Lay of The Land #116: Julia Solooki & Lior Shafir (Smart Soda)
Julia Solooki & Lior Shafir — the co-founders of Smart Soda, headquartered here in Cleveland — on revolutionizing the beverage industry!
The revolution is taking the water and soft drink industry by storm where for many consecutive years, carbonated soft drink sales have been in decline as an increasingly health-conscious society is demanding healthier alternatives in face of the $250 billion US soft drinks market.
Smart Soda is meeting that demand with a proprietary and functional beverage platform for major corporations, restaurants, offices, and retail, offering state-of-the-art beverage dispensing products serving healthy and delicious flavored sparkling water made with all-natural alkaline mineralized water, with the option for over 32 flavors utilizing organic cane sugar, vitamin infusion, and much more coming down the pike — to deliver everyday effervescence.
To date, Smart Soda has raised over $7mm building out the company, and has partnered with major brands like Sysco, BareBurger, 7-Eleven, and many others, all in pursuit of their vision to sustainably (WELL Standard adherent) create the best tasting and highest quality health-forward beverages.
Lior Shafir is an experienced executive in the water and beverage industry, with over 20 years in the field serving as the former Chairman and CEO of Aquatal and also as the former CEO of the exclusive US distributor of Soda Stream, the Israeli-based carbonated drink maker, which was acquired by Pepsi for $3.2 billion back in 2018.
Julia Solooki, now the president of Smart Soda, is focused on running and developing retail and online sales operation as well as strategically developing Smart Soda’s channel partner relations. Prior to co-founding Smart Soda with Lior, Julia held a series of leadership positions in the healthcare services arena in addition to serving on the board of education for the Healthcare Billing Management Association.
We cover a lot in this conversation — the proliferation and market for carbonated drinks, Julia and Lior’s commitment to sustainability, expansion plans, go-to-market strategy, and much more — please enjoy our conversation!
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Learn more about Smart Soda — https://smartsoda.com/
Connect with Julia Solooki on LinkedIn
Connect with Lior Shafir on LinkedIn
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For more episodes of Lay of The Land, visit https://www.layoftheland.fm/
Past guests include Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Steve Potash (OverDrive), Ed Largest (Westfield), Ray Leach (JumpStart), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Lindsay Watson (Augment Therapy), and many more.
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