Suja Life’s Recent Volatility Masks A Longer Game In Functional Beverages

Emerging Market With The Rules Still Being Defined

Right now, the wider functional beverage category, including energy and sports drinks, kombucha, herbal teas, functional coffees, protein-infused drinks and more, is expected to reach upwards of $400+ billion by 2034, roughly doubling from the $200-$250 billion range in the mid-2020s.

More than just thirst quenchers, functional beverages are engineered to deliver a wellness punch with vitamins and minerals, antioxidants, electrolytes, probiotics and enzymes for gut health and adaptogens for mood support.

The shift is one of the most profound changes in food and beverage, yet the space remains dominated by global conglomerates, like PepsiCo (Poppi, Bubly, Gatorade, Muscle Milk, LifeWtr), Coca-Cola (Innocent, Vitaminwater, Powerade, Smartwater), Keurig Dr Pepper, Nestlé, Danone, Monster Beverage and Red Bull.

Only a handful of smaller public companies operate as functional beverage pure-plays, among them Lifeway Foods (kefir), Oatly (oat milk), Vita Coco (coconut water), Zevia (zero-sugar sodas, teas) and Laird Superfood (hydration mixes).

But none compete directly with Suja in cold-pressed fruit-and-vegetable drink blends, making comparison with other companies effectively apples-to-oranges (pun intended). And when consumers think about overall health and wellness, fruits and vegetables are top of mind—“an apple a day” and all that—a nuance Wall Street may still undervalue.

Earnings Disappointment

Despite year-over-year second quarter net sales growth of 11.6% to $83.9 million, compared to $75.2 million last year, investors were disappointed by the 21% sequential drop from the first quarter.

But the company has an answer for that: Suja sales are historically weighted toward the first and fourth quarters—cold-and-flu season, when demand for Suja and Vive wellness shots peaks in grocery, convenience and airport stores. CEO Maria Stipp noted that wellness shots are both the largest and the fast-growing part of the company’s portfolio.

Investors were also put off by reported weakness in grocery bookings heading into third quarter. Suja’s brands—Suja Organics juice blends, Vive Organics wellness shots and Slice wellness-enhanced soda—are displayed in the fresh-food section of grocery, a channel currently feeling the effects of value-seeking shoppers shifting to club and mass retailers.

Grocery currently accounts for roughly one-third of Suja’s channel mix, compared with 12% at mass. The company sees continued expansion opportunities in convenience, airports, college campuses and fitness facilities.

In response to softer grocery bookings, Suja adjusted its year-end guidance from $367-$371 million (12.4%-13.6%) to a revised range between $360 million and $369 million (10.2%-13.0%)—a downward move that Wall Street typically punishes.

But as the number one brand in cold-pressed juice and wellness shot retail sales, according to Nielsen, Suja has leverage across its more than 33,000 retail accounts.

“We were the top growth contributor in the natural healthy beverage category for Q2, albeit with some softness in our grocery channel,” she shared in the earnings call. “This is a call to action with our grocery channel as well as our other channels to try to drive additional programming in the back half of the year. We’ve had a lot of our grocery accounts work directly with us to steepen the programs that we have lined up with them.”

While net losses in the second quarter increased nearly fivefold—from $5.7 million last year to $27.8 million, largely due to one-time costs related to the IPO—adjusted EBITDA rose 50% to $14.6 million.

Taken together, the past quarter looks more like a speed bump along a well-planned journey to leadership in better-for-you beverages.

“Despite the current environment, we believe our category-leading brands are distinctly positioned to meet consumer needs and continue capturing the significant whitespace opportunity ahead of us,” Stipp announced, pointing to the company’s vertically integrated model and state-of-the-art manufacturing facility as “a genuine and durable differentiator that is difficult and costly to replicate and core to how we think about long-term value creation.”

Blanketing The Nation

Originally founded as Suja Juice in 2012 in San Diego—suja is drawn from Sanskrit roots associated with a long, beautiful life—the company was among the early industrial-scale adopters of cold-pressed juice technology and high-pressure processing as an alternative to heated pasteurization.

“Our juices taste just like you would get in your kitchen without heated pasteurization that literally cooks the fresh taste away,” Stipp explained. “Our two-step process gives you fresh juice taste without ruining the nutrition stack and our juices go from farm to shelf in only eight days.”

