Hello hello!
Expo West is somehow already only 4 months away (!!!), and there’s one major thing to start planning now if you want to make an impact this year… and it’s not your booth.
We’re talking MERCH. Let’s face it: when you come home from Expo, every sample you tried is one tummyache blur. But merch is what actually lives on. It’s the conversation piece at the airport, the tote that becomes your grocery run go-to, and the reason you remember a brand among 3,000 exhibitors.
If you’re doing merch, though, you can’t just slap your logo on a tote. Every year, brands have upped the ante on merch and showed us what it means to stand out, from Belgian Boys’ pink puffer tote in 2025 to wildwonder’s fruit bag last year.
That’s where Tart Merch comes in. Tart Merch (the designers behind Expo merch/uniforms for brands like Oats Overnight and wildwonder), builds everything from scratch with its factories instead of pulling from a catalog, with low minimums and pricing in line with standard swag suppliers. Here’s a peek into everything Tart offers!
We’re working with Dasha at Tart Merch to do Express Checkout’s first merch drop (eep!), including a custom tote, sweatshirt, t-shirt, and snack pouch… and we’re obsessed with every piece. Throughout the design process, Dasha was incredibly thoughtful in incorporating Express Checkout’s story into every item—not just our “vibe” or “aesthetic.” It was fully customized every step of the way, and the pieces came out better than we could’ve imagined (can’t wait to show you!).
Fully custom merch takes 6-12 weeks to move through design, sampling, production, and shipping, so NOW is the time to hit up Dasha for your Expo West merch or uniform needs!!!
First 10 readers to book a call get two FREE custom merch concepts!
And with that, let’s get into our picks of the week →
Jenna’s Pickup:
Unwind - Sparkling Calm Beverage
I have been, for lack of a better term, incredibly hopped-up as of late.
The past three weeks have been pretty overwhelming—featuring our major acquisition announcement, two trips, onboarding, and a new (hefty) commute. While it’s all been SO exciting, I have sent at least seven texts in the last 15 days featuring some rendition of “my brain is on fire.” I’ve been waking up at random hours of the night out of pure, heart-racing eagerness. I could not get myself to calm down… which is why Unwind’s recent launch couldn’t have been more perfect timing.
Unwind is a new functional beverage brand by the founders of THC bev Nowadays. It’s one of the many pivots we’ve been seeing as THC brand builders navigate the looming federal hemp ban: Cann launched a 0mg line—which also includes magnesium and L-theanine—and Cantrip’s makers launched On the Brightside, a soda made with kanna extract (we had the founder on a pod, where he explained the ban SO well).
Nowadays is a really successful THC bev, so I had high hopes for their next endeavor. Needless to say, it did not disappoint.
Quick facts: A sparkling functional beverage in fun fruit flavors, made to help you relax, featuring magnesium L-threonate, L-theanine, and chamomile.
Reasons to love:
It actually works. If you’re a long-time reader, you know I’m a functional bev + supplement skeptic, but this functional drink is actually functional. It was thoughtfully crafted with two forms of magnesium: Magtein, a clinically-studied form of magnesium L-threonate designed to cross the blood-brain barrier and elevate magnesium levels directly in the brain, and magnesium bisglycinate, which is gentle on the stomach and great for physical relaxation. The addition of L-theanine offers a calm focus that slows some of my racing thoughts (a challenging task indeed!). This specific, intentional blend of ingredients allows Unwind to offer a mind-and-body relaxation effect, without causing any digestive upset often triggered by cheaper forms of magnesium.
For me, the effect was noticeable nearly immediately. I can drink just half of one of these cans, and quickly feel like I have fully exhaled, like the thoughts running around in my brain can finally sit down, maybe even put their feet up. The most significant shift I’ve noticed is in my sleep—after having half an Unwind a bit before bed, I fall asleep and stay asleep, avoiding that 4 AM wake-up that results in an hour of tossing and turning. For someone who is often plagued by middle-of-the-night rumination, this actually feels like a miracle.
