Move over, honey bear: How Nate’s is disrupting the honey industry for the better

With real, raw, and unfiltered ingredients, this company is making a beeline for growth.

Put down that hot tea and sip on this for a moment: Honey is now a $1.4 billion retail powerhouse redefining just how sweet clean food can be. Far from being just a quiet pantry staple and hot drink enhancer, one purveyor is redefining how the world uses, thinks, and feels about honey.

Based in Lakeville, Minn., Sweet Harvest Foods is the company that owns Nate’s honey. Already the No. 1 branded honey in the U.S. with sales revenue two times the next brand, Nate’s is soaring even higher amid deep investments in innovation, sustainability, marketing, and supply chain control.

And the numbers prove the strategy is working. Since 2021, Nate’s has seen more than a 19% compound annual growth rate in dollar sales—nearly doubling the pace of the overall honey market. But what makes this trajectory stand out is that it’s driven by consumer demand. 

While many food brands have grown through inflationary pricing, Nate’s success is consumption-driven, showing that shoppers aren’t just buying any honey. Consumers are actively choosing this brand for its quality and differentiation. Nate’s isn’t just selling honey; it’s reshaping how the category evolves.

How Nate’s changed the honey market

A decade ago, the honey aisle at the local grocer was what you’d expect. A few feet of shelf space devoted to generic honey bear bottles and a lineup of overprocessed, mass-market “honey” blends of dubious provenance with offerings even adulterated with corn syrup, rice syrup, or other dilutants.

Nate’s changed the flavor of this generic landscape. It made the intentional decision to compete against the old honey standbys (and tired, nameless bears) with a raw and unfiltered product unlike anything on the market.

Nate’s delivers on the promise of raw and unfiltered, beginning with how the honey is extracted from the hive, continuing with testing to ensure purity and origin, and ending with a purposeful process in bottling. 

Raw and unfiltered honey is gently warmed to be bottled and strained to preserve the goodness of natural honey from the hive—and that’s it. In contrast, processed honey is heated at high temperatures to pasteurize the honey, increasing the shelf-life and decreasing production costs. Adulterated honey goes further to decrease the natural sweetener with additives that cheapen not just the honey but the cost to produce it.

Glowing bright orange, Nate’s product label touts the raw and unfiltered properties as a key benefit of this gift from the hive. Short of having your own backyard beehives, Nate’s honey is as authentic as honey gets, with minimal processing, no additives, and transparent sourcing.

This shift toward real ingredients with a purposeful origin and an interesting story to tell is now echoed by other food industry trends. Think pasture-raised eggs or single-origin coffee. According to one survey, 73% of shoppers prefer foods made with recognizable, simple ingredients, reflecting a widespread pivot toward clean-label products. And consumers drawn to Nate’s incomparable authenticity and intentional simplicity continue to eat it up in ever greater quantities as they search for natural foods that meet their wellness goals.

Honey also meets demand for consumers seeking healthier lifestyles. In fact, honey holds a unique standing in the eyes of scientists. For example, one University of Oxford meta study maintains that honey is better than typical medical options at relieving upper respiratory tract infection symptoms. Other honey studies have linked raw honey to immune support, allergy relief, and antioxidant protection—further reinforcing its value as more than just a sweetener. 

Honey’s consideration and purchase amid this consumer awakening is validated with honey’s growth and its surge past traditional fruit spreads, processed sugars, and other sweeteners in popularity. In fact, honey is now a home staple, with a nearly 57% U.S. household market penetration, according to consumer insights platform Numerator.

Vertical integration advantage

With Nate’s continued success and growing consumer demand, the company is leaning into the strategy that led it into raw and unfiltered honey. It is betting on a vertically integrated operating model with ongoing efforts to own and manage its own network of beehives. Nate’s is already one of the few American honey companies that owns and operates most of its domestic beehives for unmatched control over sourcing, quality, and cost stability. 

Branded as Nate’s Hives, the company is a dedicated business division focused on honey production and honeybee stewardship. It directly employs more than 55 professional beekeepers, who tend to more than 4 billion bees across the nation, and the company plans to continue expanding its operations in the coming years. 

