The Entrepreneurs Behind Poppi Start Over
By Saghir Hussain ·
Poppi founders Allison and Stephen Ellsworth have revealed they are launching a new venture after building their prebiotic soda brand into a near-$2bn business, a move that sharpens the focus on whether UK consumer startups can replicate such scale without US-style capital depth.
From farmers market to exit velocity
The Ellsworths told Bloomberg This Weekend this weekend that their decade-long journey — starting with apple cider vinegar drinks sold at a Dallas farmers market — culminated in a valuation that makes Poppi one of the fastest-growing functional beverage brands in American retail history. The couple confirmed they have stepped back from day-to-day operations to “start over” with a new, unnamed project.
For British founders, the trajectory is familiar in outline but alien in execution. Poppi raised over $100m across multiple rounds, backed by CAVU Consumer Partners and later by strategic investors including the owner of Coca-Cola’s BodyArmor. That level of early-stage consumer capital remains scarce in the UK, where Series A rounds for food and drink brands rarely exceed £15m.
“You cannot build a national brand on British retail margins with British venture cheques,” said a senior buyer at a major UK supermarket, speaking on background. “The US model allows you to burn cash for velocity. Here, you need profitability by store three.”
The UK scaling gap
Poppi’s playbook — direct-to-consumer launch, TikTok-driven virality, then rapid omnichannel expansion into Target, Walmart and Whole Foods — relies on a unified national market of 330m people. The UK’s 67m consumers are fragmented across four nations, with distinct regulatory regimes for health claims, labelling and HFSS (high fat, salt, sugar) restrictions that do not exist in Texas.
The Department for Business and Trade’s “Scale-Up Action Plan” promises to unlock £7bn in patient capital by 2030. But founders say the pipeline is clogged. “We have the science, the brand, the traction,” said the CEO of a London-based gut-health drink startup that recently chose to incorporate in Delaware. “What we don’t have is a UK investor willing to write a £20m cheque for marketing spend before profitability.”
Lessons for the next cohort
The Ellsworths’ decision to “start over” rather than retire or join a corporate board signals a founder culture that recycles experience — and capital — back into the ecosystem. In the UK, successful exits often lead to angel investing or advisory roles, not second acts at the same intensity.
Government rhetoric on “making Britain a science superpower” rarely addresses the consumer layer where brands like Poppi live. Yet functional beverages, protein snacks and gut-health products represent a domestic market growing at 12% annually, per Mintel. If the next Poppi is built in Birmingham or Bristol, it will need more than a British Business Bank guarantee. It will need a retail and capital infrastructure that tolerates the same risk appetite that turned a farmers market stall into a billion-dollar brand.
The Ellsworths have gone again. The question is whether the UK system lets its founders do the same.