Protein powder pumps up coffee menus around the world as demand for functional ingredients grows. Photo credit: Phillip Pessar
Health trends come and go, and coffee is as susceptible to these cycles as any other industry. The latest such trend is protein, which has taken the food and beverage sector by storm over the past few years and has recently become a big deal within the coffee industry.
A 2025 report by the agribusiness giant Cargill found that 61% of consumers were actively increasing their protein intake in 2024, up from 48% in 2019. A combination of social media influencers and other health trends helped push protein into the mainstream. Younger consumers are leading the charge: Just 34% of older generations are willing to spend more on protein-enhanced items, but that rises to 56% for Millennials and Gen Z.
The coffee industry has taken notice. The high-protein coffee market was estimated at $4.5 billion in 2024, and is projected to grow to as much as $16.5 billion by 2035. Big chains like Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee have introduced protein-infused coffee products in response to growing customer demand.
“Our new protein beverages tap into the growing consumer demand for protein in an innovative, premium, and delicious way,” Tressie Lieberman, Starbucks' global chief brand officer, said in a September 2025 press release. The company released a ready-to-drink (RTD) protein-enhanced coffee in the UK a year earlier. Health influencers had previously gone viral on TikTok, bringing their own protein powder to customize their Starbucks coffee orders.
Protein and Coffee: Good in Moderation
Protein is an essential macronutrient that acts as a building block for many of the body’s critical functions. While consuming protein is important, most people living in developed countries already get enough as part of their normal diets, and focusing too much on protein can be actively harmful.
“When we overfocus on one nutrient overall or at any given time, we are often shortchanging our body of the nutrition it needs to thrive for health and performance,” nutritionist Alexa McDonald Moriarty told Business Insider.
Similarly, coffee is widely considered healthy in the right amounts. Too much caffeine can be dangerous, while the majority of studies on coffee and health find that moderation is best. A wide-ranging review of decades’ worth of research, published in October 2025, found that moderate coffee consumption was beneficial across various health outcomes.
Protein coffees suffer from the same issues as other protein-enhanced products. “People are being hoodwinked into thinking 'high protein' on a label necessarily means that it is healthy,” Federica Amati, a research fellow at the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, told the BBC.
Zooming Out
The rise of protein coffee (or “proffee” as it’s sometimes dubbed) is just a part of the wider functional coffee trend that has engulfed the industry over the past decade. These drinks, dominated by RTD formats, contain ingredients like mushrooms, superfruits, cannabinoids, or collagen, and are often marketed as healthier than regular coffee.
But much like the wider protein-enhanced product trend, the actual efficacy of these drinks is debated. Because functional beverages are a relatively new category, there hasn’t been a lot of research on their actual effects. However, the size of the market — and its projected growth — means that ever more companies are likely to jump on the protein coffee bandwagon.