Juice With A Jolt

Back in September of 2024, the Johnson brothers were on their weekly hike with their family. Often on these hikes, interesting conversations come up, and new ideas form.
The topics become random and even bizarre.
This is when the idea for carbonated orange juice in a can was born.
Little did they know at the time, that idea would be something bigger.
Fast forward a couple months to February 2025. Sippin’ Juice Co. was officially underway as a small business, needing a team bigger than just the Johnson boys. Highland graduate Mason Hunter, and current Highland senior Truman Cannon, were now on board with the Johnson brothers, Will (a junior at Highland), and Tom (now a student at the University of Utah).
While going through potential options of a production company, Cannon stumbled upon one from Vietnam and found that they had the option to add caffeine to a product.
“That might be cool,” he thought.
Sparkling orange juice isn’t very hard to find. It can be purchased online, or people can simply add Sprite. But caffeinated sparkling orange juice is unheard of.
On top of that, all of today’s energy drinks are chock full with artificial flavors, preservatives, and food dye. None of these ingredients are healthy. Sippin’ Juice Co. wanted to be different.
Orange juice concentrate. Water. Caffeine. Carbon dioxide. That’s it.
“That’s when it really started to become real,” Cannon said. “At first, we were just making funny reels and talking about it. But that was when we started actually making formulas and it became real.”
At first, the group was really looking at a company in Vietnam to produce the product and then ship it Utah for sales and distribution. However, when tariffs hit, this was no longer an option.
“That was when we switched the idea to just making it ourselves,” Cannon said. “So with the help of some investors, we bought the equipment to start working on producing it.”
With a CO2 tank, keg, juice, caffeine, and preservatives, they were all set… or so they thought.
“When we finally made it ourselves for the first time, we were so excited to try it,” Cannon said. “Unfortunately, due to all of the preservatives, it didn’t taste very good.”
They now had another hurdle to overcome. They realized quickly that starting a business from scratch isn’t easy.
“The most challenging part has been familiarizing myself with the industry,” Will said. “Everybody else that you’re talking with has been doing this for years, it’s their career, but we’re just trying to figure it out as we go.”
Being just high school and college students, they obviously didn’t have much experience with business. Although being young also has some benefits when starting something new.
“The nice part about being in high school is that I still live with my parents,” Cannon said. “So I don’t have to worry about really getting paid and covering rent yet.”
Still motivated, they went back to the drawing board. Now the question was how to get a simple juice-based energy drink that actually tastes good.
“After making it ourselves, we decided we’d have to give up more equity, to get more funds,” Cannon said. “So then we started looking into getting a co-packer to work with.”
Working with a co-packer has pros and cons for starting up a business. It takes more investment because they can be pricey, but it also ensures the accuracy of the ingredients.
The other benefit of using a co-packer for Sippin’ Juice Co., was eliminating the use of preservatives, with pasteurization. This would significantly improve the taste.
After finalizing a batching sheet, Sippin’ Juice Co. had settled on a co-packer from Columbus, Ohio.
“We sent them the juice from our bulk supplier, talked to a can printing company got the designs,” Cannon said. “From there we just get the batching sheet all good and they do the rest.”
This was a super exciting step for Sippin’ Juice Co. Everything was starting to come into focus. It was early in the summer and the hope was to get the drink out to people by the end of July.
Unfortunately, they were not done with the hiccups. There were some issues with the co-packer that became apparent quickly.
“They misinterpreted the batching sheet in a few ways which was tricky,” Cannon said. “And on top of that, we sent everything in during June and just got the cans in late August.”
Although the long wait had been disappointing for the boys, when the first cans arrived, they were excited. They finally had the product in their own hands. Now they just had to figure out how to sell it efficiently.
“We already had a deal with the U, so we sold our first 365 cans to the U, and then we just started selling them by hand at Highland,” Cannon said. “We also were set to drop some cans off to local markets, but some cans started to feel rock hard, so we stopped.”
They realized that some cans were filled more than others, due to an imbalance in carbon dioxide, so they sent out an order for a new batch and started coordinating their next sales.
“We didn’t account for the pressure difference with the elevation change from Columbus to Utah,” Cannon said. “There were faults on both parts, but we just stopped selling because we wanted to make sure the nutritional information was accurate on each can.”
They’ve worked with a formulation consultant to make sure everything is correct on the formula sheet, so that the cans are made correctly. The order for the new batch has been sent out and they are hoping to get the cans sometime soon.
“The plan for our next batch is to definitely be in some local markets, and then we’re working with other local businesses,” Cannon said. “And then we will do mostly direct consumer sales through our website, until we can get into gas stations and stuff.”
For now, all they can do is wait, but once this next batch comes out Sippin’ Juice Co. plans to hit the ground running.
“Now that we have the feedback that we needed, we’re just focusing on making the best improvements,” Johnson said, “so when we get our next batch out we can start clearing the shelves.”