Alina Morse is just an ordinary high schooler with an extraordinary passion for clean teeth. The 17-year-old is the CEO of a company called Zolli Candy. Zolli Candy creates lollipops, hard candy, and taffy all vegan, natural, KETO, gluten-free, and sugar-free. As a child, after having been offered a lollipop from a bank teller, she pondered over a major problem. Candy is terrible for your health and especially, your teeth. At the age of seven, she decided to act and spent two years over her home stove, endlessly researching, and questioning dentists and food scientists. The result was a lollipop sweetened by xylitol and erythritol, natural sweeteners that, due to their ability to neutralize the mouth’s pH, actually prevent cavities and tooth decay by lowering plaque and bacteria.
By the age of nine, Morse’s lollipop was finally ready and launched when Whole Foods Market picked it up. The new Zollipops became a bestseller on Amazon and were quickly adopted by Kroger in 2016 while Morse became an inspiring new face to the rest of the entrepreneurship and oral health world.
With her passion for healthy teeth and gums, Morse has waged a war against the tooth decay epidemic, specifically in children. In an act to save kids’ teeth, she began a “100,000 Smiles” campaign and in doing so, has donated thousands of Zollipops to schools and dentists and has donated her profits to oral health education. It is inspiring to see someone so young be so passionate about one area of pain, a passion she has nurtured since the age of seven and successfully weaved into her million-dollar idea. Morse is a surprising entrepreneur due to how she flipped the problem. She not only made candy harmless. She made it healthy.
I love how Alina Morse found a way to create a new candy that is healthy and prevents cavities. Alina saw what was on the horizon of the food industry: food that is all natural with added benefits to someone’s overall health. She developed a unique product and found new niches by expanding into Amazon and running a campaign for oral education.
Morse’s understanding of nutrition at a young age shows maturity beyond her years. She took a basic child’s passion and turned it into something that parents can get behind, therefore making it a highly coveted product. Not only that, but she took it upon herself to do chemical research and create a product from her own home. This leap of action caused her to go the next step further by reaching out to dentists and orthodontists in the area, making her even more talented at marketing. It is an inspiring product that both children and adults are attracted to, since all of us prioritize nutrition in our lives.
This girl is very encouraging to many who want to develop their idea but do not have the confidence because of their age or social status. Through whatever circumstances someone may be in, it is possible to work through it and create a business that thrives. It is wonderful to see her succeed in the scale that she did with a wonderful idea and with a product that can challenge the market to pivot. I hope her initiative to make healthier products like candy grows throughout her market and through many others to improve the lives and health of consumers.