Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - GT Dave

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

GT Dave is the founder of GT’s Living Foods and a key figure in the commercialization of kombucha in the United States. He began producing and selling kombucha in the mid-1990s, starting with small batches distributed to local Los Angeles health food stores. Under GT’s leadership, the company expanded through natural food retailers, including Whole Foods, and grew into a leading kombucha brand while maintaining a focus on raw, fermented products including Synergy kombucha, Alive mushroom beverage, and coconut yogurt Cocoyo. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AGZ https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www.AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Lectio 365 https://Lectio365.com ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

tetragrammaton. I was raised by two very kind of holistic spiritual parents who raised me a vegetarian. So I was raised with this strong belief of like food can be medicine or food can be poison. So following that philosophy, my parents brought a lot of weird things into the house, from noni juice to aloeuvre juice to wheatgrass, tofu, you name it. But in the early 90s, one of the things that they brought in was this thing called kombucha. And I remember it very clearly because it was a very defining moment My dad came home one day with the kombucha culture, which if you've seen when they're kind of these like rubbery circular

Pancakes, so to speak, and he came home in a Ziploc bag and he goes to my mom and to my brother's like, hey guys, I'm going to make kombucha tomorrow. It's called the drink of immortality. And both of us were like, okay, dad, you're crazy, whatever. But that next day and every day after that, I noticed that he became obsessive with making it and drinking it. And the way he would make it was very pungent. Like, kombucha's pungent on its own. But he would make it incredibly pungent to the point where only him and my mother could stomach it.

I tried and I was like, Dad, I love you. I've tried a lot of the crazy things you brought into this household, but I just can't. So then fast forward two years later, it just became more and more integrated into the household and then ultimately played a very strong role in my mom's health. Before you got involved in the business of kombucha, it had a healing effect on your mom?

Oh, yeah. So the way kombucha was introduced to my parents is that because my parents were on that kind of spiritual, holistic health path, kombucha was circulating a little bit in L.A. There was this underground movement of kombucha in the early 90s, and I think it was primarily because it was getting buzz about how it was helping individuals of HIV AIDS

and or cancer. And so that's where it was like getting, and you know, AIDS back then was like this unknown. So the fact that it was doing something positive, I think was giving it attention. But my father's friend was very skeptical. He was like a raw foodist, only lived off of fresh press juice, primarily vegetable juice.

So he gave the culture to my father saying, hey, everybody's raving about this. My wife thinks it's like better than anything she's ever had. He's like, but I'm not buying it. Will you try it? So that was the beauty of it. My parents kind of just took that leap of faith. They didn't have any pre-set expectations,

But they immediately resonated with it. It either works here or it doesn't. Yeah, that's not toxic. Yeah, it's fermentation, which, you know, is one of the oldest traditions in human kind of food behavior. The kombucha scene in L.A., who was the first one who brought it in

and how did it travel through? Because it was a very small community. So it's a store called the Beverly Hills Juice Club in L.A., still in existence, right? And Dave Otto, who's like the pioneer of cold press juice, yeah. So it was his wife that actually, took a trip to the Himalayas and came back with the culture. So I think that's actually how it originated coming here.

I think people... Was it on? Do you remember? Yeah, it's on Beverly and Orlando. Yeah. It's still there. It's still there. Unbelievable. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy? I haven't been in a very long time. Yeah. Which is admirable because if you think of all the different juice brands that have come and gone. The fact that he's still there says a lot.

And they still do it the same way? They still do it the same way. Yeah. They press it daily. They make what they can sell. And then if they sell out, they sell out. It's like a beautiful business model. I mean, in many ways, in many ways, it's what I still to emulate to this day. But no, back to your question, like, when kombucha came to the household, I was just a kid. I mean, I was like 13, 14 years old. I think that's number one why I was even unable to embrace kombucha because it was too far out from my young, tender age. But then witnessing my parents fall in love with it, and then, you know, ultimately what happened, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Wow. About two years after she had been drinking

the kombucha. And, you know, both my parents were plant-based. spiritual, athletic, like picture of perfect health. And so my mom went to the doctor thinking she was pregnant. And they're like, Mrs. Dave, you're not pregnant. But you do have something growing inside you. And it's a very large cancer tumor in your right breast. Wow. And it was so large the tumor was this big.

She thought it was a muscle, surprisingly, because we had this big Doberman pincher that she would walk up the steep hill that we lived off of. And she thought it was just from him pulling her. Yeah. They're like, no, it's not a muscle. It's a cancer tumor you've probably had for four years. And so they said to her, like, we don't think this is looking good. Based on our preliminary test, we think it has metastasized.

We believe it's likely gone to your bones. And they're like, we're going to see what treatments we can give you, but it's looking like six to nine months that maybe you have. Wow. And I remember she came home. Must have been shocked. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Like, I remember, like, it was yesterday.

She brought me and my brothers and my father out to the backyard. and was like, you could already tell that she was like ready to crack. And she was like, you know, boys, I went to the doctor today because I thought I was pregnant. She just retold the story. And she's like, but this is what I actually have. But she's like, I'm going to fight this. I'm going to fight this because I want to live. I want to see my kids grow up.

I want to, you know, see life unfold and all of that. But you could tell she was so scared. But ironically, you know what happened, Rick? It's like, then two weeks later, it was almost like deja vu. she took us back out to the same table in the same backyard and was like, hey, I have some more news. And she said, I was called into the doctor's office. And I was scared because normally that's when they had bad news. But she said I was pleasantly surprised to hear that they didn't have bad news. They had good news. And they shared with me that my cancer has not spread. It has not gone to my

bones or anything like that. And they brought me in because they want to know what I'm doing differently. And so she said, like, you know, I told them simply like I exercise. I'm vegetarian, and I've been drinking this pungent tasting tea for the last couple years, and it makes me feel great. The doctor said, well, Mrs. Dave, that's great. Whatever this tea is, like, continue to drink it because it's clearly helping you. And that was the catalyst for, like, understanding more, because I think up to that point, it was just like the pseudo-quasi-healthy thing that they didn't really know why it was healthy. But they drank it and they felt it. And they felt It felt good and that was it.

But it's got a lineage for thousands of years of people drinking it as a health tonic. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, if you think of kombucha, dairy or water, kifir, you know, miso, tempe, you know, sourcrow, kimchi. I mean, these are foods that, like, cultures relied on. I don't even think they really knew what was in it, but they just knew that there was, like, this chemistry that their body is needed or resonated with.

Honestly, that moment, something happened where I was, like, this needs to be. be shared. And then on the flip side, Rick, I was getting ready to drop out of high school because I was a young gay boy growing up in L.A. in the 90s. And unlike today's world, for the most part, it was not welcome. And I was being bullied. I was being ostracized. And so I was on my own path thinking, like, I'm going to need to make a hard turn of some sort because I'm not on a path that I feel good about. And so that that mixed with kombucha and how it my mom all of a sudden together became my new purpose. I look back sometimes.

I did an ayahuasca ceremony two weekends ago, and the medicine brought me back to that moment. You know, because a lot of times our lives are defined by these pivotal moments that sometimes we ignore, or we don't remember. Yeah. But that was definitely a pivotal moment for me. It sounds like it.

Yeah. So then how did you start the sharing process? Obviously, I'm biased, and so it sounds like I might be self-proclaiming, but I came from like the purest of intentions because I think because I had nothing to lose, I didn't have any like monetary aspirations. Like I was just this young boy that was like,

hey, I need a new path. I was raised with spirituality and health food. I just wanna do this. And it wasn't a business plan. I didn't even know the word entrepreneur. So I just went to my parents and I needed their blessings. I said, mom, dad, this kombucha has really blessed the household. I think the world could benefit

I think we should do something with it. And my parents are like, son, that's a beautiful idea. That's a big thing to embark upon. Like, why don't you do it? And they, when they gave me that permission, and then because of my circumstances, gave me that freedom, because, you know, I really didn't have anything to lose.

If I pursued this and it failed, I could go back to school. Do you think they believed in it, or do you think they just thought, this is a crazy idea, let him spin out on his own? I think it was a combination of both. I think they, I think they said, I think they sincerely believed that kombucha was special. Yeah, because they'd been drinking it now for years.

They had seen it firsthand. Not only were they drinking it, they became like ambassadors and evangelists. Like every time someone would come over, poor than a champagne glass of kombucha. And they would see how people like would resonate with it, you know? So they definitely believed in it. And I think honestly, for me, I think they were just really impressed that I had a passion.

