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Key Takeaways Allison Ellsworth sold her soda company, Poppi, to PepsiCo for $1.95 billion last year.
She started formulating the soda brand in her kitchen six years ago, and made an appearance on Shark Tank where she secured a $400,000 investment from guest Shark Rohan Oza.
Ellsworth believes “embarrassment is the most under-explored emotion to success” and credits repeated public discomfort with building her confidence.
Poppi soda founder Allison Ellsworth didn’t set out to try to disrupt the soda market; she was just trying to feel better.
“I was going to doctors for seven years trying to figure out what’s going on with me,” she tells Entrepreneur in a new interview. “I had tummy problems. My skin was a mess. I was tired all the time.”
When traditional medicine fell short, she turned to the Internet, discovered apple cider vinegar and realized, “If you read labels and you actually look at what you’re putting in your body, you can affect the way you feel.”
There was just one problem: straight apple cider vinegar was hard to choke down. Ellsworth decided she had to figure out a way to make it taste good without loading it with sugar or additives. She started experimenting with different recipes in her kitchen, mixing fruit juices with prebiotics and sparkling water, and asking people to try her concoctions at local farmers’ markets.
Allison Ellsworth. Credit: Ellsworth Crew
Within three weeks of selling sodas at farmers’ markets, a Whole Foods buyer came to her booth and asked to set up a meeting. By 2017, Ellsworth was selling her apple cider vinegar prebiotic soda, then called Mother Beverage, at Whole Foods. By 2018, the company had made about $500,000 in revenue.
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