Throughout her life, Allison Ellsworth had been told that the word “soda” was a bad thing to say. But instead of shying away from the fizzy beverage she always loved, Ellsworth decided to change the perception of what soda could be and what it could represent to the upcoming generation. With a drive to experiment and a lot of tenacity, Ellsworth created Poppi, a prebiotic soda that has become ubiquitous among Gen Z.
But before Ellsworth became the founding mother of Poppi, she had a journey of exploration that began in her early college years. After a brief stint of being a dance major during her freshman year at the University of North Texas, Ellsworth dropped out to take some time off. “I packed my suitcase and I moved to Spain, and I lived there with the money from college for a year,” Ellsworth tells Her Campus in an exclusive interview. However, she didn’t stay away from school for long. “I knew the power of having my degree was important,” Ellsworth says. Upon her guidance counselor’s recommendation, she went back to school the next year and got a degree in sociology, graduating within four years.
From there, Ellsworth began a career in the oil and gas research — not what you’d expect from a beverage brand founder, but “it opened my eyes into what I wanted to do,” she says. “When traveling on the road, I didn’t have the best access to food and wellness, and my tummy always hurt. This realization of health and wellness and what you put in your body can affect the way you feel.”
It was almost like you had to choose health over taste and I just didn’t want to.
This left her frustrated. “I realized that a lot of healthier things just didn’t taste very good,” she says. “It was almost like you had to choose health over taste and I just didn’t want to. So, I went to my kitchen and created the first version of Poppi.” Following that lightbulb-moment in 2015, Ellsworth and her husband Stephen began selling the sodas at farmer’s markets around the United States, working to grow their business.
Many will remember Poppi’s brief appearance on Shark Tank in 2018, back when the brand was known as Mother Beverage. While appearing on the show, the Ellsworth couple secured an investment deal with Rohan Oza to help the brand grow further.
Then, in 2020, the company rebranded to Poppi in order to appeal to a larger audience. The rebranding ended up working, and especially was taken notice from an audience Ellsworth didn’t expect: Gen Z.
Timing, according to Ellsworth, had a lot to do with Poppi’s seemingly instant connection with young consumers. “When [Poppi] launched during COVID … the entire world was dealing with something, and it created this togetherness that we hadn’t really seen before,” she says. “We were able to get TikTok on really early as a brand. I think we were the first ones to just be real.” She thinks this, combined with Poppi’s values as a brand, was what made her company stand out. “It comes down to the fact that we’ve always been really unapologetically authentic at Poppi. she says. “Gen Z’s authentic; they know what they want.”
Another game-changing factor is that Poppi isn’t just a soda brand — it’s a lifestyle brand. When you see a pink sweatshirt, chances are, you’ll be reminded of Poppi’s viral pink sweatsuit seen on influencers and celebrities all over the internet. The brand’s fashion pieces have become coveted items — and they all started because Ellsworth, once again, wanted to experiment.
“I personally started this pathway of trying to find ways to cut, sew, and dye our own apparel,” she says. She connected with a designer who’d worked for fashion houses and tested her idea out with a limited-supply drop, sending the sweatsuits to a handful of influencers — and you probably know what happened from there: “It just went absolutely viral. It became an extension of the brand. Now, we have a director of apparel development on our team, in-house at a soda company. That’s so wild to me.”
As Poppi has continued to grow rapidly, it can be hard at times for Ellsworth to balance self-care while maintaining a growing company — and a family. “I think a lot of people at my level are like, ‘Oh, I get up and I have my morning coffee, go for a run, meditate,’ and I’m like “I have 3 kids!’” she says. “I don’t have the time to do all that stuff myself.” However, she does her best to make time when she can: “I love listening to podcasts and books, [especially] self-help. If I can get that done in like 20 minutes while I’m doing the dishes at night, I feel like I’ve done something for myself for the day.”
The past year has proven to be an important one for Poppi: The brand made its first appearance at New York Fashion Week with an interactive pop up called Poppi World, launched a campus tour to different universities around the United States for Poppi fans to experience, began the first year of Poppi’s college ambassador program, and brought on Post Malone as an investor and brand partner. This is probably why Ellsworth’s advice to the next generation of entrepreneurs is all about evolving.“I would say to get used to change,” she says. “Change is a good thing.”