CEO Corner: Cadence’s Ross MacKay on Disrupting the Hydration Market

MacKay, who founded Daring Foods and turned into a leader in plant-based meet, has similarly lofty goals for Cadence

For Ross MacKay, the best businesses are passion projects. 

Back in 2018, MacKay, then a full-time plant-based eater, founded Daring Foods, a plant-based chicken brand that he helped scale into a giant, securing over $100 million in funding before exiting the company in 2024. 

MacKay has a similarly grand vision for Cadence, an advanced hydration and performance supplement brand he co-founded with fellow entrepreneur George Heaton last year. 

Last summer, Cadence launched its debut product, a canned electrolyte drink that it marketed as the world’s first ready-to-drink, mineral salt-based hydration beverage. Since then, Cadence has expanded its product line to include salt-infused energy bars and a variety of pre-, during and post-workout sachets. 

In April, Cadence partnered with The Vitamin Shoppe to make its canned drinks available at the retail giant’s stores in the United States. It’s the first step in what Cadence hopes will be a massive brick-and-mortar retail expansion across America. 

MacKay sat down with Athletech News to outline his vision for the future of Cadence, including the brand’s plans for retail expansion, new product launches and its mission to disrupt the market for what MacKay calls “performance supplements.”

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your career in entrepreneurship, including Daring Foods, and why you decided to co-found Cadence as your next venture? 

Ross MacKay: Everything I’ve done has been born out of real need and passion, which I think is the most important thing for any founder. I’ve been involved with health and wellness since I was very young – I played sport for my country growing up – so the relationship between what you eat and drink and how you perform has always been a big part of my life. That turned into a passion, and I wanted to start at a brand. I was very fortunate to grow that business, Daring Foods, into one of the fastest-growing brands in the space. We really built the plant-based chicken category. 

However, I’ve since moved into slightly different eating habits, starting to consume a bit more animal-based meat. I still believe in the mission, but I’m not a plant-based consumer to the same extent. So I decided to part ways with that business, although I remain on the board and am a large holder of the business. 

Just like Daring Foods, Cadence started from passion. I run marathons and I’ve competed in events like Hyrox, so the benefits of proper hydration have been integral to my lifestyle. But I wanted to do something a bit different in the space – that’s always my reason for starting a new business. 

ATN: What separates Cadence from other brands in the hydration and supplement categories? 

RM: I’d say we’re a performance supplement brand; we’re not necessarily a hydration company.  We started with hydration because we believe proper performance starts with proper hydration. When we looked at the category and asked what could be done better, we looked at a few major things. One is asset delivery: our primary product is a can. Also, it’s the first can on the market that delivers sodium, magnesium and potassium in the correct amounts. 

We also have a system: Core, Race and Recovery. Core is everyday hydration. Race is for race-day hydration – sometimes you need that little bit extra when you’re competing, whether it’s creatine, caffeine, nitrate, etc. Recovery is to fuel and recover for your next day. 

ATN: What’s the ideal balance of electrolytes in a hydration product, and where do other brands go wrong?

RM: I wouldn’t say other brands necessarily get it wrong, but we’re more performance-oriented. The average sodium loss in an hour of training sits at around 550 to 750 milligrams. We have the first-to-market product with 500 milligrams of sodium, along with magnesium (295 mg) and potassium (190 mg), in a can. And it’s all based on science that we’ve looked at with our head of nutrition, who also works with the Boston Celtics.

ATN: Is Cadence a mass-market brand or is it catered more toward athletes and fitness enthusiasts?

RM: When we started, our mission was to help endurance athletes optimize their physical performance through better, cleaner hydration. We’ll likely have a wider audience as we scale. We just launched into wholesale retail (Cadence is now available at Vitamin Shoppe locations in the U.S.) and we’ll explore additional distribution across food service and retail locations where you can just pop in and grab a can. So we may compete with diet soda or alternative sodas. 

But it also depends on the product. Our can, for example, is a bit more mass. But when we think about our sachets or other products, we’re looking more at goal-oriented athletes. Those are the run-club members, the half-marathoners, etc.  These people are looking to optimize their health –  they’re buying the most expensive trainers (sneakers), gut health products and sleep products. But for hydration, that product hasn’t really existed.

ATN: Fresh off the Vitamin Shoppe deal, what’s Cadence’s brick-and-mortar retail expansion strategy in the U.S.? 

RM: Daring was in 75,000 distribution points across the country, so we’re audacious and ambitious about where we’re going to take this brand, within our can business for sure. (The Vitamin Shoppe) is our first retail partnership. Until now, we’d been exclusively online, along with a few specialty retailers. By the end of the year, I’d expect that we’ll have distribution in close to 5,000 stores in the country. Eventually, I want you to be able to pop into your local bodega, gas station or grocery store and get our product. 

ATN: Cadence recently launched the Core 40 bar, which essentially combines an energy bar with sodium. What was the idea behind the Core 40, and what other products could we see next?

RM: We want to spearhead innovation in this category in a big way. Our overview of products is ready-to-drink (cans), ready-to-go (sachets) and other, which could be bars or powders, for example. Our Core 40 bar has 40 grams of carbs and 400 milligrams of sodium; it’s the first brand to deliver this ratio in the market. When we launched it online on our website, we thought it would last about six months. We pretty much sold out in a week. People were buying three to four boxes in one on one go, and the feedback has been incredible.

A lot of our innovation will come in flavors, too. Our can, for example, was one flavor, now it’s two. We’re planning to launch two more flavors.

ATN: What trends are you most excited about in the healthy food and beverage space? 

RM: I’m excited about a number of things.  … I’m very bullish on going back to a clean-label approach, so whole foods. I think consumers are becoming more aware of ingredients. Take seed oils, for example. Look at what Sweetgreen has done with their fries (removing seed oils). I’m very bullish on brands like Jacob that are minimally processed. They’re not as focused on calories because calories are good for you. It’s more about what you’re actually eating.