This Is How One College Dropout Built A Multi-Million Dollar 'Healthy Soda' Business
Ben Goodwin and David Lester created OLIPOP as a healthier way to indulge in our favorite soda flavors. Made from wholesome ingredients that include digestive support; it is now a top selling beverage brand. Both founders credit finding the best people that align with their organic business values and building a culture that empowers trust.
Ben Goodwin, cofounder and CEO of OLIPOP, joins Brittany Lewis on "Forbes Talks" to discuss how he turned a $100,000 investment in 2018 into a projected more than $200 million in annual sales in 2023.
Ben Goodwin, cofounder and CEO of OLIPOP, joins Brittany Lewis on "Forbes Talks" to discuss how he turned a $100,000 investment in 2018 into a projected more than $200 million in annual sales in 2023.
Transcript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hi everybody, I'm Brittany Lewis,
00:04 a reporter here at Forbes.
00:06 Joining me now is Ben Goodwin,
00:07 co-founder and CEO of Olipop.
00:10 Ben, thank you so much for joining me.
00:12 - Brittany, thanks for having me.
00:15 - I'm very excited to talk about the Olipop journey,
00:18 but before we get started,
00:19 let's start at the beginning.
00:21 What is Olipop?
00:22 - So Olipop is being called a functional soda.
00:28 We actually are the progenitors of the category
00:30 and the leaders of the category.
00:32 Olipop is a new kind of soda.
00:35 Instead of the 40 grams of sugar you used to
00:37 in like a Coca-Cola, it has two to five per can,
00:40 and it has nine grams of functional fiber.
00:44 So it's effectively a healthy soda,
00:47 but it replaces the soda we all grew up drinking and love.
00:50 - So did you always know you wanted to get
00:53 into the healthy food space?
00:55 What brought you here?
00:57 - Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.
00:59 So I actually grew up in Northern California.
01:03 We didn't grow up with a lot of money,
01:05 and I grew up eating a standard American diet.
01:08 And I wouldn't say that worked out super well for me.
01:11 And so I kind of, as a teenager,
01:13 went on my own health journey.
01:15 I lost a bunch of weight, I got more energy.
01:17 That was all fantastic, but what really impacted me
01:20 was how eating healthy seemed to benefit
01:23 kind of my cognitive clarity, my emotional clarity.
01:26 And that ended up becoming something I wanted to share
01:28 with the broader United States.
01:30 I mean, we, unfortunately, according to the CDC,
01:33 live in a country where 40% of people
01:35 have type two diabetes or prediabetes.
01:37 And a lot of that's driven by our food supply.
01:41 And so I, as an adult, had the mission of,
01:45 how do I take empirically validated food science
01:48 and turn it into something that's actually
01:50 wildly accessible to help to kind of offset
01:54 this issue we're facing?
01:56 - Sure, and what's interesting,
01:58 you used the phrase healthy soda.
02:00 And normally when people hear the word healthy,
02:03 normally soda's not right after that.
02:05 So what was your ultimate vision for Olipop,
02:08 and did you ever have to pivot at all?
02:10 - So Olipop has always had a consistent vision.
02:16 And that, I think, is in part because we had a bit of a
02:20 precursor company that, which is when I essentially
02:25 formulated this kind of first healthy soda.
02:27 I mean, the data's pretty straightforward, right?
02:30 Soda has 98% household penetration,
02:33 compared to say 18% household penetration
02:35 for like a kombucha, or even,
02:37 I think it's something about 45% for sparkling water.
02:41 But the size as well of soda's category,
02:44 it's $42 billion in the United States.
02:46 And it's just astronomically larger than anything else
02:50 in the non-Alec space.
02:51 So the goal was always to meet people
02:55 where they were as much as I could.
02:56 And soda was a fantastic way to do that.
02:59 We worked out some of the conceptual kinks,
03:01 and we got a lot of good feedback from our customers
03:04 in my prior venture.
03:05 So by the time we were ready to launch Olipop,
03:07 we definitely knew what we were trying to do.
03:09 - 98% household penetration, that's huge.
03:14 I mean, growing up, a lot of houses,
03:17 obviously based on that data, were soda households.
03:21 So when you hear that, how do you convince people,
03:24 hey, ditch your tried and true Coca-Cola,
03:27 ditch your Sprite, and here's a different option.
