Suja Life, Inc.

Who owns Suja Life, Inc.?
Suja Life is a public company controlled by Paine Schwartz Partners, which holds about 60.4 percent of voting power through its stake in Suja Life Holdings, L.P. Meaningful Partners holds a smaller position, and public shareholders own Class A stock listed on Nasdaq.

Is Suja Life publicly traded?
Yes. Suja Life trades on Nasdaq under ticker SUJA. The company completed its IPO on May 8, 2026, pricing 8.9 million shares at $21 and raising $186.7 million in gross proceeds.

When was Suja Life founded?
The Suja brand was founded in 2012 in San Diego. The company reorganized under the Suja Life name in 2022 after Paine Schwartz Partners acquired control in August 2021.

What brands does Suja Life own?
Suja Life owns three brands: Suja Organic cold-pressed juices and wellness shots, Vive Organic immunity shots, and Slice reduced-sugar sodas.

Does Coca-Cola or PepsiCo own Suja Life?
No. Coca-Cola held a minority investment starting in 2015 but never exercised its option to buy the company. Paine Schwartz Partners has controlled Suja Life since 2021. PepsiCo has never owned the company.

Where is Suja Life headquartered?
Suja Life is headquartered in Oceanside, California, in San Diego County, where the original Suja juice business began.

Suja began in 2012 when Annie Lawless, James Brennan, Jeff Church, and Eric Ethans started a cold-pressed juice business in San Diego. Lawless had been juicing at home for health reasons, and the founders applied high-pressure processing, a method that kills pathogens without heat, to create raw-tasting juice with commercial shelf life.

Growth was unusually fast for a beverage startup. Within roughly three years Suja went from home delivery to national distribution across Costco, Whole Foods, and Target, at one point ranking among the fastest-growing beverage brands in US history.

In 2015, Coca-Cola and Goldman Sachs' merchant banking division bought minority stakes in a deal valuing Suja near $300 million. The agreement gave Coca-Cola an option to acquire the company within three years, but it never exercised it, leaving Suja's growth funded but without a committed buyer.

Paine Schwartz Partners acquired a controlling interest in August 2021, purchasing the stake held by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and co-investors in a transaction valued between $50 million and $249 million. Under Paine Schwartz, the company reorganized as Suja Life in 2022 and executed a buy-and-build plan: Vive Organic came aboard in 2022, and the Slice soda brand followed in 2024 with a relaunch in January 2025.

The private equity owner moved the company toward the public markets starting in January 2026, when press reports described a dual-track sale-or-IPO process. Suja Life filed its registration in April 2026 and completed its IPO on May 8, 2026. The $21 pricing came at the low end of the proposed range, and the 14.3 percent first-day decline reflected investor caution about competitive pressure in functional beverages and the company's continued private equity control.

Suja Life's public record centers on ownership transitions rather than product scandals. The 2015 Coca-Cola investment created years of acquisition speculation that ended when Coca-Cola let its purchase option lapse, a decision that later appeared prescient as premium juice growth cooled.

The IPO itself drew scrutiny: pricing at the bottom of the range and the 14.3 percent first-day decline were widely reported, with analysts noting that Paine Schwartz's retained 60.4 percent voting control limits public shareholder influence under the controlled-company structure.

On products, the company has managed routine food-safety matters standard for raw and cold-pressed juice production, resolved through normal FDA-coordinated procedures.