From Small-Batch to Big-Brand: Lessons from a Bootstrap Beverage Company
By: Jill Kiedaisch
Every product has to start somewhere. Coke was carbonated water, sugar, and coca leaf extract before it was a behemoth beverage company. Kleenex was a utilitarian disposable handkerchief replacement before it became synonymous with all things facial tissue. Nike was a Greek goddess-inspired eponym for a sporting goods company founded by two guys from Beaverton, Oregon before its meteoric rise to Air Jordan fame with annual revenue in excess of $47 billion.
All businesses strive to unlock the Davinci Code for how a product or service morphs from a great idea into a successful brand. While this process looks different for everyone, successful brands always have a story to tell. Let’s take a look at a grassroots, Vermont-born kombucha brewery that fermented (literally and otherwise) in a Salisbury basement to become a nationally-recognized beverage brand distributed across the eastern US: Aqua ViTea.
The curio of the beverage industry
The first question people tend to ask of the burgeoning kombucha brewer is, “What is it though?” Put simply, kombucha is a blend of green or black tea and sugar combined with a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) that undergoes a fermentation process resulting in a bubbly beverage fortified with probiotics, digestive enzymes, amino acids, and other beneficial goodies. Then you add fruits, roots, herbs, and spices to create various flavors.
Mission matters
Jeff Weaber and his wife Katina Martin founded Aqua ViTea as an alternative to soda and sports drinks, driven by “a health mission, not a money mission.” From its inception, the company has pledged to use “only premium, natural ingredients,” refusing to compromise on production standards. For Weaber, this is about more than brewing a tasty beverage; he views the product as “a manifestation of healthy values in every sense.” In other words, drinking Aqua ViTea is as much adopting a lifestyle as it is a dietary choice.
Product authenticity
The company makes a point to “honor authentic kombucha brewing traditions” while also embracing innovative methods, striking that tricky balance between the time-tested and the trail-blazing. If there is a single key to the company’s success, this is it. Aqua ViTea walks the talk…or brews the news as the case may be. “Authentic brewing traditions” means that they let the ingredients work their magic through the natural process of fermentation. Their innovative methods involve a state-of-the-art Spinning Cone Column, which is a story-high space-age machine that required an enormous high-risk investment of revenue at a critical turning point in the life of the company. It has fortunately paid off. So we’ve got something novel and new that is also ancient and venerable, bordering on ritualistic for some.
Pathbreaker power
Aqua ViTea’s Spinning Cone extracts alcohol from the kombucha in a process called dealcoholization that involves “low temperature vacuum distillation”—is a tech-fancy way of saying that the alcohol gets pulled from the brew, preserving the naturally occurring organisms without diluting flavor. Thanks to this breakthrough in the beverage industry, there’s now a seal indicating “Verified Alcohol Extracted” status making it safe for kids and people with alcohol sensitivities.
Acquiring the Cone deepened market penetration, drove up sales, tapped new revenue streams, and gave the company a competitive advantage over rival brands, firmly ensconcing Aqua ViTea as a national leader in safe, healthy kombucha production. During this revolutionary period, Aqua ViTea seized the opportunity to use the extracted alcohol to make Aqua Vodka in partnership with Appalachian Gap Distillery. Anything else left over is available for purchase for herbal tinctures, hand sanitizer, and new beverage development.
The fountainhead of fountains
Kombucha on tap hasn’t always been a feature of your local Whole Foods. At a Middlebury Farmers’ Market one Saturday in 2007, Weaber decided to serve up his brew from a refrigerated fountain (like beer brewers do at off-site events) because hauling around cases of single-unit bottles and trying to keep them cold outside on a summer day was exhausting, inefficient, and costly. It was here that “the first kombucha fountain in the universe began to flow”—about a decade ahead of its time, affirming the brand’s position as a leader in the kombucha industry.