And, you know, I know that in the back of their minds at some point this came to the fourth. that they had some doubt. Even my mom sat me down about like a year into it. And she goes, okay, where is this going? Like, I don't really want a teetotaler for like a son. And I took that so personally because I was like, mom, a teetotaler? That's what you think I'm doing?

Like, I'm spreading. This is a mission I'm on. So there was some doubt. I mean, I understand it. Well, no one else was doing it. Yeah. And it was a whole new category of drink. And it was completely against the grain of what everything that was out there is.

thing that was out there. Was juicing getting more popular? Or was still the Beverly Hills Juice place, the only place that had it? No, so it's a great point. So Ed Walla debuted nationally, more or less around the time that I launched, right? My first store was Air One, not the Air One that we know today, right? Which is a beautiful chain of stores. This was basically a mom and pop, as crunching granola as you can get, didn't sell anything

that had animal products in it, right? They were like purists of the pure. And that's where we would grocery shop. So naturally, that's where I wanted to sell it. I used to shop there, too. It was a great store. Great store. Great store.

So, yeah, at the time, the only thing that was considered cutting edge outside of wheatgrass and, like, those more staple kind of apple cider vinegar staple foods, Ed Walla had just expanded out of Half Moon Bay slash Dinuba, which is Northern California, and started to expand almost nationally. And they were doing press juice, carrot juice. They had a four-day shelf life. I mean, it was incredible. But then something happened.

they had their first recall. I remember that too. Yeah. And that shook me to my core, to be honest, because, you know, I was a young boy at the time. And there was no playbook for me to follow. So I'm trying to find kind of piecemeal inspiration to, like, help define my path.

Like, who can I learn from? And I, you know, honestly really admired at Wallachs. I was like, these are people that are celebrating food from the earth, food that's been unprocessed, unpasteurized, just like basically juiced to the bottle. But then, like, six months after that, I remember going into Air One to deliver, and their cooler was empty. And there was a sign saying there's been eucaly in their apple juice.

And it, like, seriously caused some people to get very ill or even led to a death. And it was scary because it all of a sudden changed the narrative. Like, fresh and raw became dangerous. And so that actually became a cross that I had to bear throughout my next five to 10 years because I was very passionate about kombucha can't be kombucha unless it's, raw. If you try to pasteurize or something like that, you're wasting people's time and money. It's like milk. Exactly. Pasturized milk is dead. Just like a baby calf, if they drink pasteurized milk, they'll die. Yeah. So, but I had to overcome this like negativity and

misinformation about raw and processed food. But back to the point, like, I admired them, but I learned from them because after the fiasco, they came back with a pasteurized product. And then later so to Coke. And I said, I'd rather not make my product than make something that I believe in. Because my parents would believe that you really want to consume the juice within a short period of time after, like, the cells have been cracked and all of that, because it starts to oxidize. I mean, that's why it's so important to eat fresh food, because there's, you know, there's some, there's a life force in it that isn't indefinite. It'll fade out. It's like vital energy. Yes. It's in the food. Yes. And you lose that with time,

quickly. What's the shelf life on kombucha? It varies from the ingredients we use, but I'd say on average, like three to four months. That's pretty good. It's good because it's fermented. Yeah. Right. So it has, that's the duty of fermentation, and that's actually how I came up with the name Synergy. Is it to me, because I was big into fresh pressed juice. And at the time, because of Edwala, there was really no fresh press juice because now everything had to be pasteurized for food safety reasons, right? But we were able to bypass that because kombucha has a low pH because of the fermentation. So it has naturally preserving qualities, natural, even anti-bacterial qualities that would synergize with the fruit juice and allow it to last longer.

So it would be more like kimchi or sauerkraut. Yeah. Or you take something that's normally fresh and highly perishable, but through the fermentation, you extend and preserve its freshness, but also preserve everything that's good about it. And that's why I like synergy because my first brand was called kombucha. And yes, like the diehards loved it, but when I tried to turn on my friends to it, And again, I was a teenager at the time. They'd be like, yeah, it's like, sounds too far out.

I'm not into it. And so I thought, okay, I need to like rebrand it. So I need something American. And they used to be next to each other because I remember I used to drink the kombucha. And then when the synergy came out in the same bottle, I was confused because they looked a lot of like, but they were branded differently. Yeah. And that was a blessing and a curse. I think the blessing was as we grew, we never felt too big on the shelf because we almost intentionally diluted our brand present.

presence, right? But then the curse came from, you know, as we started to evolve as a more sophisticated company, if you want to call it that, where you have to like market and you need brand recognition, we didn't really have a brand that people would just reference the design of the bottle. They wouldn't speak to it. You know, the health and wellness space rick has been infiltrated in the last like decade. It's heartbreaking what's happened to it. And I hope it turns around. I hope like everything in this world depends on the spring. back to the other side. Do you still make it the same way you always did?

Yeah. But it's getting harder. Because the consumer, especially the younger generation, their values have shifted, right? They want quick. They want convenient. They don't want to be bothered with refrigeration or glass or a short shelf life. They want to order it online. They want a stockpilot or pantry load it.

They want zero to no sugar, which, listen, I understand, like, sugar's not great, but, like, nature made things sweet for a reason. I did stop drinking it when I went keto. I remember reading the label and it didn't say sugar on it. Yeah. And then I think we called the company and they're like, well, we use sugar in making it. Yeah. I was like, I can't drink it.

Yeah. And so that's been kind of the hurdle that kombucha and foods like kombucha, even water kefir, right? What people don't understand is that, especially in this weird world now where the FDA requires this added sugar listing on the label, it's intended to capture true added sugar for sweetening. But at the end of the day, if you're using a version of cane sugar, maple syrup, or even honey, it has to be qualified as added sugar. And so in fermentation, you need energy because you're working with a living thing. And just like us, energy is fuel to do stuff.

And so it fuels the fermentation. But at the end of the day, it's technically still a sugar source. Does it have no carbs, though? Well, so the thing is, if it has no carbs, to get to a no carb kind of position, you have to ferment it down to almost vinegar. I see. And then what happens is becomes unpleasant to drink. And that's one of the reasons why we started the synergy line because we were taking what at the time was considered a very pungent base and then softening it with a fruit juice, right?

So you gave it flavor and a little bit. But good quality fruit juice. Yes, good quality, not high fructose corn syrup stuff. But like right now, we're in a day and age where people are so obsessed with macros. They're forgetting about the microbes. Right? Like there's nutrients that I don't even think science has even began to understand. Like, as you know, like the entourage effect of when a whole food, yes, maybe a carrot has beta carotene, but it has these other things that when you consume it in its whole form, does something

to your body. Yeah, I remember when reversetrol became popular. Yeah. And then people found out it doesn't do the same thing when you just separate out the the reversetrile. Yeah, that's exactly right. And that applies to so many other things, you know, and, but, you know, but, you know, But right now we're in this, like, and I get it.

I subscribe to a version of it of like this biohacking, health hacking, right? Where you find these, I don't want to call them shortcuts, but there are these very scientific ways of giving your body what it needs, which I think has its time and place. But you can't ignore, I think, our origin story is humans. Like, we're part of this planet. So we need to eat really close to it. When the lights go down, the body gets to work.

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try it tonight tell me about the first batch that you made for sale oh wow well first I had to go and pitch it to Air One which I had no idea what I was doing, Rick. I walked in in a suit and tie, hair slick back with a briefcase

with my dad behind me for a backup. Did you bring any kombucha with you? I did, yeah. I handed them a bottle of kombucha, and they're like, what's this? I'm like, it's the fermented tea from Manchuria, China. I'll make it to order. It's the freshest, most potent, you know,

kombucha that's out there, and I think your store needs it. I was expecting them to, like, play, like, hardball with me. But it was just a series of very simple questions of like, what's the price? Okay. When you can deliver? Okay.

Can you deliver tomorrow? Okay. And so I never even opened up my briefcase because it was a very just genuine conversation. And it was a very open-minded story. They sold a lot of cool stuff you couldn't get anywhere else. That's exactly right. Yeah. So I think even the fact that this was so cutting edge would definitely appeal to them.

