The Idea:

In 2018, Olivia Ferdi was a Cambridge-educated lawyer who had worked at Allen & Overy and Farfetch, and dreaded her daily commute on the London Underground. Every morning she was queuing to board with irritable strangers and reaching her desk hunched and tense. A few weeks before her wedding, her fiancé Daniel Khoury tore his ACL playing football, and his doctor told him he wouldn't be able to walk down the aisle, let alone dance. His brother, then living in the US, had been watching CBD take off across North America. Daniel tried CBD oil. Seven weeks later he danced at his own wedding, crutch-free, all weekend. Olivia started taking it daily for the commute. But there was nothing on UK shelves that felt accessible on branding, price or quality. So the newlyweds pooled their personal savings and walked away from their City careers. This was the beginning of TRIP.

The Execution:

• 2019: TRIP hit shelves with pastel-branded CBD oils and sparkling drinks, funded by the founders' own savings.
• 2020: Lockdown sent direct-to-consumer sales soaring, and TRIP became Deliveroo's first and only specialist CBD store, delivering in as little as 30 minutes.
• 2021: A royal seal of approval went viral across 26 countries and crashed the website. The same year, TRIP quietly entered the US through a handful of premium accounts.
• February 2023: NielsenIQ data showed TRIP had grown 522% in 12 months, making it the UK's fastest-growing soft drink with over 88% of the CBD drinks market.
• October 2023: Near-death. The Food Standards Agency cut its recommended daily CBD intake from 70mg to 10mg, less than a single can of TRIP. Holland & Barrett pulled TRIP from sale, then reversed within days.
• 2024: TRIP launched Mindful Blend, a CBD-free line built on magnesium, lion's mane and ashwagandha. It topped the Fast 50 of the UK's fastest-growing food and drink businesses and raised £5.6M from The Equity Studio in December. The CBD-free range now makes up over 90% of UK drinks sales.
• 2025: TRIP launched nationally in the US, landing in Target nationwide with co-branded Calm cans that reached 50 million people in launch week. By October it was claiming $100M in revenue, profitably.
• November 2025: TRIP raised $40M at a $300M valuation to go after America, with Joe Jonas and Ashley Graham on the cap table.
• June 2026: Net revenues jumped 132% to £50.9m for the year to February, with a run rate near £90m. TRIP is now in 15,000 US stores across all six major chains and is eyeing a unicorn valuation by 2027.
• Today: Kendall Jenner has taken an equity stake and fronts TRIP's biggest global campaign yet. The brand forecasts $200M in 2026 revenue and has repeatedly ranked as TikTok Shop's top food and drinks business.

The lesson?

TRIP was built on CBD, then a regulator cut the safe daily dose to less than one of its own cans. Most single-ingredient brands would have fought the ruling or folded. TRIP made CBD optional instead, and its magnesium range now drives nine in ten UK drinks sales. Customers never cared which molecule was in the can. They cared how it made them feel, and they trusted the brand to deliver it. Own the need, rent the ingredient.