Calming cocktail queen Olivia Ferdi conquers America with Trip

If you think of British exports that you would expect to do well in the US then Burberry trench coats might spring to mind. Maybe Jaguar Land Rover cars, or Dr Martens boots. A soft drinks brand that claims to make you feel calm would be unlikely to feature high on the list.

But stateside domination is exactly what Olivia Ferdi, the 36-year-old founder of Trip, has in mind as the Cambridge graduate shows me around the firm’s offices – complete with disco ball – in west London. It was the first thing she and her co-founder, husband Daniel Khoury, installed in the small business unit nestled between pastel-coloured houses in Notting Hill.

It is a nice feature for the office parties that the start-up likes to host, she says. And lately there’s been a lot to celebrate.

Trip, which counts model Ashley Graham and American musician Joe Jonas as investors, was valued at more than $300 million (£225 million) in a fund-raising last year.

Sales at the group, whose backers also include DMG Ventures, the venture capital arm of The Mail on Sunday’s publisher DMGT, are thought to have hit $100 million (£75 million) in the year to February 2026.

Trip has just been launched in Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, another step in its ambition to take over the US by offering consumers a ‘moment of calm’.

Its drinks are a blend of ‘functional’ ingredients, including L-Theanine – the amino acid in green tea – and camomile, a flowering plant with allegedly soothing properties.

Its most famous recipe, and the one in most of its drinks sold in the UK, contains CBD, or cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive extract of the marijuana plant Trip says helps drinkers feel mindful.

Trip got into trouble – and got a lot of publicity – last year when an advert made the claim that its drinks that don’t contain CBD could ‘help you feel calm’. The Advertising Standards Authority said this claim was unauthorised and banned the ad.

‘We’re not all trying to achieve some ridiculous metric on performance or whatever,’ Ferdi says ‘but having a rested, calm nervous system is going to be the number one health goal of many, many people. When you’re in constant fight or flight, or over-caffeinated, or not getting enough sleep, you don’t feel great.’

Trip began when Daniel had surgery weeks before their wedding in 2018, having injured his knee playing football, and was told he could only walk for short periods on crutches. He used CBD in his recovery – and was able to dance at their wedding.

The couple thought there could be an opportunity in creating an accessible and tastier version of CBD. And while the ingredient may raise eyebrows for some, Trip’s drinks are now sold in meal deals in major supermarkets.

The focus now is on giving consumers a feeling of control over their lives and ‘being able to take the edge off’, Ferdi says. And it is moving away from its original CBD mixture as it targets the US where demand for its magnesium drinks are booming, she says.

Social media influencers proclaim that the mineral – when mixed with tart cherry juice to make a ‘sleepy girl mocktail’ – helps them sleep better.

In the early days of Trip, Ferdi and her husband ran a stand at the Coachella music festival held in Indio, California, trying to convince influencers, celebrities and DJs to give the brand a go.

‘I am excited to be kind of flying the flag as such,’ she says, ‘and showing you don’t have to come from this industry, you don’t have to be a certain type of person to thrive and create something that resonates and works for people.’

Ferdi knows something about stress after a career in the City as a lawyer. And leaving a well-trodden career path to go it alone was a huge learning curve.

‘I was good at school and everything seemed linear,’ says Ferdi, who grew up in Hertfordshire. ‘This job was the opposite. It was like juggling, while spinning, while running. I’m the last person you would have ever picked on paper for this job or at school.’

A big skill she has learned since creating the group is ‘just to thrive in uncertainty’, she says, adding: ‘Not many women have founded a company that has grown so big, let alone while working alongside their husband and raising two kids. There aren’t that many reference points.’

Ferdi hopes she can be a role model to other aspiring entrepreneurs as ‘an Asian female founder that’s doing things that haven’t been done while raising a family’.

Ferdi, whose father is of Chinese-Indonesian heritage, says women wanting to start a business should trust their opinions on what products appeal to customers.

‘I think having that sense of quiet confidence in your experience is really important, and it’s hard to sometimes ignore the noise,’ she says. ‘But I would just say, stay true to your experience and your truth,’ she says. Many investors can be ‘a little male-centric’, she notes. Catering to an under-represented group is part of why Trip’s pastel cans have been a hit, she says, adding: ‘Women are often slightly under-served when it comes to walking into a store and seeing the shelving and the branding.’

Working with Daniel, her work-life boundaries often get blurred. She tells me about a recent date night visiting a restaurant where the chef wanted to make a summer ice cream using a Trip drink.

‘It was so fun, and that was technically work, but we’re in a lovely place having a fun conversation about innovation and idea sharing,’ she says. Even so, she has ‘non-negotiables’ each morning, including spending time with her children and exercising, to ensure ‘basically a perfect day by the time I get to the office, knowing that the rest of the day anything could happen’.

She says: ‘That is the nature of high growth start-up.

‘I can’t control how my day is going to go.’