Poppi founder Allison Ellsworth on launching Jetty, a new hydration brand
Following their sale of better-for-you soda brand Poppi to PepsiCo for $1.95 billion last year, co-founders Allison and Stephen Ellsworth are back with another beverage.
This time, the wife-and-husband team is launching Jetty, marking their first foray into the noisy hydration category. According to Ellsworth, Jetty’s formulation aligns more with today’s wellness needs than the historically sports-centric hydration category. The formula, available in multiple flavors, will come in ready-to-drink bottles and ready-to-mix powders. Jetty launches on November 9 at Whole Foods Market, on Amazon and online at Target, with bottles retailing for $2.49.
The hydration market is currently dominated by large players, with PepsiCo’s Gatorade accounting for 61.1% of the U.S. market share. The global electrolytes drink market is estimated to hit $53.1 billion by 2030, up from $40.4 billion in 2024.
Ellsworth told Modern Retail the product was partly inspired by her recent health journey, in which she lost 60 pounds using a GLP-1 medication.
“I was always really struggling with hydrating or getting water in my body,” she said. That led her to look for a hydration product for everyday use, but many on the market are made for workouts or extreme dehydration, and many contain hundreds of milligrams of sodium. “If I’ve been sitting at my desk all day, I don’t need that,” Ellsworth said.
She added that while the hydration category is crowded with better-for-you powders, the sports drink category as a whole has been in decline because of minimal innovation. “I found there is a white space for everyday hydration for people who are just studying or commuting, and not just for going to the gym,” Ellsworth said.
And so she tapped R&D experts from the Poppi team to create a product with these criteria in mind. Soon enough, Jetty was born and pitched to retail buyers.
One Jetty bottle provides 310 milligrams of potassium, 100 milligrams of magnesium, B vitamins and prebiotics. It contains six grams of sugar and 45 calories. Perhaps most importantly, Jetty products contain less sodium than many hydration drinks, with less than 100 milligrams per serving.
Having created Poppi in her kitchen, Ellsworth said the scale of the operation is much larger this time, with more resources to bring Jetty to market. The founders are self-funding the Jetty launch for $2.5 million, with plans to fundraise down the road.
Ellsworth and Jetty’s social media pages have been teasing the launch in recent weeks to drum up curiosity and buzz. To promote the launch, Jetty is gifting hydration kits to a number of influencers to unveil it, similar to Poppi’s past influencer strategy.
“I’m also working on a YouTube series where I have cameras follow me while building the next billion-dollar brand,” Ellsworth said.
The mom of three said it’s a way to promote Jetty while also highlighting the reality of the grind in building a beverage business.
“We even had Walmart allow cameras into the meeting at their HQ,” she said, to give entrepreneurs an idea of how to prepare for pitch meetings and what presenting pitch decks looks like. “Long-form content is really difficult to do, so I think that’s going to give us an advantage to really ramp up but also give people insights,” Ellsworth said.
Going at this a second time, Ellsworth is aware that support from the CPG community and public may be subdued. Following Poppi’s exit, there are also more critics and online trolls watching Ellsworth’s business moves.
“The first time around, people were really excited to see me win,” she said. “No one is excited to see me win again.”
As for being the face of another brand and putting it all out there on social media, Ellsworth said the positives still outweigh the negatives in building a brand. “I always say: ‘If you’re not doing it, your competitor is,’” she said.