Barron Trump’s upcoming beverage startup is drawing sharp criticism on social media ahead of its planned May 2026 launch, with users accusing SOLLOS Yerba Mate Inc., the Florida-based company that lists the 20-year-old son of President Donald Trump as one of five directors, of cultural appropriation for commercialising a drink that carries deep historical and indigenous significance across South America.
SOLLOS, which draws its name from “sol,” the Spanish word for sun, announced its first flavour offering of Pineapple plus Coconut in a LinkedIn post alongside factory footage showing light blue cans moving through a production line, with Elon Musk appearing in the comments of the brand’s Instagram page praising the design as “beautiful.”
The company operates out of a 4,500-square-foot location in Palm Beach, Florida, roughly a mile from the Trump family’s Mar-a-Lago estate, and raised $1 million through a private placement according to SEC filings dated January 23, with the five-person founding team including Spencer Bernstein, Rudolfo Castello, Stephen Hall, and Valentino Gomez alongside Barron.
Critics across Instagram, Reddit’s r/yerbamate community, and wider social media argued the launch was particularly tone-deaf given the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation policies toward Latin American communities, with one commenter writing: “Nice cultural appropriation. They don’t want Latinos in the U.S. but they want their products. Buy yerba from Latin American countries and do this beverage the natural way!”
Another user was more pointed in linking the business model to broader political contradictions, writing: “Oh wow, a family tied to anti-Latino rhetoric profiting off something deeply rooted in Indigenous, Paraguayan, and South American culture. Yeah… no. Yerba mate carries real history and survival, and shouldn’t be sold by the son of the man who loathes Latinos.”
Yerba mate originates with the Guaranà indigenous people of South America and remains a central cultural ritual across Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, with UNESCO recognising the Yerba Mate Cultural Landscape as vital heritage, a status that makes its mass-market commercialisation by a brand with no South American cultural connection a particularly sensitive point of friction.
The company’s branding frames the product as a South Florida lifestyle beverage, leaning into the state’s outdoor culture and sunshine imagery rather than acknowledging the drink’s indigenous South American origins, a positioning choice that has amplified rather than defused the cultural appropriation critique from communities who view yerba mate as something far more significant than an energy drink.
Bernstein, a Villanova University student who attended Oxbridge Academy in Palm Beach with Barron, posted on LinkedIn that he had decided to postpone his final semester at university to focus on the business he had been building for eight months with close friends, a detail that frames SOLLOS as a genuine entrepreneurial venture rather than a celebrity vanity project, even as the criticism of its cultural dimension continues to grow.
Barron is currently a second-year student at New York University’s Stern School of Business and had previously incorporated a real estate firm in July 2024 that was later dissolved when his father returned to the White House, making SOLLOS his most publicly visible business venture to date and the first to attract significant national attention.
The brand’s timing ahead of its May launch means it will enter the market carrying a cloud of controversy that no amount of favourable logo design commentary from Elon Musk can entirely disperse, leaving the founders with the challenge of either directly addressing the cultural appropriation criticism or attempting to move past it through product quality and distribution momentum.
