Presence News met UNFOG founder Adam Boyd at Santa Monica Airport, where the entrepreneur shared a brand built around caffeine-free energy, mental clarity and the idea that people should have something left for life after the workday ends.
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — August 30, 2026 — For many Americans, reaching for an energy drink means reaching for caffeine.
UNFOG founder Adam Boyd is building his company around a different idea.
Presence News met Boyd Saturday at the Santa Monica Flyers event at Santa Monica Airport, where attendees gathered around aviation, community and an end-of-summer evening in Southern California.
Behind the lavender UNFOG can is a personal story that began not in a corporate boardroom, but at home.
Boyd says his wife had been struggling with brain fog but did not like how caffeine made her feel. Boyd did not use caffeine himself and was regularly working 12-to-14-hour days before returning home to his daughters.
Getting through work wasn’t necessarily the problem.
Having enough left afterward was.
That experience eventually led Boyd to ask whether it was possible to create a functional beverage designed to provide caffeine-free energy and clarity without simply giving people another stimulant to help them work longer.
The result became UNFOG, a caffeine-free functional beverage and a brand Boyd is now developing around a broader message about how people use their time and energy.
A Different Approach to the Energy Drink
UNFOG positions itself differently from the heavily caffeinated products that have become fixtures in convenience stores, gyms and workplaces.
The company describes its beverage as caffeine-free and formulated around three primary ingredients: nooLVL®, L-theanine and magnesium glycinate.
According to UNFOG, the formula is intended to support focus, mental performance and clarity without relying on caffeine.
The company describes nooLVL® as an inositol-stabilized arginine silicate blend, while L-theanine is an amino acid commonly associated with green tea. Magnesium glycinate, a form of magnesium, rounds out the beverage’s featured ingredients.
The drink currently comes in a citrus flavor and is sold through the company’s website.
Consumers interested in the beverage and company can learn more at UNFOG’s official website: https://www.unfogyourlife.com.
But Boyd’s ambitions for UNFOG extend beyond selling another beverage.
The Idea Started With Life After Work
UNFOG’s origin story centers heavily on something familiar to parents, entrepreneurs and professionals: the feeling that work can consume the energy that was supposed to be available for everything else.
Boyd has described being able to make it through demanding workdays while finding the bigger challenge was returning home with enough energy to remain engaged with his family.
That distinction ultimately helped define the company’s philosophy.
Instead of asking how a product could enable someone to work longer, Boyd began thinking about whether it could help people preserve the clarity and energy they wanted for their relationships, families, goals and lives outside their professional responsibilities.
The company’s message is summarized by a simple idea: energy should not exist exclusively in service of productivity.
UNFOG describes its mission as helping people experience life more fully through greater clarity, connection and intentional participation.
That philosophy has grown into the company’s phrase, “Experience Life Unfogged.”
More Than a Can
While the beverage is the physical product introducing consumers to UNFOG, the company’s website outlines a substantially larger vision.
Boyd wants the brand to connect the beverage with digital experiences, community activities and real-world experiences.
UNFOG organizes that vision around five pillars: Discover, Create, Connect, Challenge and Restore.
“Discover” encourages people to break from routine and experience something unfamiliar.
“Create” centers on turning ideas into something tangible.
“Connect” focuses on relationships and shared experiences.
“Challenge” encourages people to test what they are capable of doing.
And “Restore” emphasizes recovery and creating room to recharge.
The idea is to create a progression from beverage to action: drink UNFOG, choose something meaningful to do and then participate in the experience rather than simply consuming more digital content.
More information about the company’s philosophy and upcoming experiences is available through https://www.unfogyourlife.com/pages/experience-unfogged.
From Police Detective to Founder
Boyd’s background also helps explain why performance and resilience play such prominent roles in the brand.
According to his company biography, Boyd is a former police detective and SWAT operator, longtime educator in human performance and resilience, husband and father.
He is also an ultrarunner.
Boyd has completed more than a dozen ultramarathons, including two 100-mile finishes and a double crossing of the Grand Canyon, according to UNFOG.
Those experiences put physical endurance, stress management and mental performance at the center of much of his professional and personal life.
Yet Boyd says UNFOG was not created simply to help people tolerate more stress or push themselves harder.
Instead, the company’s stated purpose is to help people retain the capacity to participate in the experiences and relationships that make demanding work worthwhile.
UNFOG Sees Community as Part of the Product
UNFOG says it envisions bringing its beverage, app and experiences into environments including gyms, hotels, resorts, workplaces, local businesses, sporting communities and events.
Aviation is specifically among the communities highlighted by the company — making Presence News’ introduction to Boyd at Santa Monica Airport particularly fitting.
Rather than positioning the beverage only as something purchased from a shelf, UNFOG’s strategy appears designed to connect the physical product with events and communities where consumers can participate in shared experiences.
The company describes its larger goal as creating reasons for people to return, participate and build relationships rather than simply creating another marketing campaign.
Businesses and organizations interested in that side of the company can explore its community concept at https://www.unfogyourlife.com/connecting-communities.
A Brand Built Around Being Present
The functional beverage category is crowded with products promising energy and performance.
UNFOG is attempting to carve out a different identity by removing the ingredient consumers most closely associate with energy drinks — caffeine — while simultaneously expanding the conversation beyond productivity.
For Boyd, the original problem wasn’t getting through another hour of work.
It was what happened afterward.
Could someone finish a demanding day and still have the energy and clarity to be a parent, spouse, friend, athlete, creator or simply an active participant in their own life?
That question started with Boyd and his family.
Now, he is trying to build a company around the answer.
Learn more about Adam Boyd, the UNFOG story and its caffeine-free functional beverage at https://www.unfogyourlife.com.