Yeah. So that I went home and I already had batches fermenting and I, in anticipation of my first order, And so I bottled my first batch that next morning. You did it handmade yourself? Handmade. Yeah, we're literally talking fermenting in a room, which was our dining room, that I had blacked out all the windows. I had a space heater.

Does it have to be dark? It has to be dark, warm, and slightly humid and quiet. Those are like the primary ingredients of the environment. Why quiet? Because it's almost like a baby in the womb. I mean, I used to sometimes just stare at the vessels like fermenting, because it almost, you start seeing like this life force, this living energy of bubbles and transformation and all of that.

What are the stringy things? So those are like a combination of the yeast and bacteria, and it's almost like it's tendrils extending down because it really wants to interact with all the liquid because it really is consuming the nutrients that are in the tea, the carbohydrates and whatever the fermenting agent you're using. And whatever is in it is diluted in the water, Yeah.

So it's sucking the nutrition from throughout the water. It's not sitting at the bottom of the water, the nutrition. No. What is the best analogy I can give for kombucha is it's like a plant, right? So the tea base is its soil and fertilizer. It breathes air. The humidity and warmth is almost like it's sunshine. And just like anything, you plant a seed, you nurture the plant.

At some point, its byproduct is a fruit or vegetable. The byproduct is the tea. And that's basically the outcome of this miraculous fermentation that takes place in every batch. And so, yeah, so when I delivered it to Air One, I mean, that's where I knew I was on the right path, is that I remember delivering it and I polished every bottle like it was like a trophy. Do you remember how many bottles were the first batch? Yeah. It was 24 bottles that they ordered. So at the time, that was like almost two batches, because I was doing it initially super small,

like maybe like three quarts or something. And then I moved to like a gallon. And then eventually I found out that the sweetest, still scaled, but still homegrown, is about like four gallons. And that's how the size we make it today. We don't mass produce. I mean, we make it the same way I did when I was in my parents' kitchen. Because that's why I wanted to make it, just like I saw with it wall. I knew when things become commercialized, whether people are.

people know it or not, they lose the soul of what they were trying to do. And I didn't want to do that. And what you're selling is the soul. Exactly. That's it. Yeah, I'm not trying to sell like a tasty beverage that just people will drink recreationally. I want it to be life-changing. I wanted to nourish and heal.

And so in order to do that, I need to maintain the fundamentals of that. So yes, I remember delivering it, polishing the bottles, putting it on the shelf, and just like sitting back for like 30 minutes. And the store opened and people would come in and they would rather walk by it or look at it because I was on the Fresh Crest juice shelf. I was actually sharing the shelf with the Beverly Hills Juice Club because that was the only store that he would sell his bottles to every day outside of his storefront, right? And I remember someone grabbed it. Further down the same block. Yeah, they're both on Beverly. Yeah, he was next to Fred Siegel's. Yeah, exactly. And nowhere,

which was another health food store. That was a cool store too. Very cool. Yeah. But anyway, so, but that, like, was my first moment of fulfillment, right? Because honestly, Rick, I think what I, was seeking, even though I didn't know it at the time, I was seeking something that would fulfill my heart and soul. And seeing that on the shelf gave me that first taste. And then the second was maybe about like a week or two later when I got my first positive feedback where somebody called the 800 number that was on the label, which PS was like an answering machine in my bedroom. And it was a female and she said like, hey, I hope this is getting to somebody. I just want to let you know that I discovered this unusual kombucha

on the shelf, and I bought it, didn't know what it was, but I had some, and my headache went away. I just want to say thank you. Like, this made me feel good. Beautiful. And how many batches was I making? Did you make at that period? Oh, my gosh.

I mean, at some point, 80% of the room was filled. So I was delivering daily myself, and I was delivering probably like 12, to 20 cases a day. Was that the only store? It was my first store. But then after that, I went to like Co-Opportunity

in Santa Monica. Yeah, that's another great store. Yeah, another great store. One Life, may they rest in peace in Venice. Because there was no whole foods at the time. There was Mrs. Gooch's. Yeah.

And I aspired to get into Mrs. Gooch's, but they, honestly, they were getting a little too corporate at the time that something as cutting edges, kombucha was actually against what they were looking for. So I kept on getting rejected. So I was like, all right.

They were getting very mainstream. They were getting very mainstream, which is why ultimately Whole Foods purchase them. Yeah. But yeah, like I really grew things almost like an overprotected parent. Like I wanted my babies to be happy and healthy and grow, but not too far too fast. As he said, the mission wasn't to grow big.

It was to be pure. Yeah. And as big as it can get being pure is great. Yeah. The quality was the key. Yeah. That's exactly right. Like I knew I wanted to share this with is,

many people is possible. Yeah. But on the condition. But not at the expense. Yes. The quality, the integrity. It's core purpose because, I mean, I remember, you know, later on in my career, like, call it by year five. It was trying to gain traction.

And so now call it opportunistic individuals, started to come into the fold. And they started to give me advice. Like, one was like, hey, put it back in plastic. You'll save a ton of money. I was like, no. I got out of plastic for a reason I'm not going back. Also, they'd say, like, hey, like, the, you. stuff floating in it, like, find a way to get that out because it's like off-putting.

And I said, okay, but there's a mother and apple cider vinegar, and that's what people look for. So if you're turned off by that, then maybe you're not ready. So I had a response for things, and I really was anchored in my, even though I probably didn't know, it was really anchored in my way. So I was able to somewhat avoid some of these bad advice that I was getting. Well, they were giving you good business advice. Yes, on how to mainstream and scale. But not good advice for what this was that you were doing. Yeah. So luckily I was able to kind of stay steady and say no to a lot of those kind of bad suggestions. What do you think it is about you that was able to keep true to the mission? I think it really is, Rick, is that all I wanted was to do something

that I believed in that I knew was going to resonate with others. And I didn't really have in my mind, like a threshold or a milestone of like, I need to reach a million people or I need to sell a million bottles. It was just like, I want to make one great batch that's going to affect one person or more. It was like I had this low bar. I think by being so young and being so curious but also like unaffected by the material world, it allowed me to lead with such purity. Well, it's the reason it worked. Yeah. And I try to bring myself there more often than not these days because this world, can change you, especially right now. And, you know, I'm 48 now.

I have three kids, and, you know, my life is crystallizing more as like a human, but I'm trying not to forget, like, this origin story, so speak, that I was born from. How did you make the labels in the beginning? You know, I designed them on my dad's computer. They were black and white. My mom was a big source of inspiration.

And she loved these, you know, interesting cosmetics and things like Calvin Klein, and then there was this one brand called Laslo and Coco Chanel, and they were always very, just like simple and beautiful. And so my first label was a black and white label that just said, said kombucha kovas. So I thought kovas at the time, it was a Russian term. They referenced kombucha as kovas back when kombucha was big in Russia and still is. And then it was the ultimate, nature's ultimate beverage, which was like a tagline that it came out. and that was it no flavor

and that was it there was no you know it was kombucha flavored really yeah that's exactly right and it was very simple and I think it stood out because there was even when a Dwalah debuted everything was very bright

and even cartooning at times and I was like no I just want the I want people to feel that all the energy is going on into what's inside the bottle not marketing or puffery or posturing and I think I was somewhat right at that

I think that allowed me to stand out so how long was it like that? Was it the black and white kombucha label? The black and white label lasted about maybe a year and a half. What caused it to change is I wanted to come out with a flavor. Because I noticed that as my mom and dad really now became evangelist for kombucha, they started to experiment with how they would serve it. So my mom would sometimes put cranberry juice to change the color. They would sometimes add ginger to kind of brighten it. And so I started to explore with flavors, and I thought to myself, okay, this label

architecture is too singular. It won't support, you know, a line extension. So I hired a graphic designer, and we created a new label. And then that also allowed me to, I explored a different packaging. So the bottle that I started off with was actually a plastic juice bottle, because that was only what was available to me at the time. But I knew I wanted to get into glass, but at the time, the barrier to get to glass was so high. But I found a loophole, and it was a barbecue sauce bottle, sold from a tiny, tiny distributor. And with the new label and the new bottle, that became my new look, and that was probably about a year and a half afterwards.

