Teens brew up kombucha business
Emily and Lucas Price have a mother of a business plan.
In a time when fermented foods come second only to kale in super food status, brewing and aging tea into kombucha has all the makings of a sure thing. So the St. Catharines teens are producing and selling the health drink in small batches.
The brother and sister behind the local kombucha upstart Two Siblings Naturals aren’t gunning for dominance in the beverage market, however. Emily, who plans to study business at Brock University in two years, and Lucas simply want to pay their way through school and quench their entrepreneurial spirit one bottle of fermented tea at a time.
“We said, ‘If you want to go to university for business, the best experience is life experience,’” their dad, Michael Price, said.
“It’s partly a learning experience for all of us. Who’s ever gone through the process of getting a business license? How do you know if you should charge HST?”
It wasn’t a stretch that Emily and Lucas, with the help of Michael and mom Heidi, would hedge their business bets on kombucha. The market for the tea drink is experiencing huge growth and is expected to be worth US$1.8 billion by 2020, according to industry reports.
Kombucha’s growing popularity is steeped in its health benefits, particularly the anti-oxidants, B vitamins and probiotics it’s believed to contain.
The Prices come by their love of healthy food and drink naturally but also by necessity.
Emily has colitis, a chronic disease that causes inflammation of the gut. She was diagnosed at three, and rather than rely on drugs to treat symptoms, Michael and Heidi decided to use food as medicine.
Michael is the executive chef at White Oaks Resort and Spa, and grew up the son of health-conscious parents. He jokes he hated every minute of it as a kid, but something stuck and neither he nor Heidi flinched at taking on the tall order of carefully minding — even growing and raising — the food Emily, 16, ate to stay well.
He and Heidi raise chickens and keep bees. Throughout their children’s lives, they’ve kept a vegetable garden and used the harvests to nourish their growing family.
It was a natural progression when Michael started drinking kombucha about a year ago. He liked its tangy flavour but the slightly fizzy beverage appealed to him for another reason.
“Typical parents, we don’t want our kids drinking pop,” Michael said.
Kombucha is a natural for filling that void but it can be expensive to buy. The average bottle, containing less than 500 millilitres, fetches about $4. Done properly, though, it can be easy to make.
The family started playing around with fermenting and flavouring their own tea last year. They brewed ethical green and black leaves for the project, sweetened them with organic cane sugar, then relied on the taste buds of 14-year-old Lucas, the “flavour master,” to guide the seasoning process.
As an experiment, Michael put a few bottles in the fridge at Grow, the coffee bar at White Oaks. They disappeared quickly.
Feedback from friends also let them know they were on to something, especially when the comments originated in Lucas and Emily’s social circles.
“Having two kids with a different palate, we tried to make ones that were more mild in flavour,” Michael said. “I like to call it kombucha for everyone so if you’re not used to it, it’s not so strong. It’s not so sour.”
The family officially launched Two Siblings two months ago. They ferment their concoctions in 300-litre batches in a certified kitchen. When the mother, a gelatinous blob called a scoby, has worked its magic, Michael tests the pH, and the family gets together to bottle the beverage, affixing labels, caps and safety seals by hand.
They work on the kombucha’s schedule. There’s no putting off bottling without risking their work turning into vinegar. That means there have been some late nights for the family on the packing line.
“As much as it’s painful because it’s ready at the worst time, just the family time, the being together, is good,” Michael said.
Admittedly, Emily wasn’t fussy about kombucha the first time she tried it. Thanks to Lucas greenlighting flavour combinations like hibiscus rosebud, blueberry lavender and lemon ginger, she’s a convert and kombucha magnate in the making.
They also make a hibiscus lemonade kefir water, which is another fermented beverage touted for similar health benefits.
Two Siblings is available at Mahtay Cafe in St. Catharines, Grow at White Oaks, The Loft Beauty Bar and MedSpa in Niagara Falls, and Primal Cravings in Burlington. The hope is to get it on more shelves soon, including selling it at Pelham Farmers’ Market this summer.
But no one wants the endeavour to grow so large it stops being fun or loses its handmade touches, like the odd crooked label. Mostly, they don’t want to lose sight of the life lessons this entrepreneurial endeavour provides.
“I’m learning a lot more than I knew before,” Emily said.
“It’s taught me I can start my own business. I’ve always wanted to go into business but now I definitely do.” — Tiffany Mayer is the author of Niagara Food: A Flavourful History of the Peninsula’s Bounty (The History Press). She also blogs about food and farming at eatingniagara.com. You can reach her at eatingniagara@gmail.com or on Twitter @eatingniagara.