Naked Earth has launched a line of ceremonial-grade cacao ritual packets positioned squarely in the growing coffee-alternative segment. The single-serve pouches — each a 35-gram blend of organic cacao, MCT coconut oil, cardamom, rose, vanilla, sea salt, and sunflower lecithin — retail at $65 for a box of six through www.nakedearth.love, with wholesale accounts available on request. The format is hot- or iced-prep, sugar-free, vegan, and gluten-free.
For foodservice operators and beverage buyers, the launch is less about one SKU and more about where functional beverage demand is pointing. Research published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology found that participants consuming high-dose cocoa polyphenols daily for 30 days reported significantly greater calmness and contentedness than a placebo group. That kind of clinical framing increasingly drives menu and shelf decisions, particularly in wellness-forward café, hotel F&B, and resort spa channels where guests are already seeking jitter-free energy options.
The Market Context
The functional beverage category has absorbed considerable investment over the past two years, with adaptogen coffees, mushroom blends, and cacao-forward drinks competing for the same occasion: morning or midday focus without the cortisol spike. Ceremonial cacao specifically has moved from fringe retreat programming into mainstream café menus and hotel breakfast programs. The single-serve format Naked Earth chose — a squeeze pack designed for easy prep at home or in a service setting — is a format operators will recognize from protein and collagen categories that already sit in hotel fitness centers and juice bars.
Co-founders Alyna and Elliot Rivera developed the recipe over a year of kitchen testing after finding no existing product that matched their quality and ethics criteria. "We loved the way ceremonial cacao made us feel, and we wanted that feeling to be part of our everyday lives without sacrificing quality or ethics," said Elliot Rivera, co-founder of Naked Earth. The brand sources cacao through direct-trade relationships with small farms in Central America and Africa — a sourcing story that resonates with procurement teams responding to ESG pressure and with operators building transparent supply narratives for menus and loyalty programs.
What Buyers Should Watch
The brand's $1-per-purchase donation to the Boruca indigenous community in Costa Rica and its use of industrially biodegradable packaging are signals aimed as much at wholesale buyers and institutional accounts as at direct-to-consumer shoppers. Specialty grocery buyers, hotel room amenity programs, and spa F&B directors have shown appetite for products that arrive with an embedded impact story — it reduces the work required at the point of sale or service. The direct-trade cacao angle also positions Naked Earth alongside a small cohort of premium suppliers that operators can cite by name on menus, a value-add that has become a meaningful differentiator in the $20-and-above breakfast set.
For operators evaluating whether to pursue a wholesale relationship, the current price point — roughly $10.83 per serving at retail — places the product in premium-gift and amenity territory rather than everyday café throughput. That suggests the highest-fit accounts in the near term are boutique hotels, wellness retreats, yoga studios with a retail shelf, and specialty food retailers rather than high-volume quick-service or casual dining. Operators interested in the brand-launch trajectory of functional beverage startups should track how Naked Earth scales its direct-trade supply chain as wholesale volume grows — that constraint will shape availability and pricing flexibility more than demand will.
Anyone building out a functional beverage menu strategy in 2026 should monitor whether cacao earns a permanent daypart slot or remains an add-on. Consumer adoption in hotel and spa channels will be the leading indicator.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
