We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Susan Cartiglia Aran a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Susan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

Radiate Kombucha sells kombucha and traditionally brewed probiotic beverages in sustainable packaging to wholesalers such as Whole Foods Market, Milams and HEB as well as hundreds of local restaurants, cafes, markets and hotels in Florida and Texas. We sponsor beach clean ups and give back to our community supporting small farms and putting efforts back into cleaning up Biscayne Bay.

Radiate delivers distinctive value with superior recipes crafted by a nutritionist using functional and locally sourced ingredients, sustainability efforts and highly competitive pricing.

We are passionate about our sustainable packaging and aim to educate our community about glass no longer being recycled and why we all need to be thinking about more sustainable options. Aside from being the most sustainable packaging material on the planet, BPA_free aluminum is perfect for pools, boats and beaches.

We just added QR codes to our cans so the customer can track their ingredients back to a local farm. We aim to support local communities, small farms, restore Biscayne Bay and do our part in localizing our food system.

Susan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Radiate started as a one-woman pop-up apothecary at The Wynwood Yard in 2018 and has grown into a fermented beverage company that is working to scale to a national level in just a few short years.

As we grow, Radiates full product line will be used as a vehicle to inspire healthier living to all who are seeking to Radiate through life! We are very proud to draw upon our own community for inspiration and partner with organizations who are working to restore Biscayne Bay.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I first learned that glass was no longer being recycled in Miami-Dade County and will not be recycled anywhere in the US by the end of 2023 I had a bit of a come-apart. My second daughter was just a few weeks old and I had to really make a decision about whether I would pull-the-plug on the business or double down and go all in. Between diaper changes, breastfeeding and learning how to be a family of 4 I jumped into research about what it takes to put the microbiology in Radiate into a can, its not a simple task because we are dealing with micro-bacteria, yeasts, enzymes, acids and other living ingredients. I went from being a holistic health coach and yea teacher to brewer, scientist and manufacturer seemingly overnight. I am really proud that we made the decision we did to double down on the business and purchase our own canning line. We now manufacture in Allapattah and are rebuilding our local sourcing programs as we scale to a national level.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Covid was a scary moment for us because prior to that we were only selling to local grab n go cafes, restaurants and hotels and these businesses shut down overnight. We lost all our business that I had spend 2 years building overnight. I used the time to reach out to all of our community including influencers, chefs and people with large social media audiences and spent a week asking for their support and leaving cases on their doorsteps. We used social media to leverage the fact that everyone was home looking at their phones and started doing home deliveries. It was really exciting and that April was ou roughest profiting month thus far. I used the time at home to pivot my focus toward grocery stores and larger retail outlets and we launched in Milams, Central Market and Whole Foods during the lockdown which kept our business afloat and really changed the course of Radiate forever.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.RadiateMiami.com
• Instagram: @RadiateMiami
• Facebook: @RadiateMiami
• Linkedin: @SusanCartiglia

Image Credits
https://daniellamia.pixieset.com Daniella Mia