ZZAI started with a simple question: why doesn't America know how good this stuff is?
Real drinks. Real stories.
ZZAI is sparkling West African flavors made in the USA. Hibiscus, kola, citrus, and tamarind — the real flavors of the everyday table, in a can worth keeping.
Why we made it
A drink at every important room.
Hibiscus the way our grandmothers brewed it. Chapman on a Lagos rooftop. Kola, the original cola, served at every important room you'll ever sit in. Mango and tamarind from the schoolyard. These flavors raised us. Now we're sharing them.
Chapman was the drink that made you feel, for a moment, like the most important person in the room. Zobo was the one my siblings and I pooled our change to buy from a street hawker walking home from school in Lagos — one cold cup between all of us. That was it. I've been chasing that first sip ever since. ZZAI is not a reimagining of these flavors. It is the flavors. The same ones that have always known how to make a moment feel real.
Zainob Fashola
Founder, Faaji LLC · Passaic, NJ
Queen Amina · Zazzau
The Igbo ElderWhat we believe
Made with intention.
Four principles that shape every can — from sourcing to sweetening to the table it lands on.
Real ingredients
Hibiscus, kola, blood orange, tamarind — sourced and extracted naturally. We don't reformulate down to a price.
From West Africa
Recipes from the table — Zobo from holidays, Chapman from Lagos rooftops, Obì from elder gatherings, TamTam from market stalls.
Made in the USA
Formulated in 2025 and made shelf-stable, so the can on your shelf tastes exactly the way we made it — on day one and on day ninety.
Family-friendly
Lightly sweet. Naturally flavored. No alcohol, no high-fructose corn syrup. A drink the whole table can share.
How we got here
From the table, to the can.
Then
A drink at every important room.
Chapman at every Owambe. Zobo from the streets of Lagos. Tamarind straight from the pod. Kola at the elders' table. These flavors didn't need packaging. They were already everywhere that mattered.
2011
The first idea.
A beverage business in Nigeria — starting with wine. The market was ready. Then Nigeria's economy wasn't. A government embargo cut off access to capital and the idea had to wait.
2018 — 2021
A different angle.
Pivoted to a made-in-Nigeria spirits brand — liquor and liqueur rooted in local ingredients. Ran tests. Bought equipment. By the end of 2021, there was a mini production facility ready to go.
2022
Everything paused.
Post-COVID health needs brought me back to the US. I stepped back, rested, and started paying attention to what I was missing. The flavors I had taken for granted my entire life in Lagos were nowhere to be found here. The question kept coming back: why not?
Early 2025
The answer became a decision.
After years of building toward something in Nigeria, the mission shifted. The flavors I grew up with deserved to be here. We worked with an expert flavor development partner to translate these generational recipes into shelf-stable, lower-sugar sparkling beverages — without losing what made them worth drinking in the first place. Rutgers University Food Innovation Center ran blind taste panels and marketing research to confirm what we already knew: the flavors speak for themselves.
March 2026
Recipes locked.
Formulation complete. Every SKU tested, refined, and ready. The flavor in the can tastes like the flavor we grew up with. That was the only standard that mattered.
April - May 2026
The community said yes.
ZZAI launched on Kickstarter. Fully funded. Proof that the people who grew up with these flavors — and the people discovering them for the first time — were ready.
June 2026
Into production. Into rooms.
Cans go into production. ZZAI exhibits at the Summer Fancy Food Show, New York City — our first time on a national trade floor.
Late June - mid-July 2026
First shipments begin.
As production inventory lands, the drinks that lived on street corners, in family kitchens, and at celebration tables across West Africa start arriving at your door. Sparkling. Exactly as they should be.
