Why Olipop's founder hasn't sold out to Pepsi or Coca-Cola
Why Olipop's founder hasn't sold out to Pepsi or Coca-Cola
Brian SozziMon, August 24, 2026 at 10:31 AM UTC
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Beverage giants PepsiCo (PEP) and Coca-Cola (KO) — always thirsty for growth and willing to pay top dollar for it — have come a-knocking on the door of Olipop co-founder Ben Goodwin.
But, he is in no rush to get one of their checks. In fact, Goodwin could imagine a scenario in which Olipop is its own publicly traded company, buying up its own beverage upstarts.
"I certainly have thought about it [building a broader brand of beverages],” Goodwin said in a new episode the Power Players With Brian Sozzi podcast (see video above; listen below). “My goal is growth and a healthy P&L and a great product with a healthy customer base. That's the foundation of a great company. And those will always be my primary focuses. And what's nice about focusing on that relentlessly is that as long as you deliver on those things, you get a lot of optionality in terms of how you get to your liquidity event. Now because we've raised investor capital, simple math is that you do need to return liquidity, but you've got a variety of ways to go about accomplishing that."
Coke and Pepsi have made a host of splashy deals in recent years, effectively taking potential next-gen beverage companies out of the running for a public listing.
PepsiCo scooped up prebiotic sparkling soda brand Poppi from its founder in 2025 for $1.95 billion. Before that, in 2021, Coke purchased BodyArmor from its founder for $5.6 billion. Dr Pepper Snapple Group bought Bai Brands in 2017 for $1.7 billion from its founder.
"Certainly under an IPO scenario, which is a valid option for us because we do have the P&L for it. I would likely move in that direction,” Goodwin added. “All of a sudden, you can start expanding beyond beverage in terms of what you're thinking about, and you can have a mixed product portfolio. And so you could buy consumer brands that already exist and integrate them into your portfolio. You can also buy ingredient technology companies or flavor houses, like Monster bought their own flavor house, and they've done a really great job of that. We fit more in that bucket, which honestly is probably connected to the fact that I'm the co-founder and I'm still the formulator and kind of our driver of innovation. It's still a full-time job."
Selling out is a no-go for Goodwin, which perhaps is unsurprising given how passionate he is about the brand.
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After struggling with his health and diet as a teenager, college dropout and self-taught formulator Goodwin set out to transform the beverage industry by creating a gut-healthy alternative to traditional soft drinks.
Following the failure of his first probiotic soda startup, Obi, Goodwin teamed up with co-founder David Lester in 2018 to launch Olipop with just $100,000 in capital.
Formulated with prebiotics, botanicals, and plant fiber to support digestive health, the brand quickly became a viral powerhouse and disrupted the mainstream soft drink market. Driven by massive growth across major retailers like Target and Walmart, Olipop's revenue scaled rapidly from under $1 million in 2019 to now over $400 million.
The company closed a major Series C funding round that cemented its status as a functional soda giant and officially valued Olipop at $1.85 billion. Today, the brand holds a commanding majority share of the functional soda market and continues to challenge legacy beverage giants.
Goodwin will be stepping aside as CEO today, moving to executive chairman. But he will stay on as head innovator.
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor, host of the 'Power Players With Brian Sozzi' podcast and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.
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