Over the last two and a half years, we really had to grow this category ourselves. During the pandemic, a lot of the growth was actually driven by our D2C business that went from under 10% of our overall revenue to now between 40 and 50%. Nationally we are in around 6,000 retail doors and will probably double that by the end of the year. Because of that growth, we are seeing other brands come into (what is now being termed as) the functional soda space. We got some sideways looks from investors who would be used to seeing a lot of products with probiotic benefits but not really anything with prebiotic at that point. And the other thing was that prebiotics themselves were pretty unknown at that point. It seemed like an insane idea to launch a soda into the natural product space. One was “Why are you doing a soda in the natural space?” People told us that it is a dying category. Ben went and did a lot of the research on that and we saw this change in the market in the science and microbiology with people switching their focus from probiotics to prebiotics and fiber as the predominant way to modify for optimal digestive health.īen spent those two years formulating this product, and once we started sharing the story, there was two things that we really got questioned on. The success we are seeing now is based on the failures that we made first time around with our first venture. In the interim period between Obi and OLIPOP, we were thinking about what we were going to do and if we were going to come back into this space again? We decided we were only going to do it if we can do it 10 times better. We launched into market about two and a half years ago with OLIPOP, but the journey started nearly a decade ago from when we first met. And that became the basis for OLIPOP, which you could say is a 15-year overnight success story.ĭavid Lester: It has been a fast journey on this one. And then in reviewing the science, I realized there were new approaches to microbiome and digestive health that were similar to things I'd done in the past, but also meaningfully different.
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Eight years ago, I started working with David on our last venture. I have been on a very long journey to try to help people get to healthier microbiomes, healthier digestive systems, better functioning brains, and finding the optimal vehicle to propagate that.
Olipop soda driver#
The driver for that is because microbiome health has such a systemic impact on overall human health, and specifically there's a function called the brain-gut axis, through which you produce the majority of your neurotransmitters in the microbiome. Dave Knox: What is the founding story of OLIPOP?īen Goodwin: I have been a product developer for 15 years and during that time, I have been involved with the launching of three different beverage companies with OLIPOP being my third. My goal has always been to find a mass scale vehicle to benefit microbiome and digestive health.