And how many flavors did you have at that time? Three. The first flavor became just the original. Then I came out with a vitamin-and-rich citrus, which was, it's going to sound so silly now, but I was taking what was very popular. Do you remember the brand, Emergency? So I was taking a packet of the emergency and putting it in the kombucha

because it added all these vitamins and a little bit of flavor and I'd bottle it and bottle it by hand which I was bottling everything by hand so it was my second flavor. So that did modestly well but then the one that put me on the map was ginger raid

and the name came to me like one night because Gatorade was big and ginger was nowhere near where it is now in popularity. Yeah, probably no drinks other than maybe ginger ale which doesn't really taste like ginger. No, actually what inspired me for my ginger aid, and I have to give him credit, yet again, the Beverly Hills Juice Club. He had the apple lemon ginger, and he used like,

and he even had apple lemon double ginger, apple lemon triple ginger, where he would increase the amount accordingly. And I just love the brightness. And I thought, I'm going to explore that. And it just, it took kombucha to another level. And I think it was, one, a flavor enhancement, to an added nutritional or health benefit, because raw ginger so good for so many days. And different things. And then it slowly started to give, I think, this maybe apprehensive consumer, something relatable to anchor it. Because if it's just kombucha, it's a little too foreign. But like when you start to, you know, kind of ground it with something that they do understand, then the barrier, the fear of the unknown went away or at least was reduced. And that put me

on the map. Like those three flavors, it started to really get traction. And then after that synergy was born. Why does it taste carbonated? because it's fermented. So the beauty of fermentation is that, I mean, there's so many things going on. But to put it simply is you're starting with ABC ingredients, right? So tea, water, and some kind of fermenting agent. There's always tea in the base? Yeah, because it's the tannins and the caffeine that actually are the nutrients that the kombucha culture feeds off of.

I see. And it's black tea and green tea. You can't use if you use white tea or decaf tea. Some teas will actually hurt the kombucha because of oils or other things. It's very sensitive. So you have that base, and then, you know, the time that you create is temperature, time, again, just allowing nature to run its course. And then the output is this busy, not very sweet, tangy, kind of dynamic thing that we call kombucha. How long does it take to ferment before you put it in the bottle?

So when you do it on a very, very, very small scale, right? So when I started with like the, called the three quart vessels, that was set up. to 10 days. But then as you scaled, and this is the trap that a lot of competitors fall into, to be honest, is as you try to scale, even though I kept mine still at a homemade level, you have to extend the fermentation time to make sure that the fermentation is complete. So once I went from the 7 to 10-day small batch, when I went to the 4-gallon batch, I ended up at about 30 days. 30 days.

Yeah. And so that's where a lot of the cost comes into play with making kombucha, because even though, yes, it's a beverage. It emulates more that of a farm, right? Because you plant something, so to speak, and you need it to justate, and then you harvest it, and then you start all over again. So that's why, like, my facilities, we occupy half a million square feet.

Wow. Because 70% of our facility space is pure fermentation. And where is this? In Los Angeles. Honestly, I miss being a small company. Because there's just things that you can do when you're smaller, and there's things that you can do when you're bigger. That's why I think, honestly,

it's the curse of a growing business is a lot of times you're forced to change even if you don't want to. Well, I would say if you can make as much as you can make and sell all of it, it's okay. If there's a limit to it, that's okay too. Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's something that I'm coming

to peace with more and more these days is as I mentioned, the world's changing and at least right now, consumer behavior, they're seeking more of like the low sugar, the quick fix, all of that. Like I'm wrestling with like, do I follow that trend or do I just find comfort and solace and confidence in what I'm doing and the why?

And listen, you know, I employ 1,100 people now. So I'm responsible for people's livelihood and food on the table. So it's weird I'm tasked to kind of keep the business thriving, technically no matter what, so I can take care of them. At the same time, I have to make sure that I'm still honoring the soul of why I got started. And they sometimes compete and it's, it can be challenging. So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy, using one of Squarespace's best-in-class templates. With the built-in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus.

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The debut of Synergy. Yeah, so I debuted Synergy around like year, two and a half, three years in. You know, everybody judged what I was doing. My parents got it for the most part and people their age got it. But people my age were like, GT, like, what is this? Like, you're wasting your time. And they wouldn't drink it. But I noticed that if I added juice to it and I called it something else, like Synergy.

and Red Bull had just debuted, so energy was, it was a big kind of word that was trending in people's vocabulary. Like, it sounded like it was cool, like it was going to do something. It was healthy versus Red Bull. Yeah, so I would just say, hey, try this. It's called Synergy. We didn't get into the kombucha conversation initially. It still said kombucha, though, yes?

On the ingredients. Yeah, so it said synergy, organic and raw, and then on the ingredients, it would say kombucha. I see. Right? So you almost had to look for it. It was a little bit more of a traditional play. where you're focusing on the branding and the benefits,

but the what's inside is somewhat secondary, even tertiary. And I think that helps me democratize kombucha a little bit more. And then again, as we were talking about having the two brands, because I kept the kombucha brand still going. But then I had synergy. It's almost like I was catering to two different markets. It was confusing to me at the time. I can remember.

And I always bought the kombucha out. I don't remember ever buying the synergy. Yeah. But the fact that the bottles were the same, it seemed like they were related. They must be related. Yeah. Because while they looked alike, they didn't look like anything else in the store.

Yeah. You know what? So I eventually changed that, which in my mind, I don't know if I really did something good or bad. But I went to this event in 2019, right before COVID. And it was like a wellness retreat. And it was a lot of people in the health food industry, whether they worked in the industry or they were participants like consumers or whatever, right? And people were asking me at the table I was sitting at.

Like, so what is it you do? And I said, oh, I have a kombucha brand. They're like, really, which one? I said, she teased kombucha, because that's what we were known for. And she goes, never heard of that. And she leaned over to her husband. She goes, I drink synergy. And I said, I'm sorry, did you just say you drink synergy?

And she goes, yeah, I go, that's my brand too. And she goes, oh my God. And that's when I was like, okay, I need to fix this. Because I'm diluting things. And as things get more competitive or as I need to allow the brand to evolve, I need to crystallize its identity. So in 2020, we merged them and made them both synergy. But it's fine, because the drinks didn't change. Right. The drinks didn't change. The only thing that change is you unified the name. Yes. And now it's all synergy. It's all synergy. But I still think

that there was, and maybe this is me overthinking, Rick, I think there's a potential in the audience that is very purest, and synergy feels just a little bit too mainstream. Yeah, I think it's okay. You think it's okay. Yeah. As long as what's inside is the same, yes. It's okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. There are some consumers. Like, we recently changed our logo when we celebrated our 30th anniversary. People were calling me out. When was the 30th anniversary?

20-25. Wow. Congratulations. I didn't believe that. 30 years? Unbelievable. So I decided to change the logo because I'm into evolution. And, you know, as I'm getting into this next chapter, in my life of being a parent

and a more mature adult, you know, I wanted to create a logo that was about servitude. because I think ultimately, if you maintain a commitment to service to doing something for others, I think those values keep you honest. And I thought, you know, my luck runs in threes. Like I'm the third born, November 3rd, all this stuff. And so I thought, okay, 30th year is going to be a symbolic year for the company. So I'm going to evolve the logo and create this almost like servant, servitude kind of image. Immediately, people are like, you sold the company, didn't you?

And I was like, why would you say that? I'm like, well, because you changed the logo. And I'm like, but there's a story behind that. But people got spooked by it. So that's why it's so interesting. Like, some of the little changes can still rub people the wrong way. Well, it tells you how devout your following is. Yeah, and how much they pay attention.

True believers. Yeah. Which I love. Oh, yeah. I'm here is because of those people that believe to me and supported, you know, kombucha. So what would you consider the biggest breakthrough? The biggest breakthrough, I would say, happened. in like 2003, when now I was starting to mature and evolve again.

So like the labels that I referenced that I did with the barbecue sauce bottle and all of that, people were saying, hey, the bottle I can't put in my cup holder. This was back when cars didn't have the flexible cup holder. It was very rigid. So I was like, and that's a problem because then I can't drink my kombucha when I want to. So I said, okay, I need to fix that. So that's when I came out with a long kind of cylinder bottle. And then I worked with the design team in Seattle for almost a year to yet again redesign the packaging with what I call now the Lotus architecture, which is our current packaging.

And I think that mixed with the new bottle, mixed with the liquid that hadn't changed inside, took us to another level. It was like this trifecta of positioning that now the liquid and the packaging were saying the same thing and saying the right thing to people that were seeking a product like this. And that's when I started to sell out. Wow. Like I would make product and the next day it was gone. And it was thrilling yet daunting because it was like, it's not like it was on Oprah or like there wasn't a moment. It was just all of a sudden something started to click. And that informed a very big change where I had to go from this very small facility that I had kind of organically expanded into, like unit by unit because it was in an eight unit complex.

