What Happened to SoBe (South Beach Beverage Co.)?

SoBe (short for South Beach Beverage Company) helped define late-1990s cooler culture with herbal teas, juice blends, and flashy ‘Elixir’ bottles capped by a lizard logo. Founded in 1995, the brand leaned into ginseng, guarana, and New Age flavor names just as functional beverages were breaking into the mainstream.

Identity & design. SoBe’s instantly recognizable dueling lizards—two mirrored, gecko-like figures in a yin-yang posture—served as a bold shelf signal on bottles, caps, and case trays. The high-contrast lizard mark, oversized type, and saturated label colors made SoBe pop in crowded coolers and on endcaps.

Guerrilla buzz. Early growth leaned on guerrilla marketing more than big TV buys: college-rep sampling, street teams at action-sports and music events, sticker packs, and convenience-store cooler takeovers. The result was word-of-mouth heat and strong presence where teens and twenty-somethings shopped.

PepsiCo acquired SoBe in 2000, bringing national muscle—but as the 2010s progressed, category shifts and portfolio pruning cut many SKUs. Lines like Lifewater, specialty teas, and niche flavors were gradually trimmed, and distribution waned.

Despite frequent “Is SoBe discontinued?” chatter, PepsiCo still lists SoBe and offers a product locator, signaling the brand isn’t officially dead—just limited. For most U.S. shoppers, SoBe now lives in nostalgia (and the occasional regional sighting), emblematic of the 90s/00s wave of functional drinks that later consolidated under bigger, simpler lineups.