Eighteen months after PepsiCo paid $1.95 billion for her prebiotic soda brand Poppi, Allison Ellsworth is back in beverage aisles — this time selling hydration to people who do not exercise. Her new brand, Jetty, launched on Nov. 9 at Target, Amazon, Whole Foods and Sprouts Market, after weeks of deliberately vague teasing on social media.

The product line covers five flavors of ready-to-mix electrolyte powders and bottled drinks. The formulation is the pitch: no artificial colors, dyes or sweeteners, and only 100 mg of sodium per serving, against roughly 300–500 mg in leading brands. That gap is the strategy. Fewer electrolytes makes little sense for athletes losing salt through sweat, so Jetty is positioned for what Ellsworth calls everyday wellness.

"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," Ellsworth said 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."

What does Jetty change in a $11 billion category?

Ellsworth is repeating the Poppi pattern: enter a category owned by giants and reframe the purchase occasion. Gatorade remains the category leader with over $11 billion in annual sales, together with Propel, according to a PepsiCo investor presentation. Liquid IV, a powder mix aimed at athletes, reached almost $1 billion in U.S. retail sales in 2025, per Circana data.

She argues the incumbents are changing ingredients but not identities. "Big hydration…is trying to make moves and take dyes out and update ingredients," Ellsworth said. "But it doesn't change the fact that the branding is still for a sports drink."

Notably, she did not arrive at the idea through market analysis. "We didn't create this because [I realized] 'Oh, there's this white space in the market,'" she said. "I was like, I needed this in my life." The demand thesis came later, at the Expo West trade show in March, where she says she found genuine appetite for hydration products not aimed at athletes.

She frames the ambition in the same terms as her soda run. "I took on soda, the biggest category before. Why can't I do that with hydration? It doesn't scare me." A multibillion-dollar outcome, she suggests, could follow. That is a founder's claim, not a forecast; Poppi's exit does not guarantee a second one.

How is Jetty buying attention?

Competing means facing well-funded marketing machines. Liquid IV recently hired former PepsiCo CMO Jenny Danzi to lead its cultural presence, appearing at music festivals including Lollapalooza and Governors Ball.

Ellsworth is instead borrowing the Poppi playbook: micro-influencers over celebrities. "I think what a lot of people get really caught up on with working with talent, especially in the early stage, is you really do want to work with creators and influencers and not celebrities," she said. In Poppi's early days, Jennifer Lopez shared photos of the product organically — attention Ellsworth says creators, not paid stars, generate more reliably.

Ahead of launch, Jetty's Instagram account withheld what the product actually was. The page offered a "j-card" with VIP perks such as first access to product drops and insider information, plus colorful jelly bites stamped with the brand name. A social video showed branded lipgloss, face mist and a gua sha (a facial massage stone). Everything hinted at wellness; nothing confirmed a drink until launch day.

For Ellsworth, the buildup is also a return to what she enjoys. "It's fun to be at it again and building," she said.

What does this change for the category's incumbents? Nothing yet — Jetty has disclosed no sales targets, distribution beyond four retailers, or funding. The real test is whether "hydration for existing" can convert a Pilates-and-mom-walk audience into repeat purchases at scale, against brands with ten-figure revenues and festival-sized marketing budgets.