Whole Foods made Mother Beverage pitch store-by-store across 14 Dallas locations
Allison Ellsworth · Poppi: Allison and Stephen Ellsworth. From Farmers Market Vinegar Drink to $2B Soda Sensation · Sep 22, 2025 · at 26:15
Allison Ellsworth, co-founder of Poppi (originally Mother Beverage), recounts their initial retail expansion experience with Whole Foods.
0:00 / 0:25exact quote · 25.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“So we, from the moment we got the card from her, we at that point went and got a lease. We opened up our own manufacturing facility thinking we were going to be nationwide Whole Foods for them to say, no, no, no, no, you don't even have Dallas. We've given you a license to go hunt for it. And what that means is you actually now have to go store to store to And sell in your product to every single store at that time. And it was 14 Whole Foods, Dallas, Fort Worth.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Allison Ellsworth
Lakers' official soda Poppi cannot be sold in the team's arena
“We are the official soda of the Lakers, and we're not allowed to be sold in that stadium because of contracts.”
Beverage brands cannot access UNFI distribution without retail accounts secured
“It's like the chicken or the egg, like, get into Unify if you don't have a retailer. If you don't have a retailer, you can't get in.”
No better-for-you beverage brand used brightly colored cans before Poppi's rebrand
“Hands down, I will say I was wrong. Colored cans were the way to go. It just popped off the shelf, and no one was doing better for you with color at the time.”
Ellsworth: Modern soda brands must package in 12-ounce cans, not glass
“If we're gonna call ourselves soda, we can no longer be in glass bottles. We 100% have to be in 12 ounce soda cans.”
Poppi's monthly Amazon sales surged from $3,000 to $250,000 post-Shark Tank
“We're doing, like, 3000 on Amazon quickly over the next few months. We're doing 250,000 on Amazon a month.”
Viral TikTok video generated $100,000 in overnight Amazon sales for Poppi
“Honestly, one night, I sat down on the couch, and I just told my story. I did it in one minute or less of, started this in my kitchen, got a deal on Shark Tank, it's five grams of sugar, it's apple cider vinegar, it's this, dah, dah, dah, and I posted it and w…”