03:30 How do you do that?
03:31 - That's a great question.
03:35 I think, you know, the first step is
03:39 you have to actually make a product
03:41 that on an experiential level
03:44 is as satisfying for your customers
03:46 as a lot of those other products.
03:48 I mean, we've been, and we've been lucky,
03:51 really lucky to actually see a lot of that traction.
03:53 So in one of our largest retail partners nationally,
03:57 Olipop's become a bigger brand than Pepsi,
04:00 Canada Drive, Mountain Dew,
04:02 and our root beer outsells A&W.
04:04 And a lot of what's driving that is that
04:09 we could be a healthy product all day.
04:11 And we are, we've done in vitro trials
04:14 with Purdue and other universities.
04:16 We have strong clinical evidence that shows
04:19 our product transfers a health benefit.
04:22 But at the end of the day,
04:23 the thing that's gonna motivate somebody
04:25 to actually replace that, to your point,
04:28 that really longstanding relationship
04:29 that they would have had with like a soda,
04:32 it's gotta taste right,
04:34 and it has to be accessible from the branding
04:37 to the flavor profile.
04:38 And I do happen to be the product's formulator,
04:42 but I think our customers are giving us the clear signal
04:45 that that's their experience.
04:47 - So you're the formulator,
04:48 and I want you to walk us through that moment
04:52 where you tasted the cola, you tasted the root beer,
04:56 and you said, "This tastes just right."
04:58 Because I've talked to a few different healthy food brands,
05:02 none in the beverage space,
05:03 and I asked them, "When was that moment?"
05:05 Because a lot of the times, just as a consumer,
05:08 I can attest to when you pick the healthier option,
05:13 sometimes it tastes like the healthier option
05:15 and not in a good way.
05:16 So when was the moment for you,
05:18 you taste this and you're like, "You know what?
05:19 "I hit it."
05:22 - That is so right,
05:24 and that's exactly the experience
05:25 that we are not trying to have with Olipop.
05:27 I mean, it really should,
05:30 and again, that's what was really helpful for me
05:31 to grow up drinking soda
05:33 and having all these flavors
05:34 be quite nostalgic for me as well,
05:36 because I know what that flavor's supposed to taste like,
05:39 and I've been formulating it long enough
05:41 to know how to put my own personal spin on it
05:44 so that it's unique for Olipop.
05:45 But I do have a little trick for that,
05:49 for all the aspiring product developers out there,
05:53 at least in the beverage space.
05:55 I'll spend a lot of time
05:56 thinking through the architecture of the formula
05:58 so that when I get to the point
06:00 where I'm ready to write it down on my formula log
06:02 and start working at it,
06:03 I'm actually surprisingly close already
06:06 because I just have enough experience
06:07 to be able to anticipate
06:10 where the ingredients are gonna come out.
06:11 But then I've gotta run a bunch of tests,
06:13 and that takes a while.
06:14 But when I get to the point
06:16 where I've got a sample sitting on my desk,
06:19 I drink it, put it down, I'm thinking about it,
06:22 if in 20 to 30 seconds,
06:25 without thinking, "Oh, I should drink that again,"
06:28 I just instinctively reach my hand out
06:31 because I'm craving another sip,
06:34 I know I've gotten close.
06:35 So whenever I'm in that territory,
06:37 I'm like, "Okay, we're almost there."
06:39 - And something else interesting that you did mention
06:42 is you're out selling Pepsi, Canada Dry,
06:45 A&W.
06:47 How are you doing this exactly?
06:49 Because beverages are a very saturated market,
06:51 so how are you cutting through?
06:53 - You know, I will say,
06:56 I do think it is this combination,
07:00 which I've touched on a little bit prior,
07:02 but there's a $300 billion health and wellness market
07:06 between food, supplements, and beverage.
07:08 And probably about less than 1% of those brands
07:12 have actually done their own empirical research
07:15 to see if their product is delivering any health benefits
07:18 or if there's any kind of evidence
07:19 that would support that they would do that.
07:22 Simultaneously, I think a lot of the health products
07:27 that get formulated aren't formulated
07:29 in a way that's truly empathetic
07:32 for what the need state is for their customer.