Disclaimer: Of course, all bodies are different!!! I don’t know how this will impact you, dear reader, but I can only hope you can sip into a semblance of the calm I’ve felt upon consuming these.Fruity and light. In an industry bombarded with new functional sodas, I actually appreciate that Unwind isn’t a soda, but a light sparkling bev with a juicy, just-sweet-enough fruit flavor. The cherry is by far my favorite; it tastes like real cherry juice, not that artificial, cough-syrupy flavor I associate with most cherry bevs. At only 25 calories and 4g of sugar, it’s a light beverage that you can feel good about sipping before bed, no impending sugar crash or funky fiber emergency to stall your sleep.
Where to buy: Walmart and TikTok Shop!
Nate’s Pickup:
Gnü bone broth chews (for dogs)
As much as I love a treat for myself, I LOVE getting a treat for my dog even more, because she is my world and she deserves everything good in life (especially if I can get her healthier, better-for-you treats). She doesn’t know any better. She’s just a little girl. She’s a little 3-year-old Jack Russell Chihuahua mix (hi Ginger) who doesn’t know any better, and I’m here on this earth to take care of her. And thank god we got served an ad for this brand, because there’s so much I love about Gnü, so let’s get into it.
Quick Facts: Gnü makes a long-lasting dog chew where the primary ingredient is slow-simmered bone broth, solidified into a stick that softens as the dog chews. hey come in six flavors (Beef Bone Broth, Chicken Chamomile, Beef & Bison, Maple Bacon, Beef & Berry, Peanut Butter & Pumpkin) and are made in New Hampshire.
Reasons to love:
Ginger adores this. If I’ve learned one thing having a dog, it’s that they absolutely have preferences for their food and their treats. They might try to eat a lot of things, but there’s always one thing they like more than the others. She was almost immediately obsessed with these bone broth sticks. You could see it in her eyes how excited she got about them. When I tried to take one away from her, she would run away with it…very fast. She never did that with any of the bully sticks we’ve gotten her, and we have tried a lot of different brands. It lasted longer than a bully stick too, and she was never not interested in it. The brand says their small chew keeps the founder’s 25-pound terrier mix busy for two to three days, which from what I saw for my 12-pound little girl tracks.
Built different. This isn’t some half-assed, half-baked treat. Developing it apparently took 15 months of R&D, more than 1,200 formulation batches, a team of three food scientists, and PhD materials scientists from MIT. Exactly the kinds of nerds I want making food! The ingredient list is bone broth, collagen peptides, a touch of gelatin, natural flavor, and sea salt, and that’s it. Each chew is also up to 82% protein, low fat, ~100 calories, and packs 28 grams of broad spectrum collagen. The texture is also really impressive. It’s firm enough to last a while but softens on contact with saliva and re-firms when she puts it down, so it doesn’t splinter or fracture the way bully sticks can. I’m less worried about her chocking on it. They put the same effort into this that somebody would put into human food, and I think it shows.
Nothing goes to waste. This part I thought was very very clever. So when a chew gets down to a nub, you can bake it and it puffs up into a whole new treat. So the entire stick gets used, just in different forms along the way, so there’s no sad little end piece getting thrown out or (worse) swallowed whole.
Where to buy: online
In case you missed it… 🎧
This week, we’re back after a little hiatus, and we’ve got an extra fun episode for you in our fancy new Morning Brew studio!!!
We’re kicking things off with Coke and Pepsi’s latest functional soda wars and the booming “hard sports drink” category. Then, we’re diving into the Whole Foods 2027 Trends Report (check out the full report here)—what we loved (Beautrition, Dish Reinvention, Yoshoku Effect, The Bean Boom), what missed the mark (Ingredient Minimalism, Zero Waste 2.0, Terroir’s New Territory), and the two massive trends Whole Foods left out entirely. 👀
Catch the full episode below 👇