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Spicy pickle soda. Dirty protein soda. Cereal milk soda. These arent your standard mocktail offeringsbut thats exactly the point. On May 12, Olipop will launch its first-ever soda drive-thru in Los Angeles, offering an array of offbeat, internet-inspired drinks and limited-edition mocktails, with the first drink free to the public. The pop-up event taps into the internets growing obsession with so-called beverage goblin culture, which has people cycling through multiple drinks at once for hydration, energy, and fun. Theres just so much chatter around just these internet drinks and the whole like beverage goblin trend, where people have their hydration drink, their fun drink, and their caffeine on their desk, said Steven Vigilante, Olipops director of strategic partnerships. This is a reflection of that . . . Giving people an opportunity to actually do something, get out of the house and go try one of these for free. The drive-thru mocktail menu leans into the experimental, including three different flavors. Theres the Cereal Milk Soda, which is an orange cream Olipop mixed with vanilla almond milk, rimmed with vanilla frosting, and topped with fruit cereal. There’s also the Dirty Protein Soda, which is an orange cream with Koias vanilla bean protein shake. And there’s the Spicy Pickle Soda, a mix of pickle and jalapeo juice with Olipops vintage cola. While the novelty drinks are temporary, one fan favorite is making a permanent return. Olipops 12-ounce orange cream flavor, which first went viral in 2021, is officially joining the brands year-round lineup. Fans have been asking for its comeback on social media: Love this bestie but pls bring back orange cream, wrote one Instagram user. Another added, Next bring back orange cream pls . . . Ive never tasted anything better in my life. Starting April 29, its back permanently in the flavor lineup. [Photo: Olipop] The event also relates to the resurgence of soda culturespecifically, the dirty soda trend that blew up following the release of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives in late 2024. The reality series highlighted the oversize soda drinks popular in Utah, where chains like Swig and Sodalicious serve highly customized soft drinks mixed with flavored syrups and cream. Olipops orange cream soda fits right in with the trend. Creamy fruit flavors are the best for dirty sodas. They mix really well with the creamer. And we just thought this would be a fun way to do it. It’s like a kickoff this summer, Vigilante said. This is a beverage brand and a product that people need to try and touch and feel and taste. Adding to the event, Olipop is teaming up with Crocs for a limited-edition merch drop. The collaboration includes bright orange Bae Clogs in an Orangesicle colorway and exclusive Jibbitz charms. The items wont be sold online or in stores, as only a limited number will be given away at the drive-thru while supplies last. Attendees can also try a drink designed for the occasion: the Orange Dreamsicle Crocs-Taila mix of Olipops orange cream, half and half, vanilla syrup, whipped cream, and a branded popsicle. For those unable to attend in person, Olipop will run a virtual version of the event from May 12 through May 19. Online participants can enter to win a drive-thru kit or a case of the returning orange cream flavor. The event was originally planned for January, but postponed due to wildfires in Los Angeles. Now, it’s being used in association with the companys community-first approach. We are using this drive-thru as a way to create a nice community event in L.A. and give back to some of the folks who were impacted by the fires, said Vigilante.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Trump administration has frozen, stalled or otherwise disrupted some $430 billion in federal fundsfrom disease research to Head Start for children to disaster aidin what top Democrats say is an “unprecedented and dangerous” assault on programs used by countless Americans.Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut on Tuesday released an online tracker that is compiling all the ways President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are interrupting the flow of federal funds, often going up against the law.“Instead of investing in the American people, President Trump is ignoring our laws and ripping resources away,” said Murray and DeLauro, who are the top Democrats on the Appropriations committees in Congress.“No American president has ever so flagrantly ignored our nation’s spending laws or so brazenly denied the American people investments they are owed,” they said.The tally is far from complete or exhaustive, the lawmakers said, but a snapshot in time. It comes in a rapidly changing political and legal environment as the Trump administration faces dozens of lawsuits from state and local governments, advocacy organizations, employees and others fighting to keep programs intact.At 100 days into Trump’s return to the presidency, the project showcases the extent to which the White House is blocking money that Congress has already approved, touching off a constitutional battle between the executive and legislative branches that has real world ramifications for the communities the lawmakers serve.The White House and its Republican allies in Congress have said they are working to root out waste, fraud and abuse in government. The Trump administration is in court fighting to keep many of the administration’s cuts even as Musk, whose own popularity has dropped, says he will be cycling off DOGE’s day-to-day work.And Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget intends to soon send Congress a $9 billion rescissions package, to claw back funds through cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and others.Murray and DeLauro said they want to “shine a light on President Trump’s vast, illegal funding freeze and how it is hurting people in every zip code in America.” They said it’s time for Trump and Musk “to end this unprecedented and dangerous campaign.”While Republicans have also stirred with concerns about Trump’s spending cuts, many are reluctant to do so publicly as they try to avoid Trump’s reactions. Instead, they tend to work behind the scenes to restore federal dollars to their home states or other constituencies that have been put at risk by Trump’s actions.The powerful Appropriations committees in the House and the Senate, where Republicans have majority control of both chambers, draft the annual funding bills that are ultimately approved by Congress and sent to the president’s desk for his signature to become law. Lisa Mascaro, AP Congressional Correspondent
