Allison and Stephen Ellsworth, the couple who built Poppi into one of the fastest-growing soda brands in the United States before selling it to PepsiCo, are launching a hydration company called Jetty that will compete directly with Gatorade.
Jetty’s bottled drinks and ready-to-mix electrolyte packets go on sale Monday at Whole Foods grocery stores and online through Target and Amazon. The brand debuts with five flavors — watermelon, orange mango, fruit punch, black raspberry and white cherry — and is funded entirely by its founders with $2.5 million.
The launch puts the Ellsworths back in the path of PepsiCo, which paid $1.95 billion for Poppi in 2025 and owns Gatorade. Numerator data put Gatorade’s share of the U.S. sports drink category at roughly 60%.
Poppi shook up soda with prebiotic fiber, low calorie and sugar counts, and playful marketing pitched at Gen Z and millennial shoppers. Jetty applies a similar playbook to a category long built around athletes who need to replace fluids and electrolytes after hard training — even though plenty of people drink sports beverages daily without breaking a sweat.
Jetty targets consumers who want a hydration boost without the electrolyte load or sugar of a traditional sports drink. “No one has really created a product for just everyday hydration — literally everyday hydration for normal people,” said Allison Ellsworth, Jetty’s chief brand officer. “Like I woke up this morning, I didn’t run a marathon.”
A GLP-1 origin story
After the Poppi sale closed, Ellsworth stayed on as an advisor to the brand but said she is no longer involved in day-to-day operations. Ten years of building Poppi had finally left her with free time, and she went to the doctor for the first time in a decade. She began using a GLP-1 medication and lost 60 pounds. Jetty grew out of that experience.
Her husband, now Jetty’s chief executive, noticed she was not hydrating properly, even when she returned from the gym. Drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro can make people less thirsty, while staying hydrated can help ease some side effects of the medications, including nausea and headaches.
“I physically struggle getting liquid into my body,” Ellsworth said.
Consumers who find plain water unappealing are part of the audience the founders hope to reach, including people using GLP-1 medications. EY-Parthenon’s third annual survey of more than 3,600 current and former GLP-1 users found that about 44% said they were drinking more functional beverages. Flavored products with added benefits are part of the market Jetty aims to address.
Ellsworth expects a wider audience as well. “Our core audience is going to be millennial moms and Gen Z,” she said. “Gen Z just isn’t relating to these old school brands, the legacy of the Gatorades and the Powerades. They’re just not cool.”
A crowded electrolyte aisle
Consumers have grown broadly more interested in hydration. Dollar sales of hydration and electrolyte products climbed 20% to $2.6 billion in the 52 weeks ended Oct. 4, based on SPINS data covering new universal product codes. The category also holds a strong repeat-buyer rate of 62%. SPINS data show the number of new items with annual sales of at least $10,000 rose 41% over the last two years.
Large food and beverage companies are moving in as well. Kraft Heinz introduced Capri Sun juice pouches and Kool-Aid packets with electrolytes this spring. In April, PepsiCo unveiled an overhaul of Gatorade aimed at reaching a wider swath of consumers across more occasions, from a “fresh morning start” to an “afternoon walk.” Electrolit, distributed by Keurig Dr Pepper, was a top performer for the company, with retail sales up 40% in its third quarter.
All of that intensifies the fight for shelf space and for consumers’ “share of throat,” the industry term for beverage market share.
Jetty will sell both powders and bottles to lift visibility in grocery stores and make shopping easier. Single-use electrolyte mixes are growing much faster than the ready-to-drink category, Ellsworth said, thanks to Unilever’s Liquid I.V. and smaller upstarts such as LMNT. On Amazon alone, powders represent a $1 billion category, she said.
Ready-to-drink sports beverages remain a far larger market, but sales are shrinking as consumers reach for other hydration options. Unit sales of sports drinks fell 9.1% from 2022 to 2026, per Numerator data, and Coca-Cola has written down the value of BodyArmor by more than $1.7 billion after buying control of the brand for $5.6 billion in late 2021.
None of that worries Jetty’s founders. “Me and my husband know how to do RTD,” Ellsworth said.
Each 15.2-ounce bottle or 15-gram packet contains 100 milligrams of sodium, 310 milligrams of potassium and 100 milligrams of magnesium, along with B vitamins, 3 grams of fiber and 6 grams of sugar. The founders say the products use no artificial sweeteners or dyes. By comparison, a 20-ounce bottle of traditional Gatorade Thirst Quencher has about 270 milligrams of sodium and 80 milligrams of potassium, plus 34 grams of sugar; Gatorade is phasing out artificial colors and promoting lower-sugar versions.
“What’s really interesting about this product and this opportunity is we now can capture all those lapsed drinkers — or that generation that didn’t even ever drink it in the first place,” Ellsworth said.
Poppi’s record under PepsiCo
Poppi’s new owner is aware of Jetty and the audience it is chasing. “I don’t think [Pepsi] gets it, but what they do get is that the movement is changing, and they think that just by taking dyes out or doing 90% less sugar, they’re going to capture this audience,” Ellsworth said. “But that is very big corporate thinking.” She added that she believes PepsiCo has missed the mark in advertising to Gen Z across its portfolio, including campaigns for Starry, its competitor to Sprite.
Poppi’s own performance under PepsiCo has been underwhelming. PepsiCo now estimates the fair value of potential performance-based payments to Poppi’s previous owners at $12 million, the company said in an October regulatory filing. When the deal was struck, PepsiCo promised an additional $300 million if Poppi met certain targets by the third quarter of 2027. The Ellsworths declined to comment on the filing.
Lessons carried over from Poppi
With one successful brand behind them, Jetty’s founders say they have learned from earlier missteps. Three separate claims lawyers signed off on Jetty’s packaging, Ellsworth said. Poppi paid $8.9 million to settle class-action litigation alleging false advertising over its “gut healthy” claims.
Jetty is currently self-funded with $2.5 million, though Ellsworth said the brand will likely raise money in 2027. This time, she expects backers to look less like traditional venture capitalists. “I want to bring in investors that bring value,” she said. Rather than a venture firm willing to write a $15 million check, Jetty would rather weigh investors who can commit $1 million but bring access to celebrities. “So then you’re getting access to talent on a cheaper level and people that are invested in the brand.”
Jetty has also borrowed a page from Gatorade’s playbook. The company is already developing a lemon-lime version, the flavor that launched Gatorade. “We’ll eventually do it,” Ellsworth said. “But it was really important at the beginning just to stick to flavors that we love, for it to taste good.”