Who Owns Suja Juice?

Annie Lawless, James Brennan, Jeff Church, and Eric Ethans founded Suja in San Diego in 2012. Lawless, a former law student who had turned to juicing to manage her own health, started delivering cold-pressed juices from her home kitchen. The founders used high-pressure processing to keep the juice raw while achieving retail shelf life, a method that distinguished Suja's product quality from heat-pasteurized competitors.

Growth was extraordinary. Within three years Suja scaled from home deliveries to national distribution at Costco, Whole Foods, and Target, becoming one of the fastest-growing beverage brands in US history at the time. In 2015, Coca-Cola and Goldman Sachs' merchant banking division bought minority stakes in a deal valuing the company near $300 million, with Coca-Cola receiving an option to purchase Suja within three years.

Coca-Cola never exercised that option. Control instead passed in August 2021 to Paine Schwartz Partners, a private equity firm focused on the sustainable food chain, in a transaction valued in the $50 million to $249 million range according to market data providers. Under Paine Schwartz, the company reorganized as Suja Life in 2022 and built a functional beverage platform: it acquired immunity-shot maker Vive Organic in 2022 and bought the rights to Slice, a 1980s soda brand it relaunched in January 2025 as a reduced-sugar functional soda.

Suja Life filed for an initial public offering in April 2026 and priced on May 8, 2026, selling 8.9 million shares at $21 each for gross proceeds of $186.7 million. Shares fell 14.3 percent on the Nasdaq debut, valuing the company at approximately $695 million, but Paine Schwartz retained about 60.4 percent of voting power through Class V shares.

The Suja brand itself remains the portfolio anchor: Suja Organic juices and wellness shots sold through national grocery, club, and mass retail channels, marketed around organic certification and clean-label ingredients.