Eighteen months after securing a massive payday through the acquisition of her prebiotic soda brand, Poppi, by beverage giant PepsiCo for $1.95 billion, entrepreneur Allison Ellsworth is diving back into the consumer goods market with an entirely new venture.
Following weeks of strategic teasers and anticipation-building posts shared with her followers across various social media platforms, Ellsworth officially unveiled her latest enterprise on November 9. The new brand, called Jetty, enters the beverage landscape as a line of sports and performance drinks and powders. Rather than launching through a slow, direct-to-consumer rollout, Jetty has made an immediate, high-profile splash by debuting simultaneously across major nationwide retailers, including Target, Amazon, Whole Foods, and Sprouts Market.
With five distinct flavors available in both ready-to-mix electrolyte powders and grab-and-go bottles, Jetty is attempting to carve out a distinct space within the fiercely competitive and multibillion-dollar sports and performance drinks category. However, rather than targeting traditional high-performance athletes, bodybuilders, or endurance runners, the brand is deliberately charting a different course by bypassing the conventional athletic demographic entirely.
Formulated thoughtfully without artificial colors, synthetic dyes, or heavy artificial sweeteners, Jetty stands apart from many of its heavily salted and intensely formulated competitors. The product contains only 100 milligrams of sodium per serving, a stark contrast to the roughly 300 to 500 milligrams typically found in leading legacy sports drink brands. With this cleaner, lower-sodium formulation, Ellsworth is intentionally positioning the product as an everyday wellness beverage tailored for modern, active lifestyles rather than extreme athletic exertion.
"When I say wellness, it’s not athletes. It’s like, hot girl, mom walk, and I just did a quick little Pilates this morning. That type of wellness is really important," Ellsworth explains in an interview with Fast Company. "It’s not for a marathon, not for a gym. It’s just yummy hydration. You can just have hydration for existing and have fun while doing it."
By focusing on everyday routine activities rather than grueling athletic training sessions, Jetty is betting that a significant portion of consumers are looking for functional hydration that fits seamlessly into a casual, health-conscious lifestyle without the intense chemical additives or massive electrolyte loads designed for professional sports recovery.
Taking on Giants—Again
In taking on this new entrepreneurial challenge, Ellsworth is treading familiar ground. Just as she did years ago when she first disrupted the heavily saturated soda market with Poppi’s prebiotic formulations, she is launching a new brand in a category that is already deeply entrenched and heavily dominated by massive industry giants.
The sports and performance drink sector is currently anchored by some of the most recognizable and powerful brands in the consumer packaged goods industry. Gatorade, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, remains the absolute titan of the category, commanding over $11 billion in annual sales, alongside its sister brand Propel. Meanwhile, other modern powerhouses have captured significant market share by catering heavily to fitness enthusiasts and athletes. Among them is Liquid IV, a rapidly growing powder mix brand that achieved nearly $1 billion in U.S. retail sales in 2025, according to retail tracking data from Circana.
Despite the overwhelming dominance of these established market leaders and their massive marketing budgets, Ellsworth insists that the genesis of Jetty did not stem from a calculated corporate strategy to exploit an unserved niche or analyze dry market research reports. Instead, her motivation came from a very personal place of consumer need and daily lifestyle habits.
"We didn’t create this because [I realized], ‘Oh, there’s this white space in the market,’" Ellsworth notes, reflecting on the founding philosophy behind the brand. "I was like, I needed this in my life."
This consumer-first philosophy served as the foundational bedrock for Poppi’s viral success, helping transform a kitchen-crafted prebiotic soda into a billion-dollar acquisition target for PepsiCo. Now, as Jetty hits shelves nationwide in major retailers, Ellsworth is applying that same intuition to the hydration category, hoping to convince everyday consumers that staying hydrated can be simple, clean, and entirely divorced from the traditional locker-room aesthetic of professional sports marketing.