07:36 Like what flavor profiles are really meaningful to them,
07:39 and are you willing to invest enough
07:43 to really get that product to the place
07:45 where it actually delivers that value?
07:48 And when you can nail both of those things,
07:51 when you can create a product
07:53 that just the experience of consuming it is good enough
07:57 that it satisfies that craving,
08:00 but then people can also look at the amount of sugar
08:03 and look at the amount of fiber
08:04 and maybe do some research on the website
08:05 and say, "Oh, wow, they have a scientific advisory board
08:07 "and they've actually done some research."
08:09 When all that can come together,
08:11 I think you've got a real shot
08:12 of disrupting the current norm.
08:14 - I do now wanna pivot more to the business side.
08:18 And your company reportedly started about five years ago
08:22 with a $100,000 investment,
08:25 and it's now on track to surpass $200 million
08:29 this year in sales.
08:30 Talk about that growth because that's just incredible.
08:33 - Thanks.
08:35 Do I still have any skin on my face?
08:37 - You're like, "Is this real life?"
08:39 - It's been a while.
08:40 I know, it's been a while because it's going so fast.
08:42 I mean, it's been an absolute wild ride.
08:44 Look, I would say at the end of the day,
08:48 this comes down to the customer.
08:50 Like the customer tells you whether they like your product
08:52 and they tell you how much they like your product.
08:55 We're lucky to have a repurchase rate
08:57 that's about 2.5 to three times industry norm.
09:00 And that's 100% driven by our customers
09:04 saying they love a product
09:05 and they wanna keep drinking it.
09:07 And there is no real replacement for that.
09:10 And so that is as a baseline.
09:12 And I would say I'm also really grateful to our team
09:15 because when there is no way to predict that kind of growth,
09:20 we just had no prediction for that.
09:23 I mean, we were projecting something like 65, $70 million
09:28 less for this year than we actually ended up accomplishing.
09:31 And so it's very hard to budget for that.
09:33 It's hard to plan for that.
09:34 And correspondently,
09:36 sometimes your internal policies and structure
09:40 can fall a little behind the curve
09:41 when you're growing at a rate that nobody can expect.
09:43 So we've got a really engaged team, a really aligned team,
09:48 or we have a culture that promotes
09:50 a lot of kind of common humanity and trust.
09:54 And when you have a high trust, highly aligned culture,
09:58 your team can still work in a high functioning way,
10:01 even under some pressure.
10:02 And even when all your processes
10:04 haven't totally laddered up
10:05 to where you wanna be as a business.
10:07 So we're not closing the gap on a lot of those things
10:10 and we're doing a lot more hiring,
10:12 but without some of those kind of interpersonal components
10:17 to the Ollipop culture and the Ollipop company,
10:20 we would have really struggled a lot more than we have.
10:24 - Can you talk a little bit more about that?
10:26 Because that's something that people don't really realize
10:30 in business or in the workplace at all.
10:32 You really need an engaged and aligned team.
10:35 You share a common goal and you all wanna get there.
10:38 So internally, what do you do
10:40 to foster that type of environment?
10:42 - Great, great question.
10:45 And to your point, I think you can solve
10:47 structure all day too, right?
10:49 But if you've got a low trust culture,
10:52 it's not gonna really fix the problem.
10:54 You have to address the EQ and the interpersonal material
10:58 in addition to the structure.
10:59 So we do a range of things.
11:01 We got a set of company values.
11:04 We don't just want those to become wallpaper.
11:06 We have employees actually will build decks
11:09 that talk about their interpretation of the values,
11:12 their life experience of the values.
11:13 We have a personal development stipend
11:15 so people can get physical health,
11:17 including gym, personal trainers,
11:19 mental health, including therapy, personal enrichment.
11:22 We have a really robust leadership university
11:26 called Ollipop Leadership University,
11:28 which is taught by a dear friend and my executive coach
11:31 who has a PhD in organizational psychology.
11:34 But we're also not an entitlement culture.
11:36 It's important to us that we don't just give everybody
11:41 everything that they want
11:42 and take all the challenges off their plate.
11:44 We try to be a strength-based culture.
11:46 So we're gonna treat you like a human being.
11:48 We're gonna equip you with tools.
11:50 But when something comes up and it's challenging,
11:52 we expect you to do the work to get stronger
11:55 to overcome that challenge.
