Soda is becoming a superfood. Next time you go down the soft drink aisle at the grocery store, you may notice a growing number of new names and designs vying for your dollars.
Olipop calls its drinks “a new kind of soda” because of their emphasis on nutrition versus sugary craving—with prebiotics, plant fiber, and natural sweeteners found in each of its 18 flavors (vintage cola, grape, and crisp apple are the most popular). However, going from a startup big to a household consumer brand has been no easy feat; to spread the word, the company relies on social media and on showing up where consumers are, such as at sporting events.
Getting loyal soda drinkers to try a new product has not been an easy task—it’s taken years of recipe experimentation, long-shot retail pitches, and thousands of social media posts to find success.
“Our approach has celebrated these intergenerational connections rather than trying to replace them. By honoring that emotional connection while elevating the experience, we’ve built a brand that doesn’t just replace soda—it evolves it,” Goodwin tells Fortune.
“[We] don’t take ourselves too seriously,” Vigilante, now the director of strategic partnerships, tells Fortune. “We’re soda. We play in the soda space. We have the gut health stuff. There are very obvious ties between fiber and poop, and we shouldn’t be afraid of that.”
“I always tell the team, if you’re going to write a comment from the account, make sure it sounds like it’s coming from a person, not a brand, because every brand sounds the same,” Vigilante says.
And even though a 12-pack of prebiotic soda may cost you over three times more than Coke or Pepsi, many customers don’t mind—and it’s catching the eye of the big brands.
While product placement and creator partnerships have overall aided Olipop in growing its brand, Vigilante credits simply being at the right place at the right time and following consumer demands.
“I’m obsessed with being in the zeitgeist, and I think as a brand, especially in the soda space, where soda is so deeply in the consumer zeitgeist already, it becomes more and more important, the bigger we get, to keep showing up in different places,” he says.
“Alternative sodas have just dramatically outpaced the broader soda market, in terms of retail sales, volume sales, and even the presence in food service,” Shapiro tells Fortune.
And with growth unlikely to slow down anytime soon, businesses like Olipop are a perfect example of how to properly embrace and cater to a market shifting toward younger consumers.
“Our generation is in charge now,” Vigilante, who is a millennial, says. “The businesses that have figured that out are winning, and the businesses that still have legacy people with legacy ways of thinking in these seats—it’s reflected in their company performance and their stock price right now.”
