How Poppi Went from a Kitchen Counter to a $1.95 Billion Deal with Pepsi

Let’s talk about a soda that started in a Dallas kitchen and ended up shaking up the entire beverage industry.
This isn’t just a startup success story — it’s a reminder that some of the biggest ideas start at home, when you're just trying to fix your own problem.

Back in 2015, Allison Ellsworth was pregnant and constantly bloated. Every time she drank soda, it made her feel worse.
So she did what any wellness-obsessed, fed-up millennial might do — she started mixing up her own drinks. Sparkling water, apple cider vinegar, fresh juice. A gut-friendly soda that actually made her feel good.

She called it Mother Beverage and started selling it at a local farmers’ market. Whole Foods got curious. The samples sold out. Word spread.

Then came Shark Tank in 2018. Allison and her husband Stephen pitched the product — still homemade at that point — and investor Rohan Oza came in with $400K and a big idea: rebrand it as Poppi. Make it playful. Make it bold. Keep the mission clear — gut health, made fun.

From there, it exploded.
Poppi landed in thousands of stores. They figured out TikTok before most brands even had an account. The bright cans were everywhere. People actually liked the taste (which is rare for vinegar-based drinks, let’s be real).

And while everyone else was chasing trends, Poppi was the trend.

Fast forward to March 2025: PepsiCo announced they were acquiring Poppi for a whopping $1.95 billion.
A drink that started on a kitchen counter was now part of one of the biggest beverage companies in the world.

What made this work wasn’t just timing or trend. It was story.
It was a founder who built something real for herself first — and stayed close to the community the entire way. It was good marketing, sure. But even better instincts.

Poppi is proof that there’s room in the market for authenticity, even in the world of billion-dollar sodas.

Want to create something from your kitchen that ends up on global shelves?
Maybe it starts with solving a small problem for yourself… and showing up with it, every day, in the wild.

‍