And I was in four of the eight units by, you know, right around this is happening. And so I had to do the unthinkable. I had to go find my next new facility and find my next home so I could make more, but still make it the right way. Yeah. And I was scared of the head wallet effect that I was now going to, something bad was going to happen. But you were in control of it. Yes, yes. And I was very conscientious of what the guardrails needed to be, so I didn't burn the house down.

Yeah. As long as you stayed pure, it would be pure. As big as it got, it's okay. Yeah. Yeah, as long as you don't deviate from your primary path, I've learned, just keeps you on us. Last time we discussed flavors, you were up to five flavors? Yeah. Has it changed since then?

Oh, my gosh, we know. I mean, at some point we got too crazy. I think we had like over 30 flavors. Wow. Yeah, which is a great thing because we technically have something for everyone. But as, you know, consumer profile and flavor palettes change, we've, like, expanded and contracted certain flavors. Like we had, which is still one of my favorite flavors, like a carrot turmeric, which was so good. but then carrot became synonymous with sugar.

I see. So people were like, I won't drink that anymore. So we had the kind of weave and Bob with trends. And sometimes, you know, we had a product called Heartbeat, which was like fresh-pressed beet juice with like rosemary. And I thought it was delicious. But then beet got dilified too because it was considered a high sugar. Yeah.

So, you know, that's the sad part. I think there are times now where the things that are sincerely healthy don't register with people that one. And you sometimes just have to accept it. What's the current menu? Well, the current menu, on the synergy side, we're always looking for, again, functional ingredients that still impart a palatable or pleasant taste.

So that can mean things like elder flower, elder berry, blue spirulina. Like when we did our 25th anniversary, I created a flavor called Sacred Life, and it was coconut water, a little bit of ginger, in blue spirulina. And it was in honor of this planet, right? The blue vibrancy of the blue spirulina, in my mind, was a reminder of what makes this planet so special, which is water in the ocean. You know, so we have products that still has some fruit juice in them, like blood orange or

mango, because there's still a flavor preference for exotic fruits. But then, like, for example, we, for our 30th anniversary, we debuted a flavor called wildflower, which was like aschaganda and passion flour. So we're just always, I guess the shortest, We're always trying to just challenge ourselves and demonstrate to our fans and consumers that we're not a one-trick pony that we always look to nature on what we can create. We want to make sure that it's, yes, tasty, but more importantly, it's nutritious. And is the ginger always there? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, the gingerade is still one of our top sellers. And they rival Gingerade, which is my third flavor. So that's how, like, my luck runs in threes. And then right behind it or sometimes above it is Trilogy, which is lemon raspberry ginger. Oh, nice. Which is also symbolic of three, so it's somewhat poetic. In a world of artificial highs and harsh stimulants, there is something different, something clean, something precise.

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with athletic nicotine. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Tell me about distribution. Once you got past going to one store and selling it, how did it expand? For the first, like, two, three years, I self-distributed. I had a delivery van.

I would rather load it up myself and did that for a couple years. Was it only available in Los Angeles? Only available in Los Angeles, yeah. For how many years? I'd say two or three years. Wow. Yeah, it wasn't until, like, 1999. where Whole Foods had just acquired Mrs. Greeches,

and they kind of rang my phone and said, hey, you know, people are coming in. They're asking for this product. We would like to put it under review. Much better when they come to you instead of you going to get begging. Oh, my God, yeah. Those are the high moments, right?

When someone that you've been wanting to get in actually calls you and says, yeah, the door's open. So they reached out to me and said, yeah, we would like to consider this product. And so then I went through the process. And then they said, yes, we would like to bring it in, but under one condition. You sell it to our distributor. What does that even mean?

So the third-party distributor is basically called a middleman, right, where you ship your product to them. They order it from you based on demand. They put it in their warehouse, which can be dry, refrigerator, frozen typically. And then stores like whole foods order from them, but they'll order vitamins, milk, juice, basically 80 to 90% of what's in their store. And the benefit is, is they have a concentrated, systematized delivery program that can be almost daily.

It's really efficient for the store. And so it's very simplified. And so it shocked me initially in two ways. One was like, I was like, wait, I'm going to lose that touch. Because again, to me, putting the product on the shelf ourselves was like, essential experience, right? It's like tucking your baby in, so to speak. So like losing that control really shook me.

And then from a like a business standpoint, let's say I sold to Air One at $2.50 a bottle and they would turn around and sell it for $450, right, making it up. Now if I'm using a distributor, I have to sell it to the distributor for like $1.50 so that they can sell it to the store for $2.50 and then the store can mark it up. And I was like, you're eating into what I need to like make this high quality product. So initially I said no. But then I wrestled with it and ultimately, I was like, okay, let me see the positive in this. This will allow me to be an expert in making the product and I can delegate the distribution. Which is probably okay. Yeah, it allowed, I mean, allowed me to then proliferate with flavors and allowed me to be more concentrated on the operations.

But it was hard. It's almost like, you know, I'm a young parents, so I use a lot of child analogies. It's just like it's like that first day of dropping your kid off at school. Like, it's hard. You're used to being around them all the time, and now they're not there, and they're crying, and you're crying. Yeah. But you have to overcome it. It's a necessary experience. So once that happened, where was it available? It was a big step for me, but still a small step, I think, by today's standards.

So it gave me access to all of California, Northern California, specifically, which was huge for me. Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. That was their distribution footprint. So I could be in any store. I still had to approach the store, but I physically had now capabilities of getting my products to those stores. And that was an unlock for me. And how often would you deliver to the middle band? Once to twice a week.

And tell me when would you refrigerate? When you're making it, it's not refrigerated. No, it's actually in a warm environment because fermentation likes warm. When you put it in the bottles, is that when it gets refrigerated? Yes, immediately. Right away. And then you keep it refrigerated until the person drinks it. Yes.

How many other drinks are like that? Oh my gosh. Now, we're a dine breed. Back then? When I started, it was juice. Health juice. Yeah, and that's really it, right? Everything else was sobie, snapple, you know, teas, things of that nature.

And then when things really started to peak in the health and wellness space, I'd say it was by around 2012 to like 2016 was like the peak, you had cold brew coffee, you had cold pressed juice. Is cold-brewed coffee have to be refrigerated? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah, because it has no preservative. I see. But all that stuff went away. Like even all the fresh-pressed juice companies,

like even though, yes, they still have to be kept refrigerated, but everything kind of shrank. And then everything somewhat moved to like ambient, which is a clever way of saying non-refrigerated. I never heard the expression used for beverage. Yeah, an ambient beverage means it requires no refrigeration. But that means it has preservatives. It has preservatives or it's been killed.

Right. Field is the thing that, honestly, Rick, if there's just one thing that I just hope and pray people still recognize when they're on their, call it their health and wellness journey, is do not underestimate the importance of living versus dead. That's why, like, early on, it just came to me. It wasn't like a cute slogan, but my first slogan was living food for the living body.

Like if you want to have vitality, if you want to live long and thrive, ask yourself, what are you putting into your body to support that, that objective or that journey. That's my greatest fear right now, is that people are overlooking how the product's made in exchange for, like,

again, how much sugar is in it? Convenience. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. So after that first distributor, what was the next step in terms of distribution?

So the next step was now West Coast. So at the time, Whole Foods was still a much, a very, very small company, but they were the premier health and wellness natural food store. So I use them as kind of almost like a direction of where I should go next. And I would marry that with what I believe was the demographics and psychographics of the country.

Right. So I knew like, you know, West Coast typically is a little bit more advanced when it comes to health and wellness because I think we have more nature. So that's why the Pacific Northwest immediately became like, I need to go there, the Rockies. And so I basically went to the, I went to the Rockies first and sold to Whole Foods there and other natural food stores. And where granola was popular. Yeah, where the co-ops were. Yeah.

I mean, the co-ops, as you know, were like those are the diehard stores. They were like the early days of Airwan. So that's what I did. I just regionally grew. But then at a certain point, I started to sell out to the point where I couldn't make enough. And so like I had to pause on any kind of growth. And then that's why I had to get to that bigger facility. and once I did, by 2005, which was 10 years from the day I started,

that's when I went nationwide. Was it successful nationwide right away? It was to a certain degree because I think what happened is because it was selling out on the West Coast. You know, as people are by coastal, they would discover it to fall in love with it and then want to get it. So I had this like built up demand. I see. Because there wasn't social media, thank God. Yes.

