Seth Goldman, Co-Founder, Eat the Change

For doing well by doing good. Again.

Seth Goldman picked up the pieces of his former brand’s broken luck this year and super glued them back together into something that could end up even stronger the second time around.

The celebrated “good guy” entrepreneur could have sat back and played the skeptic when the Coca-Cola Co. announced it was going to kill off Honest Tea, the signature product of the organic beverage brand that Goldman co-founded and later sold to Coke back in 2011. But rather than simply express his discontent and continue to count his millions – and keep his energy directed toward other enterprises, including vegan restaurant chain PLNT Burger and emerging snack platform Eat the Change – Goldman stood back up.

Goldman recognized that the stakeholders in Honest Tea – most prominently the multiple certified organic and Fair Trade suppliers of tea and other ingredients – were poised to lose business along with the consumers who had been crestfallen by Coke’s announcement. Moreover, in discontinuing Honest Tea, Coke had created a hole in the market for a product very much like Honest Tea, with the same conscious bona fides, addressing the very same loyal consumers. 

No, it wouldn’t be Honest – that brand is still Coke property and is deployed for a successful kids drink line. But in the space of just a couple of months, Goldman – alongside old partner Barry Nalebuff, new compadre Spike Mendelsohn, and a host of his old sales team under the Eat the Change platform – have launched Just Ice Tea. 

We can’t predict whether there’s another life-altering business in Just Ice Tea for Goldman, but what we can say is that the fast work to fill the gap is totally consistent with his nature, which is to use business forces to make the world better. He’s Person of the Year because he’s answered the call once again, swiftly, forcefully, and with a smile.