Other brands eventually followed suit, adopting the model as demand increased. Today, kombucha fountains are pretty standard fare in health food stores across the country. But initially, vendors pushed back on designating that much space for one product. So Aqua ViTea hired beverage roadies charged with traveling store to store to help set up fountains and train staff on keeping them flowing—a nimble, responsive service offering meeting challenges with direct solutions. “If you build it, they will come”…as long as you show them the way.
Creativity over commercialism
Part of what makes Aqua ViTea distinctive is its colorful branding, brainchild of creative tour de force Mike Kin, who runs Bright Time Studio. Kin is basically the Aqua ViTea OG from ye olde bootstrap basement days, having moved from Portland, Oregon with Weaber to set up the brewery in Vermont. As Artistic Director, Kin brought the brand to life, illustrating a gallery of original label art that embodies the company’s culture, creativity, and commitment to community. His signature style stands out among the competition, visually popping off the shelves.
Always in the room during pivotal developments, Kin informed key decisions from an artistic and functional standpoint, keeping the company connected to its roots even as its reach spread westward. Placing creativity at the core of the brand ethos has undoubtedly set Aqua ViTea apart.
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A well-oiled machine
The rise in wellness beverage trends keeps the Aqua ViTea’s flora flowing. With 11 distributors and products in more than 3,000 stores, the brewery has become a well-oiled probiotic beverage machine. The brewers have mastered their craft, experimenting with flavor development and product off-shoots, like CBD chaga chai and a probiotic seltzer line, ensuring ferment foodies, kombucha buffs, and conscientious parents looking for healthy alternatives to soda will be kicking the kegs for the foreseeable future.
Even immune support isn’t immune
Aqua ViTea has been weathering some rough seas lately, coping with market volatility, lay-offs, and belt-tightening measures—including cutting back production and retiring their custom bottle design. It’s hard to stay afloat when the cost of everything from jackfruit to jam is spiking off the charts, bottoming out margins across the board.
But microbiotic metamorphosis runs in the veins of this enterprise. Aqua ViTea knows how to convert bacteria and yeast into carbohydrates, how to break down sugars and starches into organic compounds. With their vision of functional health fully intact, they’ll figure out how to convert this difficult economic predicament into some kind of business opportunity. We’ll just have to wait and see what bubbles up.
Standing for something
Many brand loyalists will tell you that they love Aqua ViTea, not only for its digestive benefits, but also because the company hasn’t shied away from taking a stand. BlueBernie, for example, was released in 2016 as a liquid endorsement of Bernie Sanders’ run for President. To stay relevant, the flavor has since been renamed Blueberry Social.
Not every flavor pun has hit the right tone, however; some consumers were put off by I’mpeachMint, a.k.a. Mmmmmpeachmint, claiming “using your company’s platform to push a political agenda is wrong no matter which side [you’re on].” The subsequent flavor glow-up resulted in Peach Out, an effort, it seems, to make peace with disgruntled fans. But the label design, touting a large orange orb topped with comb-over leaves, held firm.
VermontBiz.com interpreted the reinvented flavors as a rebrand aiming “to prioritize alcohol transparency…furthering its mission of inclusivity and kindness.” Weaber confirmed this: “Now more than ever it’s important to unify people. As we expand our distribution, we’re shifting our focus towards bringing people together and creating kombucha for everyone”—a skillful pivot from political commentary to progressive values. It helps that the “we’re all in this together” sentiment is totally on-brand.
A recipe for success
With origins stretching back to the Qin Dynasty (221 B.C.), Kombucha was born from necessity, first made from tree bark by starving babushkas on the Mongolian steppe and prized by samurai for energy during battle. So all that ancient elixir talk is legit, fueling a 21st century comeback—a trend the Aqua ViTea founders were onto from the beginning.
When cooking up your brand expansion strategy, take a page from the Aqua ViTea brew book and keep these key ingredients in mind:
Steep for 20 years and you’ve got a unique product resistant to capricious markets and fads. Businesses big and small can apply this recipe—adjusting proportions, adding or subtracting ingredients—to formulate their own secret sauce that maximizes shelf life while retaining brand flavor.
Remember, all good products are born of having a true craving and then experimenting in the kitchen to get it just right.
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