At the time, it was like the best kept secret. Nobody knew what I was doing. Coke didn't know, Pepsi didn't know, PE firms didn't know, VC firms didn't know, like it was wild. Yeah, it was totally mom and pop independent. Yeah, it was totally underground.

Yeah. And it was, you would say, for 10 years? Well, actually, it's funny. I gave birth to my own competition. And it was because, luckily, I was reluctant to cut corners, right? So when I started to have capacity challenges, yet again, the peanut gallery came into my life and was like, hey, so just dilute it.

Just like make more, like shorten the fermentation, add more water, like, come on. And I was like, guys, like, my consumer's not stupid and I'm not stupid. They'll notice a difference and they'll stop buying it. So the unfortunate outcome of not doing those, taking that advice, was the shells were empty. And so little by little, and I know this because now my competition is straight up set it on the record. It's like, I was buying GT's brand. I fell in love with it. I noticed they were having supply issues.

I decided to make my own and sell it. So that's when you started to see sometimes regional, but even sometimes more than regional competition. You remember the first time you saw any competitive item? Oh, yeah. What was it?

Well, there was two, and they were on different sides of the spectrum. There was one called kombucha wonder drink. And it was based in the Pacific Northwest. It was founded by a guy who I respect named Steve Lee. He was one of the co-founders of stash tea. And because he was a tea guy, kombucha felt right for him.

His packaging was beautiful. His marketing was beautiful. But candidly, the mistake he made is he decided to pasteurize it. And I think mass produced it. So it was missing a soul. And as much as... And it wasn't alive. And it wasn't alive.

Yeah. So that debuted, and I wasn't even worried about that product. I was like, yeah, maybe some people will buy it, but I'm not threatened by it. Yeah. If they buy it's because they don't know that it's dead. That's exactly right. And then the other competitor that actually was somewhat of a formal competitor back then was called High Country kombucha, and they were based in the Rockies. And because I think of their background, they got kombucha.

They didn't make, I say this lovely, and they didn't make the best quality, but they made real stuff. And that started to compete with me. And especially during the times where I was selling out and I couldn't restock, that gave them a big boost. I see. So, but again, as they say, what, high tides raise all boats. I was fine with it. And then over time, have there been more perishable drinks that have to be refrigerated now? Well, in our world, so it now call it the GTs Living Foods portfolio,

everything we make has to be kept refrigerated. I mean, that's why we put living foods in the name of the company. What was the first thing you made that was not kombucha-based? Alive. And what is that? So everything I make, Rick, is for better or for worse, inspired by like a personal experience, right? So kombucha, my mom, right? Combucha helped my mom with her breast cancer.

And then ironically, in, like, 2016, I had a loved one that was suffering from their own illness. And friends and people I respect came into the fold with adaptogenic mushrooms. You know, Rishi, Chaga, turkey tail, corticeps, things of that nature. And unfortunately, this individual is too far gone. So they weren't able to really benefit, you know, long term. But they saw short-term benefits. and then I started to consume it, and I saw the benefits too. And just like the early 90s of making kombucha,

I was just like, there's nothing like this out there. Like, that's a problem. So I developed a product called Alive, and it was this, we called it. I mean, it's gone through so many different iterations, but it's still around today, and it's our number two brand, and it was called an adaptogenic tea. And we would take the fruiting body medicinal mushrooms of Rishi Chaga and Turkey Tail.

We'd brew them for nine hours and extract all the nutrients and antioxidants, and then bottle it. But we use raw apple cider vinegar to still consider it living, and we used, like, herbs and other teas to kind of enhance it. And it, you know, like anything that's brand new and people aren't used to it, you have your ups and downs, that early adoption phase.

But now it's, like I said, it's our second best-selling product. Wow, cool. And then all together, how many different things are you making now? Oh, wow. So it started with Synergy, then alive, which is our mushroom. And there's only one flavor of Alive or more? No, now Alive has five. So we have a root beer, a cola, a lemon lime, a ginger turmeric, and a macho cream soda.

And then later this year we're going to do a lavender mint and a raspberry leachy. What gives them that flavor? A little bit of juice. They are sweetened with stevia because, again, that's because it's not fermented, we're able to influence the sugar content more than when it's fermentable. So it has, you know, a lighter flavor. It's still kind of bitey because we still use like real ingredients. And we're repositioning it right now because we're learning more and more about the mushrooms.

They're really good for cognitive health for homeostasis and balance. And I didn't know it at the time when I created alive. But you might relate to this. Like a lot of us are just overwhelmed, right? Like the buzzing and beeping of life and our devices and the world around us. Like we do need something to kind of round the edges. And so these medicinal mushrooms help that. So we're slowly repositioning alive.

is like a mood and mind beverage. Nice. So then after that came, which is a little bit of a curveball, it's called Kokoyo, which is a raw young Thai coconut yogurt that is one of the hardest products we make

because it's literally just raw coconut meat and raw coconut water that we ferment, and that's it. Like we don't have any fillers. So it's a yogurt. You eat it with a spoon?

Yeah, it's our first and only spoonable product. What's the package look like? It's in a glass jar. It's eight ounces, and it sells for like, depending on where you shop, anywhere from $7 to $9. So it's like a vegan yogurt substitute, would you say? But high probiotic content, like the highest that you can find for the most part. And just super, super boutique, right? It tastes like something that you would make at home, which is, you know, a standard that I still emulate.

And do people eat it by itself, or do they put it in things? Both. You can almost use it as like an assaye bowl base or in smoothies. or straight out of the jar. So there's really no wrong way. How do you describe the taste? Depends on the flavor. Like the pure, which is literally its name,

like no flavor, no stevia even. It's just coconut water, coconut meat fermented. It tastes just like a tangy coconut plain yogurt, but really pure. And then with the other flavors, we decided to use stevia and like whether it's vanilla extract for vanilla or cacao for the cacao. We keep it pretty safe.

simple, but I would say the taste is like a healthy, it almost feels like a healthy dessert. Because it's very satiating because the young coconut has body to it, has healthy fats, but it's delicate because of the young Thai coconut meat. So it's really nice. I love it. And it's alive. And it's alive, yeah. And it's refrigerated as well. Yeah, it's almost too alive sometimes. I mean, we'll get calls from like people who open it. It's like exploded on them. Yeah. I've had that happen with kombucha too. There were times where they would... It just burst on you.

Top. Yeah, and that's an example of, like, nature's in control. Like, we're just holding her hand. We're not in the driver's seat. The manufacturing has only changed in terms of scale. Yeah. Not in process. The process is the same.

Yeah. Can it exist outside of the U.S.? It can with a version of two potential prices, right? So one is the literal price where, I mean, we're based in California. So we ship to Canada and we ship a little bit to the UK. So Canada is at a premium because first of all the currency exchange but also the distance. So freight and stuff causes the retail price to be high. The UK can take six weeks to get there.

So if you have a three-month shelf life, you have six weeks to sell it. Also what's happening is all the cost that it takes to get it there is probably $7 a bottle. So that's the cost curse. The other cost is if you really want to make it the right way, meaning like have it affordable for people in that region, you really need a facility in that area. Have you considered that? I have.

Yeah. I mean, I want to, again, learn from the Adwala lesson that I still keep to heart almost daily is don't grow too fast. So like, you know, obviously I have executives now with the company and they're always pushing for what's that next phase of growth. But I always remind them, but can we say confidently, have we mastered the U.S.?

Have we mastered the markets that we're currently in. And usually the answer is no, because master is such a high standard. It keeps us focused. And so I do eventually want to be more in Europe. I have a home now in Portugal. And I did that so much strategically, whereas I could see Portugal being a good home, my next facility, whether I built it myself or I partnered with somebody. But there's a quality about Portugal that reminds me very much of California. So I think that could be interesting. And I could easily kind of access the European in market. So that's kind of further out in the future. Have you ever considered having a facility on the East Coast as well? I have. But same thing is like I ask myself, but what am I

looking to accomplish? You know, if I'm looking to cut cost, okay, what's the price of that? Because, you know, I still, I'm in the office Monday through Thursday almost every week. I mean, I'm very still tethered to my company. Totally hands on. Totally hands on. To almost full, to be honest. I love what I do and I do it for a reason and I don't want that reason to change. And as much as I love the people I work with, you know, this is my baby. So they'll never be able to fully understand what it feels to create something in the connection and pride and passion and protectiveness I have over it. So like, because we produce Monday through Friday, typically, like, I need to taste test. Like, I want to be there.

