell from 49% to 31% of all protein sales.

In dollars, the rush is into protein-only sales which… doesn’t make sense.

But the same shift holds among brands that have been selling since before 2023, where “protein-plus” slipped from 50% to 33% of protein sales; this is an organic move in what’s being bought, not the result of new protein-focused brands entering the market.

It’s also concentrated.

In 2025 the ten largest protein brands accounted for about 68% of protein subscription sales. This is the commoditization trap in real time: capital floods the hot, legible claim, and the harder-to-copy version gets under-built. The cross-brand view behind our Subscription Trend Report is the only place a pattern like this shows up, because no single brand can see the category tilting around it.

Does “protein-plus” actually retain subscribers better?

Plain protein reorders on 47.5% of its renewal cycles against 64.5% for “protein-plus”.

Metric	Plain protein	“Protein-plus”
Reorder (process) rate, pooled	47.5%	64.5%
Active (voluntary) churn, pooled	20.0%	11.2%
Reorder rate, typical store (median)	54.2%	56.9%
Active churn, typical store (median)	15.6%	14.6%

So… yes!

Which functional claims keep subscribers reordering?

Stacked and companion claims like omega-3, “protein-plus”, and collagen reorder most reliably, at about 64%, while single-ingredient hype claims like plain protein and creatine reorder least.

Ranked across the platform, the reorder scoreboard sorts cleanly. The claims that pair with something or ride alongside a routine sit at the top. The loud, single-ingredient claims that commoditize fastest sit at the bottom.

Functional claim	Reorder rate	Active churn
Omega 3/6/9	64.9%	11.8%
“Protein-plus”	64.5%	11.2%
Collagen	63.8%	11.8%
Vitamin	61.2%	15.5%
Gut / probiotic	60.9%	15.3%
Electrolyte / hydration	59.9%	15.2%
Magnesium	59.7%	14.9%
Greens	59.0%	17.5%
Adaptogen	54.1%	19.8%
Creatine	52.6%	16.8%
Plain protein	47.5%	20.0%

Plain protein and creatine sitting at the bottom is the same pattern we found when we looked at creatine on its own: the more a single ingredient commoditizes, the worse it holds subscribers.

Stacking a second function is one way to climb back up the board.

What should subscription operators do about it?

Operators can capture the shift by reading reorder rates by product claim, then stacking a second function into the protein subscriptions they already have.

Four moves we recommend:

1. Read your reorder rate by product claim, not just topline sales. The thing that’s growing in dollars and the thing that’s retaining can be two different claims, and a topline number won’t tell them apart. This is exactly what subscription analytics is for.
2. Stack a second function into your protein subscriptions. A build-a-box or bundle that pairs protein with collagen, gut health, or electrolytes is the operational version of “protein-plus”, and you can cross-sell it into the subscriptions you already have rather than spending to acquire new ones.
3. Attack plain protein’s voluntary churn directly. One in five plain-protein subscribers actively cancels, so cancellation prevention flows are the most direct lever on the leakiest part of the claim.
4. Be honest with yourself about the size of the edge. At the typical store the retention gap is a few points, so treat “protein-plus” as durable differentiation worth building, not a switch that fixes retention on its own.

The through-line is that you can only run any of this if your platform shows you reorder rate by claim, the way it already does for health and wellness and food and beverage brands on Recharge.

tl;dr… protein may have won the shelf, but on its own, it’s churn waiting to happen. Stack a second function into the protein subscriptions you already have, print money.

About this report

These insights come from active Recharge brands in the health and wellness and food and beverage verticals, all selling subscriptions on Shopify.

The category-share figures cover the full calendar years 2023 through 2025. The retention figures cover the most recent twelve complete months, and “reorder rate” is the share of scheduled renewal cycles that actually processed.

We grouped products into functional claims by reading their titles, types, and tags, so “protein-plus” means a protein product that also names a second benefit on its label, not a verified formulation. Every figure is aggregated across brands; no single merchant’s numbers appear.

The wide reorder gap is volume-weighted, so it leans on a few large brands; the typical-store gap is smaller. And this is an association, not proof: stacking a second function tracks with better retention, but we can’t say it causes it.

FAQ

Does “protein-plus” retain better than plain protein?

In Recharge’s subscription data, yes. “Protein-plus” reorders at 64.5% with 11.2% active churn against plain protein’s 47.5% and 20.0%, though most of that gap comes from a handful of large plain-protein brands, and the typical-store gap is narrower.

What is “protein-plus”?

A protein product paired with a second functional benefit, like collagen, gut health, electrolytes, or fiber, rather than protein on its own.

Which functional claims retain subscribers best?

Stacked and companion claims (omega, “protein-plus”, collagen) reorder most reliably. Single-ingredient hype claims like plain protein and creatine reorder least.