Nate’s network doesn’t stop with the beehives it owns but extends across the globe. The company partners with trusted beekeepers and uses sophisticated quality controls and processes to craft honey varietals that include the highest quality, best-tasting honey from countries including Canada, Brazil, and Uruguay. For its certified organic honey, Nate’s specifically sources from trusted international partners to meet strict U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic standards.

Leading the way with honey technology

Bees and high technology may not seem like a natural pairing, but that’s changing because of Nate’s support from its parent company, Sweet Harvest Foods, and its commitment to bringing more advancements to the industry. Through Nate’s Hives, proprietary hive-monitoring apps provide a technological platform for enhanced levels of control and productivity.

Robotics and warehouse automation are being used to increase efficiency and scale responsibly and sustainably. To maintain its edge over the competition, the company is also exploring ways to use AI in farming, production, and marketing.

Impact on food supply and the ecosystem

Nate’s, Nate’s Hives, and Sweet Harvest Foods view their mission as extending far beyond the security of its own supply chain. With bees responsible for pollinating more than one-third of global crops, according to the USDA, Nate’s is helping to protect the broader American food system. 

With a geographically diverse network of hives in California, North Dakota, Florida, and Texas (with more to come), Nate’s Hives helps mitigate environmental risks, ensures floral diversity, and incorporates natural foraging practices to support overall bee health and ultimately crop production.

And by investing in bee health and sustainable practices, Nate’s Hives is helping to safeguard national food security at a time when agricultural ecosystems face increasing environmental and economic pressures.

In a market historically plagued by adulteration scandals—including dilution with syrup and false labeling—this focus on technology and practices to strengthen authenticity and increase sustainability sets the brand apart.

Earning consumer trust

As with bottled water, hot sauce, and craft chocolate, savvy consumers are looking for more than just the basics with honey these days. 

Rather than make decisions based solely on price, today’s buyers expect quality, authenticity, and trust, and that’s what Nate’s delivers. Every batch of honey is tested for purity and a clean read of pesticides and antibiotics. Nate’s guarantees it and has practices and supply chain measures in place to meet that promise. Its products are also produced in Global Food Safety Initiative–certified facilities with exceptional ratings in the food industry. These same values have pushed growth in Nate’s branded honey by 168% since 2019, per Circana.

The company leads and leans into honey trends that only strengthen its position as the No. 1 branded honey. 

Nate’s 100% pure, raw, and unfiltered organic honey, for example, launched in 2017. It now accounts for 50% of all organic honey sold in the U.S. today. That suggests a clear shift in consumer preferences toward less-processed, more natural options. Meanwhile, the company’s single-serve honey minis packets have proven popular with health-conscious, on-the-go consumers, growing 174% since the product’s relaunch in June 2024.

The booming hot honey trend has added another culinary edge to the honey market. This spicy honey infused with chili is used on everything from Dave Portnoy–approved pizza to Nashville hot chicken and carefully crafted cocktails.

Honey in the clean food movement

At its core, Nate’s believes honey can be the definitive hero ingredient in the clean food movement. That’s exactly what the brand is doing by prioritizing ingredient simplicity, minimizing artificial additives, and advancing label transparency with clear practices and industry-leading guarantees.

The result is a reinvention of honey as a modern product, celebrated equally for its culinary chops and intrinsic wellness value. Led by Nate’s and Sweet Harvest Foods, the U.S. honey market has more than doubled in value, from $667 million in 2015 to $1.4 billion in retail sales 2025. It has become the fourth-fastest growing category in food and beverage, according to data from research firms Mintel and Circana.

What began as a sleepy category is now being disrupted by a company challenging conventional wisdom, and it’s not done yet. Nate’s has its sights on ensuring the future of honey with a strategy in which honey is far more than a sweetener but also a golden symbol of wellness, sustainability, and innovation set to cultivate excitement for many years to come.

Note: This article was created by Sweet Harvest Foods.