Poppi founder launches Jetty to take on Gatorade

After transforming the soda category with Poppi, founders Alison and Stephen Ellsworth are now aiming to hydrate with their new brand Jetty.

Starting Monday, Jetty drinks and ready-to-mix electrolyte packs will be on shelves at Whole Foods grocery stores and available for purchase online. target and Amazon.

The new, self-funded venture will go head-to-head with the Ellsworths. pepsicoPepsi, which owns Gatorade, has about 60% market share in the U.S. sports drink category, according to Numerator data.

Poppi shocked the soda category with prebiotic fiber, low calories, low sugar, and fun marketing targeting Gen Z and Millennials. Jetty is disrupting the hydration category through a similar strategy. That will pit it not only against Gatorade, but also against a slew of other startups looking to cash in on the electrolyte fuels trend.

Gatorade and other sports drinks have been marketed for decades to athletes who need electrolytes and fluids after intense exercise, but many consumers drink them every day without breaking a sweat. Jetty is aimed at people who need extra hydration, but don’t need the same levels of electrolytes and sugar as traditional sports drinks.

Alison Ellsworth, Jetty’s chief brand officer, told CNBC that “nobody has really developed a product that’s just for daily hydration, literally daily hydration for the average person.” “Like when I woke up this morning, I didn’t run a marathon.”

Following Poppi’s sale to PepsiCo, Mr. Ellsworth remained an advisor to the brand, but is no longer involved in day-to-day operations.

After 10 years of building Poppi, Ellsworth said he finally has some free time. Ellsworth said it was her first visit to the doctor in 10 years. She started using the GLP-1 drug and lost 60 pounds.

And so Jetty was born.

Ellsworth’s husband, Stephen, now the CEO of the new brand, noticed that Ellsworth wasn’t hydrating even when she returned from the gym.

GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Munjaro reduce thirst. But staying hydrated may be even more important because it can also help reduce some of the drug’s side effects, such as nausea and headaches.

“It’s a physical struggle to get fluids into your body,” Ellsworth said.

Jetty aims to solve that problem.

While plain water is often less appealing to consumers, even dehydrated GLP-1 users, more flavorful options with additional benefits may be appealing. Approximately 44% of GLP-1 users report consuming more functional beverages, according to EY Parthenon’s third annual survey of more than 3,600 current or former GLP-1 users.

Ellsworth believes Jetty also has broad appeal.

“Our core audience will be millennial moms and Gen Z,” she says. “Gen Z isn’t interested in the old-school brands of Gatorades and Power Aids. They’re just not cool.”

Consumers have become broadly concerned about hydration.

Dollar sales of hydration and electrolyte products rose 20% to $2.6 billion in the 52 weeks ending Oct. 4, based on data from SPINS, which tracks new universal product codes (UPCs). This category also has a high repeat purchase rate of 62%.

But the Ellsworths aren’t the only ones realizing the potential for hydration. According to SPINS, the number of new products in this category with annual sales of $10,000 or more has increased 41% over the past two years.

Major food and beverage companies are also paying attention to hydration.

Kraft Heinz This spring, we debuted Capri Sun juice pouches and Kool-Aid packets with electrolytes. In April, Pepsi announced an overhaul of the Gatorade brand, with a focus on increasing potential opportunities such as “a refreshing start to the morning” and “an afternoon stroll” to make it more appealing to a broader range of consumers. Electrolit is a top performer among its distributors Keurig Dr Pepperthe company’s third-quarter retail sales increased 40%.

All of this means increased competition for shelf space and consumer “throat share” (industry term for beverage market share).

To increase Jetty’s visibility throughout the grocery store and maximize shopper convenience, Jetty will be available in both powder and bottle form.

Disposable electrolyte mixtures are growing much faster than the ready-to-drink category, Ellsworth said. unileverSmaller startups like Liquid IV and LMNT. Powder is a $1 billion category on Amazon alone, Ellsworth said.

Ready-to-drink (RTD) sports drinks are a much larger market, but sales in this category are shrinking as consumers reach for other hydration options. According to data from Numerator, sports drink sales volume decreased by 9.1% from 2022 to 2026. and coca cola wrote down the value of Body Armor by more than $1.7 billion after acquiring a controlling stake in the brand for $5.6 billion in late 2021.

Jetty’s founders aren’t worried about that.

“My husband and I know how to do RTD,” Ellsworth said.

Jetty will be launched in five flavors including watermelon, orange mango, fruit punch, black raspberry and white cherry. All of these contain 100 milligrams of sodium, 310 milligrams of potassium, and 100 milligrams of magnesium in a 15.2-ounce bottle or 15-gram packet.

In addition to electrolytes, Jetty products also contain B vitamins, 3 grams of fiber, and 6 grams of sugar. The founders say they don’t use artificial sweeteners or colors.

For comparison, a 20-ounce bottle of traditional Gatorade Thirst Quencher contains about 270 milligrams of sodium and 80 milligrams of potassium, as well as 34 grams of sugar. The sports drink brand is also phasing out artificial colors and promoting lower sugar versions.

“What’s really interesting about this product and this opportunity is that we’re able to capture all of the people who have ever stopped drinking, or a whole generation of people who have never even had this product in the first place,” Ellsworth said.

Poppi’s new owners also know about Jetty and the market it’s trying to capture.

“What they understand, which I don’t think[Pepsi]understands, is that the movement is changing. They think they can appeal to this audience just by eliminating dyes or cutting sugar by 90 percent,” Ellsworth said. “But that’s a very big corporate mindset.”

She added that she believes Pepsi is missing the mark in advertising to Gen Z consumers across its portfolio, including campaigns for Sprite competitor Starly.

Perhaps by extension, Poppi’s performance under PepsiCo’s ownership has not been underwhelming.

Pepsi said in a regulatory filing in October that the food and beverage giant now estimates the fair value of potential performance-based payments to Poppi’s former owners at $12 million. At the time of the deal, Pepsi promised to pay an additional $300 million if Poppi met certain goals by the third quarter of 2027. The Ellsworths declined to comment on the CNBC filing.

Now, with one successful brand under its wing, Jetty’s founders say they’ve learned from their past mistakes. These lessons should help Jetty as it launches on a much larger scale than Poppi.

Three different attorneys agreed to Jetty’s package, Ellsworth said. Poppi paid $8.9 million to settle a class action lawsuit over false advertising about “gut health.”

So far, Jetty has raised $2.5 million entirely on its own, but Ellsworth said the brand will likely raise money in 2027. But this time, he said, the investors will likely be different from traditional venture capitalists.

“We want to bring in investors that bring value,” Ellsworth said. Instead of a venture capitalist willing to invest $15 million, Jetty wants to consider an investor who can only write a $1 million check but has access to a celebrity. “That means you have access to people who are investing in their people and their brand at a cheaper level.”

And Jetty learned some lessons from Gatorade, too. For example, the brand is already working on a lemon-lime version of Gatorade’s original flavor.

“We’ll get there eventually,” Ellsworth said. “But in order to create something delicious, it was really important to stick to the flavors we liked at the beginning.”