Key takeaways:
- BEEUP has developed a proprietary process to pack a full teaspoon of honey into each serving, giving the brand a technical edge in functional snacking.
- Next month’s Amazon rollout will act as both a growth driver and a rapid-feedback testing ground for future innovation.
- David Beckham plays an unusually hands-on role in R&D, collaborating with CEO Peter Stearns on product development as the brand explores new honey-based formats.
David Beckham has thrown his weight behind a lot of things over the years, but fruit snacks weren’t exactly on anyone’s bingo card. And yet here we are: BEEUP, the honey-powered brand he co-owns, is quietly moving into a much bigger league. The Amazon expansion hits next month, the R&D engine is revving and behind it all is CEO Peter Stearns, who spends a surprising amount of time in the kitchen with Beckham himself. Yes, literally.
What’s interesting isn’t the celebrity name attached to the pack. It’s how the team has bent a notoriously temperamental ingredient to their will. Honey is glorious on toast and a menace on a manufacturing line, but Stearns and his crew have figured out how to make it behave like a modern functional ingredient without turning the product into something medicinal or joyless. That alone gives BEEUP a different kind of swagger.
Shoppers are getting wise to the difference between ‘energy’ and ‘just another sugar bomb’. The category has become a blur of blended fruit and lofty health halos, but very few brands are offering anything that feels genuinely different. BEEUP’s bet is simple: if you can engineer honey to work at scale, you’ve got an edge that isn’t easily copied.
And that’s the real story here. Not just a celebrity play, not just a natural-sweetener angle, but a brand trying to carve out a functional niche in a category that’s overdue for something fresh. With a teaspoon of honey in every serving and an R&D process that sounds more like a culinary sciences lab than a startup snack company, BEEUP’s next phase looks distinctly more ambitious than the soft-launch era it’s leaving behind.
Cracking the honey code
The turning point came when the team figured out how to tame honey’s quirks and still make a product people actually want to eat. “Our biggest breakthrough has been developing a proprietary manufacturing process that allows us to pack a full teaspoon of honey into each serving of fruit snacks,” says Stearns. “The result is a product that truly delivers functional benefits, without the sugar crash typical of other snacks.”
It wasn’t a clean, linear process. “Balancing honey with real fruit and tapioca in a shelf-stable, great-tasting format was challenging, but it’s what makes BEEUP stand out.” Anyone in the category knows exactly what he means: honey scorches; it separates; it pulls its own stunts every time you think you’ve figured it out.
Plenty of fruit snacks call themselves ‘natural’, but beneath the glossy fruit visuals is often a base loaded with corn syrup. BEEUP plays it differently. “Our top three ingredients are non-GMO honey, real fruit, and tapioca, which set us apart from many competitors who rely on 65% corn syrup or processed sugar,” says Stearns.
Then there’s the variability factor. Honey shifts depending on floral source, region, even season. Most brands would simply dilute it or reformulate around the volatility. BEEUP didn’t. “We work closely with two of the three major producers in North America who co-op with small sustainable bee farms. These partnerships allow us to secure consistent, high-quality honey year-round.”
And while honey gives BEEUP its signature function, Stearns doesn’t want the brand painted into the supplement aisle. “BEEUP’s key functional ingredient is honey, complemented by tapioca and excellent sources of vitamins A, C, and E. We focus on benefits people can feel without overloading on functional claims, making our snacks accessible while still delivering natural energy.”
The market moment for honey-powered snacking
The functional-snacking market has split into countless micro-trends, from adaptogens to electrolytes to ‘clean energy’. But honey sits in a comparatively rare space: familiar, culturally trusted and still relatively underused at a technical level.
“Consumers are looking for sustained mental and physical energy from snacks, not just a quick sugar hit,” Stearns says. Against a category overly reliant on syrups, concentrates and wishful thinking, BEEUP’s formula gives the brand a legitimately different proposition.
There’s also the flavor story. Honey carries its own nuance, its own sense of origin and a natural halo most other sweeteners can only dream of. Yet BEEUP hasn’t leaned into elitist provenance narratives or overly educative messaging. Instead, Stearns keeps it grounded: give people something they enjoy eating that also delivers.
That balance matters. Some functional brands lean so far into performance claims they forget that snacks still have to feel like snacks. BEEUP wants to live in the middle – interesting enough for health seekers; comforting enough for the mainstream.
And as more retailers look to re-energize their better-for-you sets without alienating impulse shoppers, honey-based formats could prove exactly the kind of bridge they’re hunting for.
Amazon as an accelerant for trial, data and innovation
Next month’s Amazon rollout is arguably the brand’s most important move since its launch. Yes, it boosts visibility, but Stearns is more interested in what Amazon reveals. Shopper behavior, pack-size preferences, review language, repeat rates – the kind of rapid-fire insight physical retail simply can’t produce.
“Amazon provides a unique opportunity for trial, easy conversion and larger pack sizes,” he says. But it’s the loop that matters more. “It also offers a platform to learn and adapt quickly based on consumer feedback, allowing us to layer on new products efficiently.”
That agility is crucial. Amazon shoppers aren’t loyal by default, but they’re curious. They’ll trial a new brand at 11pm on a Tuesday simply because it looks like it might have a point of view. If BEEUP can convert that curiosity into repeat purchases, it builds a case with implications far beyond D2C.
The move also tees the brand up for the broader retail conversations that will define 2026: sugar reduction, functional energy, natural ingredient stories and founder involvement that isn’t just symbolic. BEEUP checks those boxes without trying too hard.
Inside the R&D pipeline (yes, Beckham is really in the kitchen)
If phase one was about making honey behave, phase two is about stretching its functionality in directions consumers haven’t seen yet. “Get ready,” teases Stearns. “Some exciting new items are coming soon. We are exploring new formats and ways to expand honey’s functional benefits across different snack categories.”
And here’s the curveball: Beckham is part of that process. Not as a cameo, not for a social clip (though one is coming), but as a genuine collaborator. “David is actively involved in the kitchen with me,” Stearns says. “As CEO and product lead, I collaborate with him tasting new items, looking at trends and more.”
It’s a refreshingly unmanufactured detail. Beckham, it turns out, can actually cook. “He is a talented cook who really understands nutrition and health, making product development a creative and fun process.” A recent filming session from their New York test kitchen is expected to land on social soon and will likely send fans and retailers down a rabbit hole of curiosity.
Stearns himself has the résumé to match the ambition. “Every experience has been valuable. I have launched and scaled brands both large and small, worked alongside legends in CPG like Pete Mattson and even served as a celebrity private chef,” he says. “My advice to our team is to enjoy the journey and learn from the ups and downs. R&D is full of bumps, but culture, team, and resilience make the ride worth it.”
Why BEEUP is positioned to sting harder in 2025
Celebrity-backed brands flame out all the time, usually because there’s no genuine IP or product advantage beneath the hype. BEEUP, unusually, has put its weight behind the part consumers never see: formulation infrastructure. That’s the kind of thing that creates longevity, not just splashy launch weeks.
With a proprietary honey process, a formulation that actually delivers on its claims and a distribution strategy designed to gather insight at speed, BEEUP enters 2026 in a stronger position than most early-stage snack brands can claim. And as the R&D pipeline widens into new formats, the brand isn’t just buzzing around the edges of the functional-snack space. It’s aiming higher and trying to reshape it. And if the Amazon rollout goes the way the team expects, the competition may feel the sting sooner than they think.