Cove Soda: Born at a farmers market. It started in a cove, a real one, and with their mom, who gave it the name.
Builder Stories
The Cove Soda story: how brothers John and Ryan MacLellan turned a mom’s-kitchen side project into a zero-sugar prebiotic soda on 7,000+ shelves
We’ve written before about why Cove Soda caught our attention as a business, and why Gravette Capital backed it. This time we want to tell the other half: the Cove Soda founders’ story, and where it started. It didn’t start in a lab or a boardroom. It started in a small Nova Scotia community, at a mom’s kitchen table, and at a folding table in a farmers’ market.
The more we learned about John and Ryan MacLellan, the more we were reminded of something every builder eventually figures out. The origin story isn’t marketing. It’s the operating system.
A Real Cove, and a Mom Who Named It
Cove is named for a real place. Malignant Cove is a small community in Antigonish County, Nova Scotia, and it’s their mother’s home community. When the brothers needed a name, they borrowed hers. On Cove’s own telling, it’s "two brothers, their mom’s name and her spirit on every can."
The product began there too. Canadian Grocer reports that in 2016 Ryan MacLellan, who was studying to be a teacher at the time, got curious about fermented foods. A friend gave him a kombucha culture and some instructions, and he started brewing at his mom’s home in Malignant Cove. "I was curious about fermented foods," he told the magazine.
It’s a humble start. No pitch deck. One curious brother, one borrowed culture, one kitchen.
The Accountant Who Said "Let’s Sell This"
A few weeks later his brother John tried a batch and was hooked. John was working at Ernst & Young and was, in his words, "always tempted to do something entrepreneurial." Cove’s own site puts it in one line: John, "an accountant ready to bet on something of his own," tried a batch and said, let’s sell this at the farmers’ market.
They signed up that night. By November 2016, John had registered them for the Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market, and Ryan was refining recipes and designing labels. "I would be designing labels in between classes and selling kombucha out of my car to friends and fellow students," Ryan told Canadian Grocer.
Then the market told them what they needed to know. "We brought 20 bottles on our first day and sold out before lunch," John recalled. "The next week, we sold out in two hours."
That’s the real lesson of a farmers’ market: it’s the cheapest, most honest product test a founder will ever get. Nobody at a folding table is buying out of politeness. They come back or they don’t.
A note on dates: Canadian Grocer, the company’s 2023 press release and BevNET put the start in 2016. Cove’s current site says "Est. 2017." We go with 2016 for the first brew and the first market, as the most detailed reporting does, and treat 2017 as the brand’s official founding year.
Two Brothers, Two Lanes
As the company grew, the brothers split the work by strength. John took sales, accounting, operations and logistics. Ryan took product development, marketing, packaging and branding. "It’s easy working with my brother because we have complementary skills," Ryan told Canadian Grocer. "We don’t cross over a lot, but we can always ask opinions and collaborate on our vision."
We see this pattern again and again in durable founding teams. Clear lanes, shared vision. Two people who trust each other enough not to do each other’s jobs.
From Kombucha to Zero-Sugar Soda
Cove spent its first years as a kombucha brand. A Loblaws deal took it west to Ontario in early 2021. Then customers started asking for something new. "We were hearing from people that wanted zero sugar but still something that’s gut healthy," John told Canadian Grocer. Ryan developed a soda line that launched in October 2022.
The company billed it as Canada’s first zero-sugar functional soda. By 2023 the brothers had shifted their focus from kombucha to soda, and the bet paid off. BevNET reports that growth sped up after the pivot.
Today Cove describes its soda simply: zero sugar, prebiotics, and "tastes amazing." The company says each can is sweetened with stevia and erythritol and contains prebiotics, which it calls "functional fibers that feed the good bacteria already living in your gut." (Earlier launch materials called the line probiotic. The brand’s current site says prebiotic.)
The flavors lean hard into nostalgia: Classic Cola, Root Beer, Cream Soda, Dr. Cove, Blue Razz, Pink Slushie, Rainbow Sherbet, Galaxy Pop, Ice Pop, Lemon Sorbet, Pineapple and Enchanted Apple, among others. That choice is deliberate. Cove isn’t asking soda drinkers to become wellness drinkers. It’s handing them the soda they already love, without the sugar.
From Folding Table to 7,000 Doors
Cove’s own timeline reads like a builder’s checklist:
- 2017: "a cooler and a folding table" at a local farmers’ market
- 2019: onto major-retailer shelves, with every win celebrated "right there in the parking lot"
- 2020: Costco, right through the pandemic
- 2022: soda launches across Canada at retailers like Sobeys and Costco
- 2024: into the U.S., with shelves at Target, Costco, Erewhon and more
- Today: "over 7,000 locations across North America"
In September 2025 Cove signed a distribution agreement with Keurig Dr Pepper Canada. In November 2025 it announced a $15 million USD Series A led by Vanterra Ventures. Other investors in the round included RiverPark Ventures, The Palm Tree Crew, Simple Food Ventures, Dan Lourenco, Michael Rubin, Diplo, Kygo, The Chainsmokers, Miles Teller, Jack Eichel, Aaron Ekblad, Matt Chapman and JD Martinez. Vanterra Principal Ellis Fried joined Cove’s board.
"Cove represents the next wave of innovation in the $250 billion carbonated soft drink market," John MacLellan, now Co-Founder & CEO, said when the round was announced.
Gravette Capital is one of Cove’s backers, and we’ll say it plainly: we invested because of the people first. Two brothers with complementary skills, a product that actually tastes like soda, and momentum you can see on the shelf made backing Cove feel like common sense. We laid out the business case in Inside Cove Soda: Why the Soda Aisle Is Changing.
What Builders Can Take From the Cove Soda Story
We keep coming back to a few things.
Name it after something true. "Cove" isn’t a focus-group word. It’s a place and a person. When a brand name carries a real story, every can tells it for free.
Test where the feedback is brutal and cheap. Twenty bottles and a Saturday morning taught the MacLellans more than any survey could. Find your farmers’ market: the smallest real setting where strangers can say no.
Listen past the first product. Cove’s best move came from customers asking for zero sugar that was still gut-friendly. The brothers didn’t defend kombucha. They followed the demand.
Keep the family in the brand, and the discipline in the business. The warmth is on the can. The growth came from clear roles, retail execution and patience.
As Cove puts it, "better-for-you was never a bolt-on — it was in the very first batch." We think that’s true of most great companies. What you become is usually set at the beginning.