We recently connected with Tristan Jensen and have shared our conversation below.

Tristan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Let’s be honest Soda’s suck today. They either taste great and are killing you, or taste like shit and are killing you… less. Package that with the same boring marketing, and bland branding. it’s not surprising why more people every year are dumping their childhood friend “soda” for one reason or another.

My cousin and I want to redesign the way people feel about sweet beverages by redesigning the drink from the ground up.

Let’s back up.

It’s Easter Sunday, 2023, and on a warm rooftop restaurant somewhere in downtown Los Angeles, two 20 something year old cousins from opposite worlds are about to come together to accidentally start a soda company. You see Tristan (That’s me) comes from the music world. Crazy hair, rough guitar fingers, obnoxious outfits, the whole thing. My cousin Alec, is a genius biochemist. Maybe a little too buff for the average biochemist, but a skilled scientist and chemist all the same. On that very Sunday I was raving to Alec about my new song called “Pop!”. A funky, alternative gorillaz type song designed to bring you into the bubbly fantasy world of a soda commercial. Sampling sounds straight from the can, I was looking to sync license this song to a sprite commercial. Sprite was my all time favorite soda growing up, at least it was until the pimples and bloating started during high school and I had to chill tf out.

I couldn’t exactly drink my favorite drink, but I could support them with a song. This is where Alec says “Hey crazy idea… What if you didn’t give that song away… What if we kept that song and started our own Soda company!”
The idea was crazy… But just crazy enough for me to say “absofuckinglutely”
We spent the rest of that year combining both our strengths to create drinks that are simultaneously incredibly healthy and uniquely fun.

The first obstacle was health. After all, it was why I dumped Sprite in the first place. We needed a sweetener that could give that same sugary sweetness of a sprite without the shitty side effects that comes with it. This is where Alec comes in. My cousin is a huge nerd. I mentioned this right? What I didn’t mention is that Alec is a grad student at Cal-Tech University where he had been working with proteins for a good 4 years. Some of these proteins happen to bind to your tongue’s sweet taste receptors, providing a sweet sensation all while breaking down in your body like… well like a protein! Unlike other alternatives these proteins, extracted from plants, have no calories, great taste, and most importantly no side effects! (seriously look it up). We built our soda from the ground up so that every single ingredient that goes into our 5 calorie soda cans; including these sweet proteins, come without a catch so that you can enjoy our soda as much as little Tristan did with his Sprite can. Just minus the acne and stuff.

Now this is only half of our story. Alec’s got the health side locked down. But as a musician with an overactive imagination, I wanted our sodas to be more than just a drink; I wanted them to be an experience. Ever had a flavor-changing soda? We used these same sweet proteins to develop soda’s that become sweeter over time, creating a dynamic storytelling experience similar to the dynamics found in our favorite songs. With each flavor retelling a story from our childhood take our “The Floor is Lava” flavor, for example. This drink starts off sour to represent a child’s nervousness when making the leap from chair to couch, but within the course of a sip starts to turn sweet to mimic the relief of victory upon landing. Each flavor has its own unique story to tell with vibrant cans designed to immerse you further into the narrative, making every can a new experience.

Together my cousin and I are aiming to bring soda’s back to our generation by making incredibly fun drinks that just happen to be incredibly healthy. No longer should we be forced to give up on the things that make us happy because later we may regret it. After all, your weekends are fun, and guilt free. Your drinks should be too.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Being a couple kids in their young 20’s building a soda company. It’s really fun to follow absolutely none of the rules set by the industry. Every soda has this boring bland single color background and their logo and some bad slogans, so we make immersive vibrant world designs that we get laser printed into our cans to make them actually exciting to look at.

Wanna make a commercial? We get to do whatever the fuck we want on our socials and marketing, which just makes things funnier and a lot more chaotic. In the best way of course.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I remember when we first got our hands on a sweet protein. It was almost too good to be true and we began giving demos to people and advisors within weeks of our first formulation. But as life is, it was too good to be true. The proteins were fake. Discovered by a gel test preformed by my co-founder Alec- handy to have a scientist as your business partner- we quickly started testing every sweet protein supplier we can find. Many of these were huge companies with names you know, and almost all of what they sent us was F.A.K.E. fake! When we finally found a company that come clean during all our tests we discovered our protein wasn’t at all like our previous fake ones and it wasn’t going to work as a sole sweetener anymore.

Some friends around us thought the company was over.

But rather than lay down and give up we just looked at the problem from another angle. If protein won’t work by itself then we’ll find something to work with it, all while fitting the “no bad side effects” mission. We quickly discovered that monkfruit could step in where our protein could not, and together they really bring out the best in each other. By taking a step back when things catch fire, you can almost always find the solution hidden in plain sight.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Simple. Sweet. We all were raised in school to believe that failure is BAD. When grades run your life and there’s only one acceptable way to answer a question you are forced into the false security that you can succeed without failure. Anyone who starts a business learns fast that failure is to be expected, but resilience is what keeps you going. Never forget, you don’t have to know what you’re doing to take the first step, and if you don’t you will never move from where you stand.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://weekendsoda.com
• Instagram: @weekendsoda
• Other: Tiktok is @weekendsoda

Image Credits

Tristan Jensen