Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Greg Goodman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Greg thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea?

I literally started this product in my kitchen as a homebrewer. After brewing kombucha using common methods that I learned from internet resources like “Kombucha Kamp” and “Cultures for Health”, my wife and I started to become very health conscious, in particular with sugar consumption. I noticed that most bottled kombucha selling in retail stores in my local area had way too high of a sugar count per serving. Kombucha is supposed to be a healthy, functional beverage and yet companies were dumbing down the product (and masking improper fermentation) through the addition of fructose. I knew there was a market for a lower-sugar kombucha, so I started developing recipes that were in line with more tea-centric ingredients as well as the addition of herbs and botanicals that would add health value to the product. I later hooked up with my brother-in-law Bryan Schmitz who helped me figure out how to single-ferment the product and add carbonation without adding sugar, and we started sampling the product at various events. Idea to execution in this case, which included a lot of R&D, was roughly a 2 year process.

Prior to the development of our retail bottle, we had served a few clients with kegs and had done several sampling events in which we wanted honest feedback from people who we didn’t know and didn’t know us. I was told by various people, already in the business and smarter than me, that you had to get out of your comfort zone of friends/family/neighbors, the very folks who won’t tell you the honest truth about your brand, your packaging, and your product. While I think we were lucky in that we had an excellent designer and brewed a good product to begin with, there was some critical feedback during that period that helped us hone in the product we have today.

This all led to the grab-and-go retail product that we have on the shelf today, which boasts one of the lowest sugar per serving counts on the market.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

I had been interested in craft foods and beverages for a while before deciding to start manufacturing kombucha. Microbrewed beer and in particular craft coffee inspired me to pay close attention to the details which I learned mattered more than anything else. I wanted to make kombucha better than what was being presented to the public, so I spend a lot of time on sourcing ingredients and learning how to brew a more beneficial product in which the fermentation stood on its own.

As KTonic grows, our number one challenge is to maintain our identity as a kombucha brand for kombucha purists. While we want to have fun and come up with different flavor combinations, the product has to have the value-add of being good for you. Yes, kombucha in general is lower in sugar than sodas and yes, kombucha as an acidified food has benefits beyond the tea that was used to brew it, but can we maintain a health and wellness ‘tonic’ that provides multiple benefits consistently as we grow to serve a larger market? This is our challenge.

What makes me particularly proud about KTonic beyond the product that we make is that we value people more than anything else, both inside and outside our organization. We are a small, tight-knit outfit in which taking care of our crew, who so carefully produces our product, is our number one concern. We also have great partnerships with other local-area businesses and support various local charities regularly. Of course, without our wonderful customers, we wouldn’t be here!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Interesting question. I had to reorient my focus (unlearn for the most part) regarding who I thought my target was within an organization that I wanted to sell to. The owner and his business that I’m referring to will remain nameless, but it was a local-area Austin entrepreneur who caught fire after going on shark tank. I met him at an event that we were both working and discussed the idea of his shops carrying my product. He liked our product and thought we would be a good fit. He was pretty inundated in growing his business, but I kept in touch with him over the course of several months, continuing to think that the owner’s interest in my product had to be the key to entry. When the owner finally gave me the green light and connected me up with his beverage director, I find out that his director’s team literally just struck a deal with one of my competitors days prior. Here I was, courting the owner, while my competitor pitched exactly who they needed to within the company. Luckily this was early in the game for us and it’s been one of a multitude of lessons that I have learned since I started selling our product.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

I started out manufacturing our product in a cottage setting and it was all about translating that to scale in a commercial environment. Frankly, I couldn’t have picked a more difficult beverage business to be in given the unpredictability of the fermentation process and the nuances that come with it. Trying to co-pack kombucha with another entity was pretty much out of the question back then, so I needed to nail down how we were going to produce our product as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. Manufacturing your own product is about maintaining a constant effort in trying to reduce labor and material costs without affecting quality. Purchasing in larger quantities, sometimes from a variety of suppliers, and implementing tools and processes to help achieve a higher labor efficiency while maintaining or increasing product quality is the game.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ktonickombucha.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/ktonickombucha
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ktonic
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/ktonickombucha
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClQWvnq1_4-TqT_D-joN-VQ

Image Credits
Chai bottle and Original bottle photos – Eden Goodman Cherry Blossom photo – Meera Chandrasekaran