Category:
E-Commerce
The startup playbook that built Uber, Airbnb, and DoorDash is becoming obsolete in real-time. As AI compresses jobs that once required hundreds of employees into algorithms, we’re witnessing the birth of a new company archetypecapital-efficient, immediately profitable, and surprisingly small. With a variety of software to use for all aspects of building a businessfrom Shopify for e-commerce to Stripe for paymentsand low operating costs, innovation just keeps making everything that much more efficient. Advancements in AI are turbocharging this even further. Now, companies not only need less software and less capital for solutions to get off the ground, but they also simply need fewer people. From marketing to design to data management, AI can perform and accelerate many processes that take place in a growing company. Whether its automating website copy and social posts, assisting with interface and ad design, or even processing data sets to inform strategic decisions, many are already using AI to do this and more. This means it now takes the least amount of money it ever has to grow and scale a company. As a result, revenue scale is being achieved with the fewest number of employees ever and profitability is soon to follow suit. Acquisitions and IPOs are out of date Starting a company the old way was coming up with an innovative idea, followed by creating a minimal viable product and getting users. Raising venture capital to fund additional growth was the traditional next step, with ownership of the company being diluted every step of the way as new and necessary capital came in in which was needed to reach true scale. An ideal outcome would then be an exit through an acquisition or an IPO, but the odds are actually often against the company in that instance. In fact, only 11.5 percent of companies actually reach a good exit within the first five years. And when they do exit, the teams ownership has often been so diluted that their stake in a $100M sale could be less than if they raised just a few million and sold for $25M. Sometimes, consistently batting singles and doubles is better than trying to swing for home runs. The $100M company with one employee More and more stories like this are surfacing. Companies are reevaluating the need for venture capital and how much, if any, money to raise. Theres a lot of talk about the first $100M revenue company with just one employee because of AI, and were getting closer to that every day. In general, companies utilizing AI to its maximum potential are proving to be extremely efficient in terms of revenue per employee, because there is less needed to achieve the same growth trajectories. The best case study for this may be Midjourney, a company which has raised no outside capital at all but was last projected to be valued at more than $10B, in 2023, if they were to go out and fundraisea number that is likely even higher now given the companys continued growth. Because its easier than its ever been to start, grow, scale, and become profitable, the question now is, How much money companies should be raising? When theres so many more viable options, some have begun to wonder why raise money at all. New forms of financing All of this raises another fundamental question: What does this mean for the future of the tech ecosystem? The new normal may become financing through debt. If companies can turn a profit sooner than ever and the ability to get there requires far fewer employees, there are a lot more financing options for EBITDA-positive companies, including raising debt from banks, which is relatively inexpensive, or securing financing using revenue as the collateral. Because raising money from VCs requires diluting ownership and answering to shareholders, it is far and away the most expensive capital a company can find. If theres a world where capital can just come from debt, companies will get the best of both worlds: scaling the business on their terms while retaining ownership the entire way. This is likely going to be one of the most popular options in the AI-first era. Disrupting the conventional VC model VCs, meanwhile, will have to adapt their approach to adjust for a world in which their capital is simply less interesting to a company. Traditionally, their model is to get outsized returns from a handful of investments, which offsets the losses from the majority of the investments that dont return anything. VCs usually do this by investing and gaining significant ownership stakes in companies over time, reinvesting in round after round of the winners in their portfolio. These companies historically have come back for more capital because that was the way it was always done. That looks a lot different now when the companies they want to invest in only need to raise very little capital and in turn they dont get the ownership stake they need to generate those outsized returns. To keep up, VCs can look to new models and find companies outside of their normal view. It may look a bit less like software, and more like service-based companies that they previously avoided. These businesses are still ripe for disruption and have the potential to experience a dramatic lift from incorporating new technologyspecifically AIinto the mix. Investing in these types of businesses gives VCs the chance to capture the traditional types of returns over time, even if it starts to look more like private equity. The model becomes less about picking a handful of big winners, and more about ensuring that the majority of the companies they invest in are successful, even if just modestly. An existential question The next decade won’t just transform what startups build, but it will fundamentally reinvent how they’re built. The companies that thrive won’t necessarily be the ones with the most capital, but those that strategically deploy technology to maximize impact with minimal overhead. For companies and investors alike, adapting isn’t optionalit’s existential.
Category:
E-Commerce
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