Mike Lombardo

Mike Lombardo is an American entrepreneur and co-founder of Halfday Iced Tea, a prebiotic iced tea brand distributed nationally across Whole Foods Market, Target, Wawa, Kroger, and other retailers.^[2][3][5] He and co-founder Kayvon Jahanbakhsh launched the brand in 2021 after developing an earlier version of the product as a class project at Rowan University, where Lombardo graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Marketing in 2018.^[17][6] Both founders were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Food & Drink category in 2023.^[13]

The company originated in Jahanbakhsh's diagnosis of ulcerative colitis at age 18, which led him to experiment with prebiotic-infused teas as part of his recovery.^[13][6] Lombardo and Jahanbakhsh first met on a school bus to swim practice in southern New Jersey — Lombardo's mother, who had attended the same high school and swum there, had made him join the team — and the two became business partners at Rowan.^[1] They spent years cold-brewing by hand out of a New Jersey brewery, generating $18,000 in their first year of sales, before relaunching the brand in shelf-stable cans in 2021.^[1][6]

Halfday has raised approximately $10 million in venture funding, including a $7.3 million Series A in August 2023, from investors including Raptor Group, Humble Growth, Goat Rodeo Capital, and BroadLight Capital.^[9][18] The brand expanded from approximately 2,000 to 7,000 retail doors in six months during 2025 and launched nationwide in approximately 1,100 Target stores in July 2026.^[14][3] Before co-founding Halfday, Lombardo served in the U.S. Army National Guard as an infantryman from 2013 to 2019, overlapping with both his college years and the brand's earliest development.^[1]

Lombardo grew up in a middle-class family in southern New Jersey, outside Philadelphia.^[1] His mother is a physical therapist and his father a financial adviser; his parents divorced when he was approximately three but maintained a cooperative relationship.^[1] He attended the same high school his mother had, where she had been a swimmer. She required him to join the swim team, a decision that proved consequential: on a school bus to practice — the school had no pool and bused athletes to another facility — Lombardo met Kayvon Jahanbakhsh, then a freshman.^[1]

In high school, Lombardo began playing drums, an interest he has described as the first thing he became passionate about.^[1] He also filled notebooks with business ideas alongside friends, framing it at the time as a joke but later recognizing it as an early entrepreneurial instinct.^[6] Most of his peers went on to become first responders, nurses, and teachers; Lombardo has noted that the path he chose was unusual for his community.^[1]

Lombardo enlisted in the U.S. Army National Guard in December 2013, serving as an infantryman through November 2019 and as a musician in the Guard from 2017 to 2019.^[1] He enrolled at Rowan University's Rohrer College of Business in 2014 and graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Marketing in 2018.^[17] During his senior year, he took six courses instead of the four required to graduate in order to enroll in entrepreneurship classes whose prerequisites he had not yet completed.^[1] He used the nascent Halfday concept in place of a traditional internship and persuaded professors to let him apply the business to class projects, including his capstone marketing plan.^[1]

Topos Tea and Halfday Tonics (2017–2021)

In the summer of 2017, Lombardo was heading into his senior year at Rowan without an internship and feeling uninspired by the options available to him.^[1] Jahanbakhsh, who had been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in 2016, had lost over 80 pounds and spent three months in the hospital before discovering that mixing prebiotic ingredients into hot tea helped manage his condition.^[13][6] One afternoon that summer, in Jahanbakhsh's kitchen, he offered Lombardo an iced version.^[1] Lombardo was struck by the fact that something that tasted like the iced tea he had grown up drinking could also be functional. When Jahanbakhsh mentioned that his brother thought he should bottle it, Lombardo's response was immediate: "I think we should."^[1]

The two began hand-bottling product under the name Topos Tea — later renamed Halfday Tonics — out of the back of a brewery in New Jersey, self-distributing by car with coolers full of ice.^[1][17] They tested the product at a farmer's market and entered the Rowan University New Venture Competition, winning funding from the Rowan Innovation Venture Fund.^[17][6] The brand name "Halfday" came from a brainstorming session: growing up, the two would walk home from school on half days, stop at corner stores for iced tea, and hang out at the park.^[1]

In their first year of commercial operations, the brand generated $18,000 in revenue, selling to a single Whole Foods location.^[1] By the end of 2019, they had reached 10 Whole Foods stores across South Jersey and Philadelphia.^[1] Lombardo personally logged over 200 in-store demos in a spreadsheet, tracking inventory movement and consumer feedback; Jahanbakhsh would sometimes leave mid-demo to take college exams.^[1] The product at that stage contained 13 grams of sugar per bottle, was cold-chain dependent, and lacked the margins needed to scale — limitations the founders would later cite as critical lessons.^[1] A chance breakfast conversation at Expo East 2019 with Ian Wishingrad of Three Wishes cereal produced candid feedback that led the founders to put prebiotics and gut health on the packaging for the first time.^[1]

