How Poppi Hopes to Win the Battle of the Bubbles

On the ground floor of a nondescript condo building in east Austin last month, the wife-and-husband co-founders of Poppi made good on a promise they made to me: that they would offer me a taste test of their beverage company’s in-the-works flavors. It wasn’t quite like getting access to the secret Coca-Cola recipe, but it was as close as it comes at Poppi.

“Take a sip,” instructed co-founder Allison Ellsworth, 38, once a lab-coated food scientist had opened three glass bottles and poured fizzy liquid into small plastic cups. “Then guess what you think it is.”

The first one: sweet—very sweet. Lots of vanilla. Cream soda? Bingo.

Next up was a lemon-lime one—sorta like Sprite, sorta not—followed by a third that I could guess immediately: a ginger ale.

“Nailed it,” said co-founder Stephen Ellsworth, 37.

OK, maybe the taste test didn't have the highest degree of difficulty. But Poppi’s popularity doesn’t rest on an enormous reinvention of soda pop. The Ellsworths certainly do excel at riffing on classic flavors that they can produce with far less sugar than you’ll find in a Coke or a Sprite, and they then package it up with attractive branding. The combination of a pretty good soda with much lower sugar content is Poppi’s biggest selling point—and a distinct point of pride for Allison, who pointedly told me exactly how much less sugar a Poppi has than an average traditional rival: “Eighty-nine percent less,” she said.