I've spent a long time watching this category from the inside. Making products, tasting other people's products, talking to the people who buy them. And lately a few patterns have started to feel less like trends and more like structural shifts. Things that aren't going away when the hype cycle moves on.

These are the three I keep coming back to.

Provenance is moving from nice-to-have to table stakes. People want to know how drinks are made and where the ingredients actually come from. Not in a box-ticking sense. In the sense that they're increasingly able to tell the difference between a brand that knows its supply chain and one that doesn't.

The work we've done with Kakadu Kitchen is a good example of what this looks like in practice. Indigenous botanicals sourced by Bininj people from country in Kakadu National Park. Ingredients that carry story and cultural significance, not just flavour. That's a fundamentally different thing from buying a flavour compound from a bulk supplier and putting "natural" on the label.

This isn't just an ethics argument, though the ethics matter. Provenance is increasingly a quality signal. Ingredients that are locally sourced, foraged, or grown with genuine care tend to taste better and behave differently in formulation. The story and the quality often point in the same direction.

Phytonutrients over flavourings. This one is less talked about but I think it's significant. Local and foraged botanicals aren't just interesting from a sourcing perspective. They're genuinely different ingredients. They haven't been stored, sprayed, or shipped across the world. The nutrient density is different. The flavour expression is different.

When you distill fresh botanical material, you capture something that a purchased flavour compound can't replicate. The gap between those two things is closing as consumers get more educated, and brands that built on shortcuts are going to feel that.

If the better option is on the shelf, that's what I'm reaching for. I think more people are starting to feel the same way.

Functional benefits with actual science behind them. Flavour alone isn't going to be enough. The next wave of non-alc is being built on ingredients that do something: L-theanine, lion's mane, Kakadu plum, magnesium glycinate, adaptogens with real efficacy data. The list keeps growing as the research catches up with the interest.

This is where HIGHR sits. Not because functional drinks are a trend worth chasing, but because there's a genuine gap between what people want from a drink, something that helps them feel a particular way, and what most non-alc products actually deliver. Sophisticated flavour and a functional stack that works. That combination is still relatively rare.

The brands that can answer that question clearly, without overpromising, are going to have a durable advantage over the ones that can't.

That's my read. Three shifts that feel structural rather than seasonal: provenance as a quality signal, whole ingredients over processed flavourings, and functional benefits grounded in evidence.

The category is still young enough that none of this is settled. But the direction feels clear.

Still not cool, by the way. Not for lack of trying.
— Tim Triggs