Making An Exodus

The Schwartzes are parents who have always used their entrepreneurial mindset to create a secure future for their children. Rebecca used to be a pediatric occupational therapist and owned her own sensory gym while Yoni has had an actuary business. “We’ve always wanted to have some other kind of backup,” Yoni says. They gave a whirl at investing in real estate, kickstarted a sock business and even more recently a toy business. “We tried a bunch of schemes that did not work out.”

The best ideas, though, come when you stop thinking so hard and just do what you enjoy.

From fermenting foods to brewing his own beer, Yoni has always enjoyed experimenting in the kitchen. As Passover was approaching a number of years ago, he began to wonder why there weren’t any accessible options for beer that he would be able to drink during the eight-day holiday which prohibits standard wheat products.

“I knew some apple ciders are made with hops,” he remembers. “If you have a hopped apple cider, it tastes almost the same as a light beer.”

Eventually, they made a few hundred cases of their hopped cider at a cidery in Upstate New York. The label portrayed Moses splitting the Red Sea. They named the beverage, Exodus.

This was 2020, when the upside of the pandemic allowed them to create a small business. But the down side was that all of the hotels they planned to sell the product in were shuttered.

But Rebecca has a way to her of pulling off some wizardry time and time again. “I got on the phone and called every single place that could sell it,” she says.

Exodus began making some decent sales, and Yoni began to get a bit more serious at home with mixology as customers asked for more beverages, leading the Schwartzes to open up a manufacturing facility in Brooklyn, but more roadblocks came as the realities of producing alcohol became apparent. “You can’t apply for the license until you have a space ready to go,” Rebecca explains. “That means you're paying rent, get your equipment ready, then you start the application, which doesn't get looked at for six months.”

Even though fans are still asking for it, Exodus saw an exodus a couple of years later, around the time functional sodas began to gain popularity, leading them to explore the nonalcoholic route, which felt more practical. “I wanted something that I’m okay with my kids drinking because I knew we would end up with a lot of it in the house,” Rebecca says. “I wanted it to be the highest quality soda.”

Natural Sweeteners, Not ‘Natural Flavors’

Fresh Fizz wants to be the original Rx Bar of sodas–listing every ingredient on the front as its prime differentiator among countless new soda companies on the market that all seem to blend together.

There are no artificial, refined or added sugars in Fresh Fizz sodas. Still, they are plenty sweet, as anyone expects from a soda, thanks to dates, honey and maple syrup. “Your body knows what to do with these,” Rebecca says. “And they taste better.”

The first flavor Yoni and Rebecca crafted in their own kitchen was Mint Lemonade, inspired by Rebecca’s love for Mojitos. On Shabbat, she often makes a nonalcoholic version for her kids, which essentially transformed into the Mint Lemonade flavor.

The flavors that add a level of intrigue to familiar classics are powerful–they honor the herbs and fragrant aromas inside that enable the soda to embrace its identity.

Herbs like the mint and hibiscus are steeped in hot water like tea to bring out the earthiness of their flavors before they are filtered after about 24 hours. The juices and sweeteners are then added and cooled down before carbonated in a final tank so that it absorbs the CO2 more efficiently. As Rebecca says, “we don’t take shortcuts.”

Another shortcut that Fresh Fizz avoids is using no ‘natural flavors’ which are listed on many products, something that’s deceptive to American consumers, but legally acceptable. “The flavor itself is natural, but everything else in that concoction doesn’t have to be natural,” Yoni says. “Pretty much every single soda has ‘natural flavors.’”

This commitment is part of the reason they aren’t exploring other classic flavors like Root Beer right now, because they aren’t able to find the necessary ingredients in an organic form to achieve those flavors. “Colas always use phosphoric acid, which has no flavor. But we use lemon juice for acid, which makes it more difficult,” Yoni says.

The Tart Cherry flavor is inspired by the New York deli classic Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry soda, but made for more modern palettes with a mix of tart cherry and sweet cherry juices sourced from Northwest Naturals in Washington State.

Yoni is admittedly a big Coca-Cola fan, so wanted to take a whirl at putting the Fresh Fizz stamp on cola, going back to its origins of kola nut, nutmeg and citrus. “Those pieces alone will get you most of the way to the flavor of cola,” he says.

Kola nut proved to be a pretty difficult ingredient to source, so they managed to find other ways to uncover the distinct cola flavor without it. Fresh Fizz uses Seville bitter orange peel, significantly different from a standard orange, and native to the South of Spain. This flavor is sweetened with dates sourced from Date Lady.

Food in itself is functional. While Fresh Fizz makes no outright functional claims on its cans, it’s making the biggest functional claim any brand could make with its inherently pure and functional ingredients.

Hyper-Intentional Growth

Fresh Fizz has intentionally been growing slow and steady. Yoni’s previous Bitcoin sales have enabled the company to be fully self-funded all this time. “We’re going to stay lean for as long as we need to,” Rebecca says. “We're very focused on becoming profitable as early as possible.”

Since making their first sale to LA’s Erewhon, Rebecca has acted as a one-woman salesperson with a backpack full of sodas, going door-to-door primarily close to home in New York City to form relationships with stores who she envisioned carrying the product. “I was in a small store doing a demo and a customer’s mom ended up being a KeHe rep, which got us into distribution with them,” Rebecca says.

Small but incremental improvements from customer feedback, including a trial in 2025 on the Sprouts ‘Forager Finds’ set, have landed them at formulas and flavor profiles that the couple is proud to finally launch on the national natural grocer’s nearly 500 permanent shelves.

“Fresh Fizz quickly demonstrated its ability to resonate with our customers. Bringing it into our core assortment allows us to build out that destination in a more impactful way,” says Espinoza. “We’re intentional about curating assortments that prioritize nutrient density and ingredient integrity. Fresh Fizz delivers on both.”

As a slew of healthier sodas continue infiltrating the American market since Poppi and Olipop changed the scene, there are fewer and fewer gaps to fill in the space. Most new entrants innovate with flavor profiles regardless of the source of that flavor, while Fresh Fizz fills an additional gap that others are not capitalizing on. “We consistently see a preference for organic options across our store,” Espinoza says. Fresh Fizz is helping push that forward within the beverage space, where organic offerings are still relatively limited.”

Sprouts also recently made a big commitment with Tractor Beverage and its new organic haymakers, showing the grocer’s commitment to going the extra mile on beverages that specifically highlight ingredient integrity. “We see an opportunity for Fresh Fizz to play a meaningful role in a growing Modern Soda set…” Espinoza adds. “...one that meets increasing demand for better-for-you beverages.”

The Schwartzes enjoy the creative scratch that building a beverage brand allows them to itch. But the urge they resist allows them to build a strong business foundation before feeling the need to expand too quickly like many companies do, leading to premature burnout. Fresh Fizz, however, with the increased consumer demand for classic products reinvented with integrity, may soon be on a calculated path to many more fridges.