There are few products that people love as much as soda — while feeling so guilty about consuming it. “Soda has 97 percent household penetration in the U.S. alone,” says Ben Goodwin, founder and CEO of Olipop, a company selling a whole new kind of soda. “It’s a $42 billion industry. It’s been one of the largest beverage categories in the United States for 150 years. And for so many consumers, it’s a product that’s been with them since they were children.” But recently, the guilt many people felt for drinking a traditional soda seemed to overtake the pleasure — especially with, of all people, children. “When we first launched Olipop, soda was on a decades-long decline, with a sixty percent collapse in younger consumers,” says Goodwin.
So he set out to solve this conflict, so folks could have their Coke — or at least a cola — and feel good about it, too, by offering what Goodwin calls a “functional” soda. Olipop is made with botanicals, natural plant fiber, and prebiotics to support the gut’s microbiome and help with digestive health. It’s got only a little sugar and a lot of fiber. And, crucially, it still has flavors similar to those many consumers grew up slurping. “People love the way soda tastes, but they know it’s not good for them,” Goodwin says. “The drivers for the decline was the internal conflict folks had around the product — it wasn’t a lack of love for the product.”
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Now people are loving Olipop. Last year, the company did $200 million in gross sales while only being in 28,000 individual stores. “Usually when companies are getting up in that $200–250 million range, they’re in 80,000, 90,000, 100,000-plus retail doors,” Goodwin explains. “This year, we’re hurtling down the track towards a half-billion dollars, and we’ve become fully profitable as a business. And we’re still nowhere near the door count norm for a business of this size, right? As of August, we’re sitting at about 35,000 doors. So we continue to not only shatter the industry expectations of demand rates and efficiency rates — we continue to actually blow our own minds.” All of this made Goodwin one of 20 finalists on our Entrepreneur of 2024 list of innovative leaders.
It sounds like you’re starting to get into the territory of — gulp — Big Soda.
We’re the most efficient single-serve soda in the country right now. We lead the functional soda category, but we’re also putting up real numbers against the traditional soda category. I just have a massive amount of appreciation, because I know that a lot of these [traditional soda] brands have really long-term, meaningful relationships with their customers. And when their customers decide to become our customers, that’s a big extension of trust.
Is that the goal: to steal customers away from traditional soda?
We are not trying to shame anybody for loving other brands of traditional soda. I think that’s the worst way to try to go around engaging folks and having them be open. I don’t mind if you have a traditional soda and then you have an Olipop. In fact, some of our consumers just switch completely away from traditional soda, but I’d say the majority of our consumers drink both. If you are swapping out some portion of your soda with something that’s packed with fiber, low in sugar, that has different benefits to it, that’s a win. Olipop should be a really phenomenal bridge for folks to a healthier lifestyle. And look, if we are lucky enough to actually displace a lot of soda consumption or convert a lot of soda consumption, obviously, that’s a really big category.
How has Olipop managed to own the moment?
I think people are just ready for the functional soda category. We both created it and are the leaders in it. It’s a big focus of ours to ensure that we actually are bringing real science to bear. We’re not just motivated to be as empathetic and efficacious as we can be in meeting consumers where they are emotionally and delivering the taste they want. We also want to be setting new standards around what it means to be a health and wellness product.
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Olipop is groundbreaking, but there’s also a distinctly vintage vibe about it. How do you create that feeling?
It goes as deep as the formulation. When I’m building a flavor, I am always ensuring that there’s something that’s at least nostalgic for me personally. Because I grew up consuming a lot of the same stuff that so many other Americans did, my hope is that there’s that translation. But there’s also a reimagining of the flavor profile that goes hand in hand with nostalgia.
So it has elements that create that successful linkage to past experience, but also redefine the flavor profile into the future. With almost every flavor, I could take you on a storyline to how it came together and what that means. But it’s certainly a key part of the flavor architecture for me.
It also exists in our branding. Traditional Soda built incredible brands, and their approach to their brand framework is one that leans into the lightheartedness. Sometimes the nostalgia itself certainly leads into the flavor and leans into the permissibility. But for a lot of Americans, again, that relationship is more complex. What they get to do with Olipop is re-experience that without all that dissonance.
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