Today we’d like to introduce you to Sara Polon.
Sara, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
It starts with a mother and daughter who had no business starting a food company — and did it anyway.
Sara Polon spent her twenties as a stand-up comedian in New York, chasing a completely different dream than the one that would eventually define her. Her mother, Marilyn, better known now as Soupermom (the CAO – Chief Anxiety Officer), was the one who could actually cook. In 2008, Sara started digging into how broken the food system really was, and decided the fix was… to start a soup company. There was just one problem: she wasn’t much of a cook. So Marilyn stepped in, and the two of them started making soup in a rented restaurant kitchen with no heat or air conditioning — sweating through summers, bundled up through winters.
By 2011 they’d opened their first soup shop in Takoma, DC, quickly realizing they knew nothing about retail. A year later, Chef Gonzalo joined the team and helped push Soupergirl from a shop into real retail distribution.
TIn 2015, Sara walked into the Georgetown location with a literal bag of soup, asking to speak to the buyer — and ran straight into the regional chef, who had no idea who she was and made all the soup for the region himself. Awkward in the moment, but it turned into real support, and by 2016 Soupergirl was on shelves across the DC area’s natural retailers. That same year, they landed in Costco — a genuine turning point for the business.
2018 brought Shark Tank — the Polons got grilled on national TV but had fun doing it. 2019 marked the leap into nationwide shipping, which came with its own steep learning curve.
Then 2020 hit, and instead of retreating, Soupergirl leaned into supporting its community, team, and first responders through the pandemic.
The growth kept compounding: expansion into new Costco regions, Whole Foods, and other retailers; a move in 2023 into a larger production facility in Lanham, MD (Sara finally got an office instead of sitting on a cooler all day); and in 2024, a full visual identity refresh alongside new products and new retail doors — all still anchored to the same founding values.
In 2025 the company expanded its offering, now making Fearlessly Fresh Salsas in addition to soups and gazpachos. You can now find their products in Whole Foods, Giant, Safeway, Costco, MOM’s Organic Market, and more.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Not smooth at all — that’s actually one of the better stories to tell. Here’s a draft answer in your voice, first person and ready to use:
Has it been a smooth road?
Not even a little. I like to say Soupergirl was built by two people who were wildly unqualified to build it — and I mean that as a compliment to us now, because we figured it out anyway.
The first struggle was literal: our first kitchen had no heat and no air conditioning. We were sweating through soup batches in summer and wearing seven layers in winter, in a rented restaurant kitchen, just to get product out the door. That’s not a metaphor — that’s Tuesday.
Then there was the fact that neither of us knew retail. We opened our first shop in Takoma, DC in 2011 having zero idea what we were doing on the retail side. And when I finally got the nerve to walk into Whole Foods Georgetown with a bag of soup, hoping to pitch a buyer, I ran straight into the regional chef — who had no idea who I was and made all the soup for the entire region himself. Deeply awkward. Also, weirdly, the beginning of a real relationship with Whole Foods.
And then 2020 happened, like it did for everyone. We had to figure out how to keep a small food company — and our team — intact through a pandemic while still showing up for our community and first responders.
Beyond the “and then this happened” moments, the deeper struggle has been constant: we make fresh, from-scratch food with a short shelf life and no preservatives, which is the harder, more expensive, less scalable way to build a CPG brand. Every year has been a negotiation between staying true to that and actually growing the business. Add in being a women-led, mother-daughter company in rooms that don’t always take you seriously at first, and you’ve got the real version of the story — not the smooth one.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Technically, I’m the CEO of a fresh soup and salsa company. Practically, my job is refusing to let good food get made the cheap, easy, corner-cutting way — and building a business around that stubbornness. I specialize in being annoyingly uncompromising: always fresh, nothing preserved into oblivion, and a supply chain where the people growing our ingredients actually get paid fairly for the work they do We were the first CPG brand to earn Fair Food Program certification, and that’s not a badge I put on for press — it’s the thing I’d defend hardest if you took everything else away.
What I’m most proud of isn’t the store count or the Costco deal, honestly — it’s that seventeen years in, our values have grown with the business instead of getting quietly negotiated away as we scaled. That’s the harder version of growth. Anyone can grow revenue. Growing your integrity at the same rate, while staying in business? That’s the flex.
As for what sets me apart — I didn’t come up through food. I came up through comedy. I spent my twenties in New York doing stand-up before any of this soup business happened, and that background never left me — it’s why I can’t stand corporate food-speak and why I built this brand to have a sense of humor about itself. And this fall, I actually get to go back to where it started: I’m bringing my one-woman show, I Regret Nothing, back to the stage. Running a values-driven food company and doing comedy are, weirdly, the same muscle — both require telling the truth even when it’s more comfortable to perform something smoother.
How do you define success?
Success isn’t the store count. It’s in our focus on food justice, our Fair Food certification. It’s the knowledge that the farmers that picked our tomatoes are treated like human beings. We’re the first CPG brand certified under the Fair Food Program — built with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers — and to me, that’s the actual scoreboard. Growth that doesn’t carry that with it isn’t success, it’s just size.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thesoupergirl.com
- Instagram: @thesoupergirldc
- Facebook: @thesoupergirl
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-polon/
