Growth 101: Lessons from 2025's Fastest Growing Emerging Brands

Challenger brands aren't just growing on Instacart, they're reshaping the market.

We're pulling back the curtain on exactly how they’re doing it. We sat down with some of 2025's fastest-growing emerging brands: Archer Meat Snacks, Built Bars, Cymbiotika, and Scott & Jon's to understand the strategies, tactics, and mindsets fueling their explosive growth.

Monumental growth starts with great products

Before any marketing strategy comes into play, the product itself has to deliver. "For us, it always starts with the food,” said Scott Demers from Scott & Jon’s. “Before we launch anything new, we have to be confident it tastes great and fits naturally within the Scott & Jon's lineup. If it's not something we'd be excited to eat ourselves or serve our families, it's not ready to go out into the world."

This product-first philosophy isn't just about quality control, it's centered around building authentic brand equity that turns first time buyers into brand loyalists. When consumers first discover your product you have one opportunity to exceed expectations. And when you do, those customers come back.

Great products need great placements

Successful product launches require bringing retailers into the conversation early, ensuring your product has a clear place on shelf, and aligning your launch strategy with what consumers are most excited about.

“There needs to be consumer demand, but if it has no place to live on shelf and retailers don't love the idea, you're doomed to fail. Securing that feedback and buy in is paramount,” said Andrew Thomas from Archer Meat Snacks.

Once you earn shelf space, it’s essential to accelerate growth and drive sales velocity to stay stocked.

Driving early sales requires a data-driven strategy aligned to your specific brand goals. “Establish goals, stay focused, use data to guide, and leverage merchandising and ads together,” said Ben George from BUILT Puff.

Great products must be easy to discover

Breaking into shoppers' carts means prioritizing discoverability and purchase ease across the entire journey.

"The goal is to make it easy for consumers to understand what's new and why they should care, and then make it easy for them to try it," says Scott Demers. "We tend to prioritize channels where discovery feels natural and where consumers can act on that discovery right away, whether that's in store or online. A successful launch is about driving trial, listening closely to feedback, and letting the product earn its place over time."

On Instacart, this means leveraging formats like sponsored products to capture high-intent searches, display ads to inspire discovery in complementary categories, and tools like AI-generated landing pages to tell your brand story at the moment of consideration.

“Make the SKUs that matter, available; stick to a core hero product or two and hammer home your messaging and imaging with accompanying CPM campaigns; experiment with building your brand a bit on the platform and not only limiting it to product ads or direct conversion based,” said Ryan Delany from Cymbiotika.

Build full-funnel strategies to compound growth

The 75 brands on our 2025 Fastest Growing Emerging Brands list share a common approach: they leverage Instacart's comprehensive suite of marketing tools to maximize impact at every stage of the customer journey.

“If you see an area of your business start to catch fire, pour gasoline on it. Prioritize that area or segment, find ways to increase investment, and make sure that innovation pipeline is humming along to continue to support growth,” said Andrew Thomas.

To drive conversion, brands use sponsored products to get products in front of high-intent shoppers actively searching in your category. The results speak for themselves: in 2025 challenger brands drove over *6x sales growth and more than *2x customer growth compared to the top 80 CPGs.

The brands seeing the fastest growth didn't stop there. Adding display ads to their media mix introduces their brands to new audiences, tells your brand story, and accelerates discovery beyond search. Display ads help emerging brands reach **1.4x as many consumers compared to sponsored product campaigns alone.

Tips for making the list in 2026:

Start with the product

Take a data driven approach.

Test, learn, iterate, and stay consistent.

Amplify your success.

Ready to see the full list of 2025's Fastest Growing Emerging Brands? View the complete list here and discover what's possible when great products meet the right strategy.

^{Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes.}  

^{*Source: Instacart data, 2025 YoY Challenger Brands defined by Instacart. Compared to Top 80 CPG partner. Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes}

^{**Reach is based off of Instacart Ads internal data, Q3 2025. Brands were live on both Sponsored Products and one or more Display tactics for 7+ days in the studied period. Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes.} 

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