And if I'm not there for too long, like, I feel estranged. And it feels like that's the beginning of losing control. So for 30 years, you've been taste testing all of it. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah, I mean, even this current chapter that I'm in, because of my kids mostly where, you know, I'll take a Friday off or I'll work from home on Friday. Like, I still wrestle with that because I'm not used to not tasting every day.

You must have a very fine palette for it after all these years. Yeah. How different is it from batch to back? Watch. It's like, again, using the analogy of a farm or a plant growing from the earth, like, you could have an orange tree, but oranges from different sides of the tree have a different. Taste different. Camboch is no different.

You can have the same base. Like, we brew the tea in a large vat, right? So that's where we can scale. But when we go to ferment at small batches, right? So even though they're all in the same base, they have different qualities, whether they have their different cultures or the heat or humidity or the way the air exchanges in the room. room is different. Each batch is different. So my team tastes us every small batch, grades them, and then blends them to create a standardized finished base. But even with that process, you'll

sometimes see it's maybe a little bit more tangy or a little bit more mild or a little more carbonated or a little bit less carbonated. And then you also have the ingredients that we use post fermentation right at the time of bottling. Like, you know, sometimes the ginger will be out of season or something weird will happen with that apple juice and you you want to really study it. But I guess in some ways the fact that it's a little different from batch to batch also speaks to the realness of the food. Yeah. You know, if it's too similar, then it feels like it's machine made.

I agree. And we actually use that in the early days as kind of a secret to our success. We would say, hey, like, this isn't sterilized or standardized or pasteurized. This is just straight from the earth. And just like anything, nature is perfectly imperfect. And so we would highlight and frame that for people, and people would really get it. So you think of it more like fruit and vegetables. Exactly.

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Learn more at lectio-365.com. How would you say the market for the drink has changed over the years? Oh, wow. Well, first of all, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, health and wellness has been infiltrated. It really started to get infiltrated a lot in like around 2016 to 2018 because you started to see news hit where companies were selling and they were selling for a large dollar amount, right?

So the first notable kombucha brand to sell was a brand called Kavita and they sold to Pepsi in 2016 and they sold for 200 million, which at the time was like, that could have been like 10 billion in people's money. Like, that dollar figure was huge, and it rocked the health food industry and specifically the kombucha category. And how big of a brand was that? I think at the time when they sold, they were probably at, like, maybe $75 million in sales. But they really, I mean, their growth was remarkable.

You can't take away the success that that brand had. Is theirs alive as well or no? It kind of did a little bit of a dance of like live probiotics, and it used. use certain language, but at the end of the day, it was discovered. It was pasteurized. Did it have to be refrigerated or no? Well, so the jury's still out on that. Like, there are products, Rick, that are technically ambient, but they claim they need to be kept refrigerated. Well, pasteurized milk is still in the refrigerated section. That's exactly right. But even more so in this like ready to

drink beverage space, it's a little bit of a secret approach of how to get high traffic store shelf placement and almost hijack certain categories. So like even in the last couple years, there's been brands that have said they need to be kept refrigerated. So they're immediately in my set, which is a highly desirable set because the store has only so much refrigeration space. So that's how they're able to kind of naturally appeal to a shopper that's maybe looking for a product like mine because they think refrigerated means fresh, means pure. But a lot of these brands, if you look at the ingredients, they're like, what's in this that needs to be? kept refrigerated.

Have there been any complications along the way or unexpected difficulties that came up? Well, I mean, the biggest, candidly, was when the kombucha space call it, was getting so popular because I was selling out and, you know, the category was growing even after, like, the 2008 Great Recession.

Almost every industry was soft. But health and wellness was still growing and within health and wellness, kombucha was like on fire. And so what happened is overnight, you had like five dozen brands. Really? Yeah. Like every day there was an announcement of another kombucha brand.

And it was, you know, it was thrilling to see because they're like, oh, we're part of a movement. But then you started to see, like, they were changing the narrative. They were going after other brands. Some were pasteurized. So it just really started to confuse the conversation. And then 2010, a brand that had just started out on. the East Coast was delivering their product unrefrigerated, probably for cost-cutting reasons,

and it was starting to ferment more, and the bottles started, were, like, fizzing out on the shelf. And somebody saw it, and they called the health department, and the health department came in, and just standard procedure, they grabbed the bottles and took them to their lab and just paneled them to see if they were safe or anything like that, and what came out was a hit of alcohol,

above 0.5%, which in this country, unlike the rest of the world, is the definition of non-alcoholic or alcoholic. You can be 0.049, but you can't be 0.5 or 0.51. And even though there's no difference physically, like one isn't like non-intoxicating, the other one is intoxicating, it's just a technicality. It's just a line, arbitrary number. Exactly, exactly. And so now this revealed that this fermented tea, may have alcohol

and so like overnight there was like stop the press stop everything we need to understand that and every brand including mine was taken off the shelf. Wow for how long well so what happened was initially they said hey we can't sell this anymore

it has alcohol and I said okay guys I put that on the label like it says may contain alcohol because it's fermented and I believe in transparency I'm not I understand alcohol is a stigmatism for people I want them to know that, but this is by no means alcoholic. Like, you're going to try to drink this to get drunk. Believe you and me, like something else is going to happen.

You can be paying more time on the toilet. You'll get sick before you get drunk. Yeah, that's exactly right. So I was like somewhat caught off guard with this like newfound conversation. But because now kombucha was so big and the players, whole food, specifically, we're now publicly traded companies. Like they had a lot at stake. And they're like, no, we can't risk this.

You need to reformulate. You need to find it way. to suppress the ability for the ethanol, aka alcohol, to rise to a certain level. Had you ever tested alcohol levels before that? We did, yeah, and they were low. But what happens is, is like, we can't control what people do. So if somebody buys a bottle from the refrigerator or a store even takes a delivery and doesn't put it in the refrigerator right away, you know, an hour or two of being out,

yes, you kind of awaken the fermentation and depending on the fruit juice it's being used, nature will start to take off. So yes, that was the challenge. It was this conversation about like, okay, but what if there is alcohol? Are people going to now believe that this is, you know, bootleg product, black market product, potentially even unhealthy product, because alcohol is not healthy. And so that was the really strong, most existential moment. When was this?

It was 2010. It was June, like 15th, 2010, when I got the phone call of like, hey, because in May there was the whispers of like, hey, we're hearing there's like alcohol concerns in kombucha. And that's why I said, we test, like, we're good. It's like, okay. And then they came back and they're like, no, we're not comfortable with what we're hearing. So effective tomorrow, we're taking all your products off the shelf.

And it was hard. But you know what helped me navigate that is what I kind of said earlier is I anchored myself in, hey, if everything ends today, I'm okay with it. because what I've been able to do is beyond what I ever dream. So I'm not a failure. This isn't a bad thing. Maybe this is just the conclusion of this chapter. So what happened?

How did it get resolved? Well, so initially, I was like, this is it. I'm being told that I need to change the way I make my product. I don't agree. I think I'm going to be making a substandard product. I'm not going to do it. And so that was like month one. Month one, I just started to make peace with the fact that this is it.

This is the end. and I'm okay with it. But what changed my point of view is some of the other brands on the shelf rushed back to the shelf with diluted dumbed-down product. And that bothered me because I said, wait,

I'm not saying I'm the kombucha godfather, but I do feel that I have a responsibility and I cannot allow only that to be on the shelf. So it kind of changed my perspective. I was like, okay, yes, I want to still be a purist, but I'm going to find a purist with like, not with a compromise, but a purest positioning that still is now navigating this new kind of criteria that I must meet. And that's actually when I shorten the shelf life,

because my kombucha used to be six to nine months. I see. But what was the issue with this conversation of ethanol wasn't what I was doing. It was what was happening afterwards. Over time. So one of the ideas I had, in addition to slightly modifying the fermentation approach, was, hey, if I can treat this like a fresh press juice, then I'm going to limit or reduce what could potentially happen downstream in the market. So what I did is I immediately, I think I launched with a 60-day shelf life. And I told every retailer, I said, this is our new positioning to remind you that this is raw. This is living. So there's two months down from what could be as long as nine months. Yeah. Big difference. There's a huge difference. In reality, how long were your

things on the shelves typically. That was an interesting part, not that long. Probably, it seems like. Yeah, and so that's why I was comfortable. I was like, hey. Probably wouldn't change things so much. It didn't. Yeah.

