Roxberry Found the One Shopper Missing From Walmart’s Hottest Aisle

Walmart built the Modern Soda aisle for adults who wanted their soda back without the sugar. Roxberry looked at that set and saw the one shopper nobody had built for: the kid standing next to the cart. The Columbus, Ohio brand entered Walmart this January in 2,200 stores across all 50 states as, by the company’s account, the first kids’ beverage in the Modern Soda set, selling 7.5-ounce four-packs listed from $4.87 on Walmart.com as of this writing, SNAP EBT eligible, with same-day pickup and delivery. On May 14, the parent-founded company announced a funding round and said Walmart is expanding its store count by 50%, to more than 3,300 locations. That expansion is what makes this a story for right now: it was announced heading into the heart of beverage season, and the brand runs both of Walmart’s doors at once, 1P on the shelf and a Marketplace storefront operated under the Roxberry Naturals name selling 24-count cases online.

Four Kids, One Gap in the Aisle, and a Founder Who Has Done This Before

Roxberry is a family operation in the literal sense. Lauren and Andy Sauer founded the brand in Columbus alongside their four children and co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Dan Haugen, and began developing the concept in 2022. But this is not a first venture finding its way. Andy Sauer is the CEO of Garage Beer, the craft light beer he turned into a national name, with sales up more than 500% in the twelve months ended April 2025, according to Fast Company, and majority owned by Travis and Jason Kelce since 2024. Roxberry is a proven beverage operator’s second national playbook, pointed this time at his own kitchen table. Each 7.5-ounce can, sized for small hands, blends carbonated water with fruit and vegetable juice on a coconut water base, carries 5 grams of sugar with monk fruit doing quiet work, and contains no artificial flavors, colors, sweeteners or caffeine. The flavors are named for the customer, not the parent: Pink Lava Strawberry Lemonade, Ocean Potion Fruit Punch, Galaxy Gulp Citrus. Fast Company profiled the brand’s deliberately loud visual identity in January, noting characters inspired by the Kool-Aid Man and a launch footprint that also included some 450 Kroger, Meijer and Harris Teeter locations plus independent grocers, with four-packs at $5.99. The brand added Texas through H-E-B in late April. Roxberry Naturals remains independent and founder-led; the May round’s terms were not disclosed.

Incrementality Is the Argument That Turns 2,200 Stores Into 3,300

The mechanics of Roxberry’s first six months are the part worth studying for anyone who sells, or wants to sell, at Walmart. The brand did not ask for space in a crowded set by promising to out-compete Poppi and Olipop for the same shopper. It argued category math instead. In a survey of 4,000 Modern Soda shoppers the company cites, nearly 60% said they were actively looking for a kid-friendly option in the set, and 78% said a kids’ offering would be an incremental purchase, new dollars into the aisle rather than dollars moved between brands. Those figures are the brand’s own, and a young company necessarily tells much of its own story. But the category research backs the logic: Circana’s Modern Soda’s Moment research describes a category meeting needs that legacy soft drinks leave unserved and adding demand to the aisle rather than shifting it, drawing buyers whose baskets skew toward other better-for-you drinks, and Circana data reported by Beverage Industry put modern soda at $1.8 billion in 2024, up 83% from $983 million the year before. Walmart’s behavior is the third signal, and the most concrete: retailers do not expand a four-month-old brand’s store count by half on sentiment. The company said in May that sales had grown nearly 900% since the January launch and that its presence is pulling new shoppers, specifically parents buying for kids, into the Modern Soda set. The 1P and 3P halves of the operation each carry a lesson: the shelf placement won the family impulse purchase at an everyday price, while the brand-run Marketplace storefront captures the case-pack loyalist online, a two-door structure that more emerging beverage brands are likely to study.

There is an honest tension worth naming too. A Mintel analyst told Beverage Industry this spring that prebiotic soda growth may be approaching its ceiling. If that read is right, it sharpens rather than dents Roxberry’s bet: if the category’s adult core is maturing, the untouched kids’ segment is the clearest remaining growth argument, which is precisely the whitespace the brand claimed. The timing around the shelf points the same direction. Walmart is stripping synthetic dyes from its private brand foods by January 2027, the industry is reformulating around simpler panels, and a kids’ beverage built without dyes from day one sits exactly where the aisle is heading. Roxberry did not wait for that reset. It arrived a year early.

Which brings the question its second six months will answer. A 50% footprint expansion is the moment every young brand meets the velocity test: the same cases that flew off 2,200 shelves now have to prove themselves in 1,100 more stores, many in trade areas the brand has never marketed to, right as every incumbent in modern soda can now see the kids’ segment Roxberry opened. The segment it claimed inside Walmart’s set is the prize. The open question is whether the family from Columbus can hold it before bigger players decide they want the kid standing next to the cart too.

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