Content creator CJ Weber’s TikTok audience watches him pop a caffeine pouch under his upper lip as casually as he might open a can of Red Bull. The 149,000 followers who see it represent a microcosm of what’s happening to the caffeine pouch category globally — viral, fast-growing, and increasingly mainstream, but still carrying questions about safety, regulation, and who these products are really for.
Caffeine pouches — small sachets placed between the lip and gum that deliver caffeine through buccal absorption — have moved from an niche concept to a product with genuine retail footprint in the UK. Last month, Finnish brand Denssi secured a national listing at WH Smith, a breakthrough that suggests the format has crossed an important threshold from specialist online retailers to mass-market bricks-and-mortar distribution.
The Market Numbers
Getting precise market data on caffeine pouches is difficult given the category’s youth, but Research & Markets estimates the global market will grow from $71.3 million this year to $107.2 million by 2032. In the UK specifically, Haypp — a specialist platform for tobacco-free oral products — reports that around 10% of its UK consumers now use caffeine pouches, up from 5% the previous year. That doubling in a single year signals a category in acceleration, not merely experimentation.
US brand Wip surveyed over 10,000 adults aged 21 to 40 and found nearly 50% purchase intent among caffeine consumers. UK consumers are more cautious — only 20.8% were familiar with caffeine pouches in a survey of 1,921 UK adults conducted for The Grocer, and just 26.1% expressed interest in trying them. But those figures are notably higher among 35 to 44-year-olds, suggesting the format may find its footing with a slightly older, performance-oriented professional demographic before spreading wider.
Who’s Buying and Why
Brands in the space broadly target adults in their twenties and thirties — on-the-go professionals, fitness enthusiasts, gamers, shift workers, and construction workers looking for a discreet, convenient alternative to energy drinks. The format’s appeal is straightforward: portable, flavored, zero-calorie, and usable anywhere without the logistical requirements of a can or cup.
The category sits at an interesting intersection. The UK energy drink market delivered another year of double-digit value growth in 2025 — up 10.6% to more than £2.7 billion in grocery. Nicotine pouches, meanwhile, have seen explosive growth: Velo recorded £113.4 million in sales on the back of 66.7% growth last year. Caffeine pouches borrow the format and discretion of nicotine pouches while targeting the functional energy occasion of drinks — a potentially powerful combination.
The Image Problem
The challenge is that caffeine pouches inherit some of nicotine pouches’ baggage alongside their format. Campaigns group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) has flagged concerns about aggressive pouch marketing reaching children, and the visual and behavioral similarities between caffeine and nicotine pouches make it difficult for caffeine brands to entirely escape the association.
In The Grocer’s survey, 30% of UK adults described caffeine pouches as “worrying” and 21% as “addictive” — even though, for most adult consumers, the caffeine doses involved are within safe daily limits. The strength variation across brands doesn’t help: some products contain just 50mg per pouch while others reach 200mg — a significant range for a category with no statutory age restriction, while energy drinks above 150mg per serving cannot be sold to under-16s.
Amazon told The Grocer it would be “guided by legislation” on age restrictions. WH Smith did not respond to requests for comment.
The Wellness Opportunity
The brands most likely to succeed long-term are positioning caffeine pouches as a wellness product rather than a stimulant shortcut. Some founders — like Kirke Lashelle of US brand Kaffa, who became addicted to nicotine pouches at 15 — came to the category specifically to offer a safer alternative. US brand Deckiez positions its pouches as a “knockout blow to nicotine.”
Alex Beckett, principal food and drink strategist at Mintel, is measured but optimistic: “Caffeine pouches are stimulating, discreet, flavoursome and zero-calorie, so they present competition” to energy drinks. Whether that competition becomes meaningful, he suggests, will depend on how the category’s best players handle the wellness repositioning — and whether regulators give them the space to do it.
“The human need to stay productive, invigorated and alert isn’t going to decline any time soon,” Beckett said. For a category that’s essentially betting on that need, the runway looks long — if the image problem can be solved.
