
Poppi: The $1.95B PepsiCo Prebiotic Soda Deal
Poppi — founded 2018 by Allison and Stephen Ellsworth. $500M+ 2024 revenue. Acquired by PepsiCo May 2025 for $1.95B. EPR's canonical Poppi reference and the LaForce / Magrino agency record.

Poppi — founded 2018 by Allison and Stephen Ellsworth. $500M+ 2024 revenue. Acquired by PepsiCo May 2025 for $1.95B. EPR's canonical Poppi reference and the LaForce / Magrino agency record.
Sprite owns 62.87% of U.S. lemon-lime dollar share — up from 50.91% in March 2024. Starry has fallen to 2.52%. The hip-hop citation moat, the NBA layer, and the share table mapped.

P&G owns scale. Unilever owns personal care. Nestlé owns food breadth. Coca-Cola owns beverages. PepsiCo owns snacks. The first AI-visibility ranking of CPG brands across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

PepsiCo has launched Starry — a substantial new lemon-lime soda brand introduced in January 2023 to replace Sierra Mist. The Sierra Mist replacement positioning, the Gen Z-targeted positioning, the regular and zero-sugar formulations, the substantial U.S. retail distribution including Walmart, Kroger, and convenience channels, and the broader cohort-driven product development approach.

Liquid Death — $1.4B. Olipop — $1.85B. Poppi — $1.95B PepsiCo exit. Three challenger beverages built billion-dollar valuations on three different digital PR machines. The tool-by-tool breakdown of how each one outflanked the soda incumbents.

PepsiCo has announced substantial recent management promotions including Al Carey to CEO of North America, Kirk Tanner to president and COO of North American Beverages, and Vivek Sankaran to president and COO of Frito-Lay North America. The internal talent development emphasis, the deep bench positioning, and the broader leadership continuity tradition under CEO Indra Nooyi.

PepsiCo has announced its 2025 Sustainability Plan with multi-year goals across products, planet, and people categories. The reformulation commitments, the 15% agricultural water-use efficiency improvement, the 20% absolute greenhouse gas emissions reduction, the $100 million PepsiCo Foundation women and girls commitment, and the broader Performance with Purpose framework continuity.

PepsiMoji ran across 100+ countries in 2016 with emoji-branded packaging, a #SayItWithPepsi hashtag, and five-second video spots via Ketchum and Porter Novelli. The execution missed — generic symbols, no behavior driver. The instinct — symbol communication on packaging — was a decade early.

PepsiCo continues to operate as one of the more substantial portfolio reinvention machines across multiple categories. The diversified portfolio structure, the multi-category architecture, the continuous experimentation culture, the cohort-driven product development, and the broader snack-funded experimentation across Frito-Lay, Quaker, Gatorade, Tropicana, and broader beverage operations.

Starbucks is one of the most active partnership marketers in American consumer retail. The PepsiCo joint venture. The music experiments. The Seattle's Best Burger King deal. The seasonal Girl Scout cookie collaborations. The pattern that explains which partnerships compound and which do not.