Alex Cooper's drinks brand Unwell Beverage is shutting down after barely a year on shelves, the latest setback for a media empire already reeling from allegations that her husband and co-CEO berated staff and threatened to end their careers.
The beverage line, launched in 2025 in partnership with Nestlé SA, will wrap up its final sales after Halloween-themed products clear Target stores this fall, The Sun reported, citing Bloomberg's reporting based on sources at Target Corp. No official reason for the closure has been given by Cooper or the company.
The shutdown lands at a difficult moment. Cooper, the host of the massively popular Call Her Daddy podcast, has spent months watching her business empire absorb hit after hit, from high-profile staff departures to a Bloomberg investigation detailing a pattern of alleged workplace misconduct by her husband, Matt Kaplan, who runs the day-to-day operations of their media ventures.
Kaplan, 42, serves as co-CEO of Unwell Productions alongside Cooper. But according to Bloomberg's reporting, he has earned a reputation for yelling at employees, and multiple staff members have filed formal complaints with company leadership. Some threatened to quit outright if his behavior did not change.
One incident stood out. After logistical problems prevented Love Island USA star Kendall Washington from competing on Cooper's YouTube show, Unwell Winter Games, Kaplan allegedly berated production staff over the mishap. Bloomberg reported that he threatened crew members, telling them he would prevent them from ever working in Hollywood again. One crew member reportedly broke down in tears.
Neither Cooper nor Kaplan has publicly responded to the allegations. No direct quotes from Kaplan appear in any of the available reporting.
Cooper has long positioned herself as a champion of women in spaces dominated by men. When she launched Unwell Hydration, the first product line under the Unwell Beverage umbrella, she framed it as a corrective to a male-dominated industry.
"If you go on their Instagrams, the packaging is for men, and a lot of time it has to do with high performance, like you have to be a professional athlete to drink this, and it's all made for men, by men, marketed to men."
That was Cooper explaining why she wanted to build a hydration brand aimed at women. The brand eventually expanded into four product lines: Unwell Hydration, Unwell Focus, Unwell Protein, and Unwell Energy. None of them survived long enough to see a second full year on the market.
The beverage collapse is not an isolated stumble. Breitbart reported that Cooper and Kaplan co-founded Trending in 2023, an umbrella company housing both the Unwell Network and ACE Entertainment. Bloomberg described the company's internal culture bluntly: "employee turnover, a sputtering slate of shows and discord between staff members and her husband and co-chief executive officer Matt Kaplan."
Several high-level executives have departed in the past year. The head of brand marketing, the head of the network, and the chief growth officer all left. That kind of leadership exodus does not happen at a company where things are going well.
Cooper herself has not been entirely absent from controversy on other fronts. She previously made headlines when she brushed off Dave Portnoy's claim that she had threatened a fake harassment accusation to break her contract at Barstool Sports, where Call Her Daddy originated.
Cooper launched Call Her Daddy in 2018 alongside former co-host Sofia Franklyn. The show became one of the most-listened-to podcasts in the country, eventually landing Cooper a deal reportedly worth $125 million when she sold it to SiriusXM. That windfall gave her the capital and the credibility to build an empire beyond the microphone.
The Unwell Network became a Gen Z-focused media and lifestyle company, housing podcasts from influencers and celebrities. Cooper described herself as a mom-to-be while building out the brand. The vision was sprawling, beverages, content, production, talent management, all under one roof.
But the gap between the public brand and the private operation has widened. The woman who pitched herself as a voice for women frustrated by male-dominated industries now faces questions about whether her own company, run day-to-day by her husband, subjected workers to the very kind of hostile environment she built her brand opposing.
Cooper has also faced scrutiny over the messy implosion of her original partnership at Barstool, which has been the subject of renewed attention following Portnoy's memoir.
Separately, Fox News reported that Cooper alleged her former Boston University soccer coach, Nancy Feldman, sexually harassed her, claims she detailed in the Hulu documentary "Call Her Alex." Cooper played soccer at BU from 2013 to 2015. The university issued a statement affirming its "zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment" but did not fire Feldman or conduct an investigation at the time of the alleged incidents.
Cooper spoke about that experience with visible frustration.
"I felt a lot of anger, anger at my coach, anger at my school, and anger at the system that allowed this to happen."
That anger at institutional failure resonated with many of her listeners. Whether the same listeners will extend the same scrutiny to the workplace culture inside Cooper's own company remains an open question.
Several questions remain unanswered. Cooper has not explained why Unwell Beverage is closing. She has not addressed the staff complaints against Kaplan. It is unclear whether the formal complaints employees filed were handled through internal HR channels or submitted to an outside agency. And no one has said whether the shutdown of the beverage brand signals broader trouble for the Unwell Network or Unwell Productions.
The media industry is littered with personalities who built empires on relatability and then watched those empires crack when the behind-the-scenes reality stopped matching the public pitch. Cooper's situation echoes patterns seen across media, from workplace misconduct allegations at legacy outlets to behind-the-scenes feuds that eventually become the story.
A brand built on telling women they deserve better has to live up to the same standard, or the brand is just packaging.