11:57 And when that happens successfully,
11:59 you actually have an even more loyal group of employees
12:03 who are also now more competent.
12:05 And that's a situation where everybody's engaged
12:07 and everybody wins.
12:08 - I wanna talk about you as an entrepreneur a little bit.
12:12 You are now at the helm of an extremely successful company.
12:16 So I'm curious, what's one piece of business rules
12:21 that you kept that's a traditional business,
12:23 from the traditional business playbook that you kept,
12:25 and then one piece that you just tossed away
12:27 and you did it your own way?
12:29 - You know, (laughs)
12:32 when my team hears this, they're gonna just laugh
12:36 because the thing about me is,
12:38 I dropped out of college at 28.
12:40 I've never worked in a large corporation in my life.
12:43 So to be fully honest with you,
12:47 I don't know what a traditional corporate playbook
12:51 is the majority of the time.
12:52 I read, I love the Harvard Business Lectures and essays.
12:57 I love to read books on all sorts of different case studies,
13:01 but it's hard to know.
13:02 I mean, look, there's certain things you have to do.
13:04 Like you have to manage your money correctly.
13:07 You've gotta make sure that as you scale,
13:08 you scale towards a P&L that's sustainable.
13:12 There's certain seasons in the business
13:13 where you need to hire against growth
13:15 and then other seasons where you need
13:16 to hire against infrastructure.
13:18 There's a lot of stuff that you learn,
13:20 but I think that, you know,
13:24 one thing that I think is a little out of order
13:27 sometimes in the way that people think about business
13:30 is the ratio between innovation and creativity
13:33 and then finance and operations.
13:35 And I think sometimes when businesses are started
13:37 for purely economical reasons,
13:40 or they get to a place of economic success
13:43 where they're attracted to that kind of class of operator,
13:47 businesses may end up plunking a financial
13:50 or operational kind of center of gravity into their business.
13:55 And a lot of the decision-making comes from that place
13:58 of the center of gravity.
13:59 And I think that's pretty out of touch
14:02 with why most customers are interacting
14:04 with your business in the first place.
14:06 They're interacting with your business
14:07 and supporting your business
14:08 because you're providing them with value.
14:10 You're probably providing them
14:11 with differentiated and innovative value.
14:13 And so I think a healthy business structure,
14:16 from my standpoint, creativity and innovation
14:19 is at the center of that, of gravity
14:23 and your operations and your finance
14:25 are really there to empower and put the right guardrails
14:30 and the right structures in place
14:31 to kind of keep that contained
14:33 and moving in the right direction.
14:34 So that might answer your question,
14:37 but that's something that I'm thinking about.
14:39 - No, that totally makes sense.
14:41 And Ben, my final question to you would be,
14:44 what's next for Olipop?
14:46 - It's gonna be a big year next year.
14:52 We're gonna be expanding into some new classes
14:55 of some new channels, which I'm really excited about.
14:57 We should see expansions across club,
14:59 expansions across convenience.
15:01 We've got some really exciting partnerships
15:03 I can't quite announce yet.
15:05 And there's some new flavors coming out.
15:06 So it's a little bit of more of the same,
15:10 but there's also some enhanced accessibility,
15:14 enhanced flavor ranges.
15:16 And we launched our Real Love Makes Us brand strategy
15:20 campaign this year with Camila Cabello.
15:22 And there's a lot more stories to tell
15:25 off the initial success we had with that.
15:27 So we'll also have a lot of really innovative
15:31 and interesting marketing content coming out,
15:33 which I'm really excited about.
15:34 - And how are you picking the flavors?
15:36 - So we do have every customer request
15:42 that we've ever seen in any format.
15:45 We do have it all in one big master spreadsheet.
15:49 So I do have access to that.
15:50 And it's a little bit of reviewing that
15:53 and seeing what our customers are saying.
15:56 Up against me, kind of just sitting there thinking like,
15:58 what would be really fun?
16:00 And that I think I could do a great job at.
16:02 And then somewhere in the middle of those two forces,
16:06 that we land in our flavors.
16:08 - Well, Ben, thank you so much for coming on today.
16:11 I really appreciated the conversation.
16:14 Thank you so much.
16:15 - Thank you so much, Brittany.
16:17 Appreciate you having me.
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