For the next like five years, Rick, the short shelf life did nothing. In fact, it actually gave us the ability to use ingredients that we couldn't use before, like chia seeds, right? We were one of the first companies to do a drinkable whole chia drink. After Born to Run came out? Yeah. And chia is such a fascinating ingredient. Yeah.

But it's volatile because once it's hydrates, the cellulose becomes very unstable. And so we sold those, I think, with like a 45-day shelf life. And it was remarkable. And we got a lot of- And is it 45 days from... Baudling. From bottling. Yeah, from bottling.

And from bottling, how long does it take to get to a store typically? Well, to get to a distributor, depending on what their inventory is, right, which we don't influence. It can speed anywhere from one day to five days to get to a distributor. So obviously like a distributor on the East Coast takes longer. And then it'll probably take another five days to get on the shelf. So call it 10 end to end, which is still pretty good. Yeah. You know, we use the same distributors that like yogurt uses.

So they're familiar with the coal chain kind of requirements as well as the fast turn. So it didn't hurt us back then. Now it hurts us because, as I mentioned, people are now being more programmed for products that don't have a short shelf life or better yet don't even have a shelf life. Yeah. So we're noticing on the shelf. But those aren't your customers. They're not our customers. That's the reality.

Yeah, that's true. But it's influencing the way stores behave. I see. Back in the day, like when I was sharing the shelf with Adwala, you had to rotate. You had to make sure that what was in the back comes to the front and you stock from behind. I'll walk into a store and they're just pushing bottles. So you're moving fresh product to the back. So we're now seeing, like, I buy my product periodically at the stores.

I'm seeing it sometimes up to its expiration date or sometimes past its expiration date. And that just crushes me because I'm like, well, then my fans, my consumers, whatever you want to call them, they're not getting the best product. So I'm trying to navigate that. So it's a work in progress. Have you ever tested how much sugar is in the drinks? Oh, yeah? After the process? Yeah.

How much is it? Is it negligible or no? Well, the first thing that is important to know in this wonderful conversation of sugar is that the first thing that kombucha does, regardless of what form of sugar you're using. whether it's cane sugar, honey, fruit juice, what have you, it breaks it down. So it starts separating the fructose from the sucrose, from the glucose, and it starts modifying the molecular structure of now this simple carbohydrate. So that's like the first thing that happens. So it's already kind of been transformed, so to speak.

And then by the end of the fermentation, at least our fermentation, because we so want it to be palatable and we don't want to taste like a shot of vinegar, it ranges from like, I'd say, 10 to 12 grams of sugar for a 16-ounce bottle, which is still relatively low. In today's market, it's considered high because everybody wants single-digit at best, but it's still relatively low when you think about it. Are there other obscure health drinks that are less popular that you're interested in? Oh, absolutely.

Like water kefir is fascinating to me. Water kefer in many ways is like a younger sister to kombucha. So kombucha, you know, dates back to two, two. 21 BC when it was first recorded being consumed, which is a long time ago. Yes. Water kefir, on the other hand, it's like the 1800s. And it was discovered in the desert. And the kefir culture, aka. Tipikos, was growing on the pad of a prickly pear cactus.

And somehow someone got the bright idea to put it in like a sweetened base and it ferments and reproduces. So very similar to kombucha. But what's important about it, It's unlike kombucha that has a little bit more of like a, it's called an acetobacter ferment. So basically like a vinegar ferment, so that's why it's sour and tangy and all of that. The water kefir has a lacto ferment, not lactose. It's not dairy base.

But it has a different kind of chemistry of living cultures. And the end product is not sour. It's maybe a little dry, but it's not sour. And it's really in many ways it's like nature's natural soda. It's naturally effervescent. It's not very sweet. It doesn't have any tea. So people who are maybe adverse to tea, whether it's because of caffeine or flavor, what have you, it doesn't have any of that.

It's just literally a fermented sweet water. Unlike kombucha that you can do honey and fruit, water kefer primarily thrives on a cane sugar base. But that to me has been fascinating. And we debuted that a couple years ago. And it's doing really well because in my mind, it's hopefully a response to people who think they're doing the right. thing by buying these sodas or buying these low sugar products that have really just mass-produced snake oils. And it's giving them an option of like, yeah, I understand you want a flavor profile, you maybe have a macronutrient target, and maybe that kombucha can't satisfy it. But I still want

to give you something authentic. So we're excited about our water kefir. It's called Agua Decafere. It's a little bit of a nod to, I'm a quarter Mexican. It's a little bit of nod to my background. And it's alive as well. Yes. Yes. Yeah. What's the shelf life on that? It's longer than kombucha. I think we coat it with, I think, four months, maybe five. Any other difficulties with even manufacturing or distributing because it's a perishable item? Oh, absolutely. What's getting harder and harder is freight.

You know, but like the amount of trucks and freight companies that are available these days, especially after the ups and downs of the economy in the last five years, it's becoming harder and harder to ship cold. And so therefore the costs are going up, the availability is not what he's. used to be. Has your business been fairly consistent sales-wise over the years? I would say for the most part. So I would say from year one to maybe 2019, it was uncontrollable growth, like double-digit growth without any effort with virtually no marketing. And the reason why I believe that was is I think, well, definitely the market was different. But in addition

to that, we were speaking the right language to people who were looking to be spoken to, if that makes sense. But then I think as the health and wellness craze took off and the Kavita brand sold, as I mentioned, just the chemistry and dynamics of everything started to shift. And by 2020, of course, pandemic year as well, is when we first started to see a soft year. And since then, it's been kind of up and down. And we're not alone, like whether it's our category or even Whole Foods or even other players in our industry. Like, it's not as easy these days. Are less people going to supermarkets to shop and are more people just ordering stuff from Amazon? Yeah.

That's the hardest, Rick. Because I sometimes like to go back to my origins, right? I think it's just who I am. And one of my origin beginnings was sampling at the stores. So from time to time, I actually like to go back into a Whole Foods or some other store and sample my stuff and, like, interact with people and, like, visibly see and connect with them and see how they resonate with what I'm offering them, how I'm framing it. And the last time I did it was about a year ago.

And I noticed that, like, first of all, like, 80% of people would walk up and they'd be having their phone in front of them. And, like, kind of talking to me, but also, like, preoccupied. And I was like, okay, I'm not, don't have your undivided attention. So that's the first thing. Second thing is half of those individuals were, like, Instacart and DoorDash, and Amazon Prime shoppers. So I'm not even talking to the actual person who's shopping.

I'm talking to like their avatar. A shopper, yeah. Wow. And then. That's interesting. Yes. That's a new thing. It's a new thing.

And then on top of that, if I'm lucky and I am talking to somebody that's at least giving me a good amount of their attention and they're the actual shopper, I would notice I'd tell this beautiful story of like what kombucha is, why it's special, what's in it. And then they would look at me and eight out of ten times, Rick, would be like, how much sugar is in it? And I'm like, really? I just poured my heart and soul out to you, and that's your first question.

No, I understand. I was that guy. Yeah, I think we're all of that at a certain point. But it's just remarkable, but how much more of that is coming into play. So I think that's what we're searching for right now is how can we breathe new life into things like kombucha? Is it technology and our obsession with instant gratification? I believe Rick has allowed us to a little bit of lose our way.

And we have to kind of go back to like the fundamental principles and remind ourselves that, yes, it's important to have dynamic thinking and dynamic behaviors and all of that, but don't ignore like the essentials. Tetragrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge. What may fall within the sphere of tetragrammaton? Counterculture, tetragrammatian, sacred geometry, tetragrammatin, the avant guard, tetragmatine, generative art, tetragamatin, the tarot, tetragmatin, out-of-print music, tetragrammatin, biodynamic, tetragrammatin, graphic design, tetragrammatin, mythology and magic, tetragrammatin, obscure film, tetragrammatin, beach culture, tetragrammatin, esoteric lectures, tetragrammatin, off-the-grid living,

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