I was reading this morning about PepsiCo and Poppi — that fizzy gut-health soda they bought last year. Turns out the earn-out clause just got smaller. Not canceled, not renegotiated — just quietly adjusted downward, like a thermostat in a room nobody’s using.
They don’t say why exactly. Maybe sales slowed. Maybe the gut microbiome turned out to be less thirsty than projected. Or maybe someone in Dallas looked at the numbers and said, 'Da, but do we really need to pay for that?'
Poppi still exists. People still drink it. I saw a bottle in Oakland last week — next to a kombucha and a very sad-looking energy drink. Nothing’s broken. Just recalibrated. Like most things after the first year.