Halfday Iced Tea — Relaunch and early growth (2021–2023)

When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in 2020, Lombardo and Jahanbakhsh recognized that their cold-chain, hand-bottled product was fundamentally unscalable and paused operations to rebuild from scratch — new liquid, new branding, new format.^[1][13] The redesigned brand launched in 2021 as Halfday Iced Tea in shelf-stable cans containing 8 grams of prebiotic plant fiber and 3 grams of sugar, positioned as a modern alternative to legacy iced tea brands.^[6][5] By May 2021, the brand was in over 150 stores across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia.^[6]

The founders filled their first large purchase order — 60,000 cans — themselves in six weeks, packing boxes by hand.^[1] That first purchase order exceeded the brand's entire prior-year revenue under the old name.^[1] A single press article about the brand generated $10,000 in direct-to-consumer sales overnight.^[1] A last-minute decision to attend BevNET Live led to a meeting with an investor that propelled the business forward.^[1]

In 2023, Halfday added a Raspberry flavor and launched at Wegmans.^[16] The brand was nominated for BevNET's Best of 2023 Awards and recognized by the Thingtesting community as a Best of 2023 brand in the Tea category.^[15] In August 2023, the company raised a $7.3 million Series A round, bringing total funding to approximately $10 million across five rounds, with investors including Goat Rodeo Capital, BroadLight Capital, TR Ventures, ZoiBel, Goods Ventures, Humble Growth, and Raptor Group.^[9][18]

National expansion (2024–present)

In March 2024, Halfday secured a national rollout across all Whole Foods Market locations, a milestone the company attributed to relentless in-store sampling.^[2] The brand was included in the Whole Foods Market Trend Council's Top 10 Trends for 2024.^[2] In April 2024, Halfday launched in over 1,000 Wawa stores across the Mid-Atlantic and Florida — a chain that held personal significance for both founders, who grew up buying iced tea at Wawa on half days from school.^[5]

In February 2025, the company unveiled a full brand refresh after nearly a year of development, introducing a proprietary GOODDAY Prebiotic Blend (cassava root fiber, fructan fiber, and organic agave inulin), updated packaging that prominently featured the prebiotic callout for the first time, and a new tagline: "Make a Break for It."^[7][20][14] The new packaging drove a 40% sales lift at Whole Foods in its first six weeks.^[11] In the six months following the rebrand, Halfday expanded from approximately 2,000 to 7,000 retail doors, adding Sprouts, Kroger, Albertsons, Stop & Shop, GIANT, and Erewhon to its retail footprint.^[14][7]

In April 2025, the brand launched a workplace campaign that paid people to take time off, leaning into consumer confusion about the brand name — many online searchers had assumed "Halfday" was a leave-management platform.^[8] The campaign received approximately 1,000 submissions within two weeks and generated press coverage outside the beverage trade press.^[8] In October 2025, Halfday expanded distribution of its Half & Half flavor into Whole Foods stores nationwide.^[4]

In July 2026, Halfday launched nationwide in approximately 1,100 Target stores with an exclusive Strawberry Half & Half flavor in a new slim can format.^[3][10][19] In September 2026, the company announced a Crisp Apple Tea flavor for the fall season.^[12] The brand also secured a distribution partnership with Big Geyser, the largest independent beverage distributor in New York City.^[7]

Lombardo and Jahanbakhsh were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Food & Drink category in 2023.^[13] Halfday was nominated for BevNET's Best of 2023 Awards and recognized by the Thingtesting community as a Best of 2023 brand in the Tea category.^[15] The brand was included in the Whole Foods Market Trend Council's Top 10 Trends for 2024.^[2] At Rowan University, Lombardo and Jahanbakhsh won the Rowan Innovation Venture Fund competition with their pitch for the brand's earliest iteration.^[17]

Lombardo is based in the greater Philadelphia area.^[6] He is a drummer, an interest he has maintained since high school and lists alongside his founder role in public profiles.^[1] He has described drumming as the creative gateway that first made him consider unconventional paths: "It got me thinking about the possibilities of what else is there that I can do in life."^[1] He served in the Army National Guard for six years while simultaneously attending college and building the earliest version of Halfday.^[1]