After Forbes named Suja Life the number two most promising company in 2015, behind only Instacart, Coca-Cola became an early minority investor and distribution partner, utilizing its then-Odwalla chilled direct-delivery system.

Coke eventually discontinued Odwalla, but Suja Life learned from the best—expanding distribution from its Whole Foods and natural-foods base into leading grocery chains, such as Kroger, as well as Walmart, Target, Costco and many more.

Today, Suja products are available at nearly 400,000 points of distribution as convenience and airport stores expand from junk-food assortments into the wellness space—QuikTrip recently picked up the brand across its Midwest home base. And the company now holds more than 30 major retail relationships as strategic advisor or category captain.

As it approaches critical mass in retail distribution, Stipp’s next priority is deepening penetration inside its existing current retail accounts. Kroger carries over 50 SKUs, whereas most other partners average in the low teens.

“My goal is to work on building out our footprint inside those retail stores,” she said. With a portfolio now spanning three major brands and category-captain relationships, Suja Life has the product range—and the leverage—to do it.

Building The Portfolio

The company breaks down its sales into two groups: Suja Core products, including wellness shots and cold-pressed juices under Suja Organic and Vive Organic, which delivered $81 million in the quarter and Emerging Brands led by Slice, the functional soda Suja relaunched after acquiring the trademark in 2024.

Slice was originally introduced by PepsiCo in 1984 as a fruit-juice enhanced alternative in the soft drink aisle. Back in the day, it was the only soda I was happy to serve my kids. PepsiCo discontinued it in the late 2000s, and the brand sat dormant for nearly two decades. In 2025, PepsiCo paid nearly $2 billion acquiring functional, prebiotic low-sugar Poppi brand. Suja has done what PepsiCo overlooked—reimagining Slice for the better-for-you beverage era.

The new Slice offers all the classic soda experience with less than five grams of sugar and only 30 to 40 calories per can. Plus, it contains prebiotics, probiotics and postbiotics for gut health in orange, lemon-lime, grapefruit and strawberry flavors.

Suja has also introduced a Slice Dirty soda version—tapping the TikTok-driven dirty soda trend—in orange and strawberry flavors with all the health benefits and an added creamy twist. First introduced at Target, Slice Dirty quickly became one of the retailer’s fastest-selling SKUs in the fruit soda category.

“Being a beverage company and not having cans and carbonation in our portfolio was kind of a big miss,” Stipp said. “We wanted to bring back a legacy brand that people would know so it made a lot of sense for us to buy the trademark and reimagine it as a better-for-you alternative that remains true-to-taste.”

Slice generated $10 million last year after its rebirth and posted nearly 70% growth. Brand awareness now stands at 28%, and its net promoter score rose from 39 to 55 over the last three months, according to company surveys. Slice’s early results suggest it is riding the nostalgia wave among older consumers and getting a welcome reception among younger ones discovering it for the first time.

The Brand Builder

“I’m all about brand building,” Stipp declared and her resume backs that up. After starting her career at Kellogg and Miller Brewing, she spent nearly 15 years in the technology/video gaming industry, before returning to beverage as CEO of Lagunitas Brewing Company, whose flagship brand routinely ranks among the top-selling IPAs in the industry. She then signed on as CEO at Stone Brewing where she oversaw its acquisition by Sapporo.

Stipp joined Suja Life in early 2024, helped steer its IPO and is now focused on its next chapter: building the leading portfolio of brands in the better-for-you, functional beverage category.

“In the spirit of IPOs, we were on the smaller side, but we are hyper focused on growth,” she said. “We felt being part of the public market—knowing what the long-term consumer trends are, plus our sales growth consistency over the years—it made a lot of sense to work in the public market.”

Taking part in the public market carries risk, as Suja Life is experiencing now. But the company’s story isn’t defined by one disappointing quarter. It is building a fresh, functional, fruit-forward beverage platform in a category that investors are still learning how to value. With national distribution, a vertically integrated model, a revived legacy brand in Slice and a CEO whose career has been devoted to building sustainable brands—the kind that aren’t built overnight—Suja’s long-term arc is only beginning to take shape.

“My goal is double-digit top and bottom-line growth and so far that’s what we’ve been able to do,” she concluded. From here, the work is simply to keep delivering it.

See Also:

ForbesSuja Life’s Evolution From Cold-Pressed Juice To Functional WellnessBy Dave Knox