He was the first to put kombucha on store shelves, in the late 1990s, and GT’s is still the biggest manufacturer, owning 40% of the U.S. “I can’t point to a single other beverage entrepreneur who has done that.”Ī less sure-minded person in Dave’s position might be waffling on his convictions right now, for his kingdom is increasingly under siege. Dave has “the freedom to still be 100% himself,” Steltenpohl says. He long ago left Odwalla and has a new nut-milk startup, Califia Farms. Steltenpohl knows what it’s like to give up independence, chafing at the chains wrapped around him by public shareholders after Odwalla’s 1993 IPO. “He has been able to scale his company while retaining his craft ethos and independent spirit,” says Greg Steltenpohl, an admirer of Dave’s and a founder of the Odwalla juice company. “This is what the customer wants,” he insists. And Dave does not skim away the mix of yeast and bacteria that does the fermenting, leaving small amounts floating gelatinously in the drink. It is not pasteurized, though doing so would make the beverage less perishable and easier to ship.

Unlike many of his rivals, he says, he makes his authentically, and it’ll stay like that: “From day one, I tried to emulate a homemade process.” Dave lets nature do much of the work, as he has since the beginning: fermenting a blend of black and green teas in small batches of 5-gallon jars for a month.

This new, 260,000-square-foot factory doesn’t mean he’s changing how his kombucha is made. Ethan Pines for Forbesĭave, 41, takes the opportunity to make a point, one very important to him and his GT’s Living Foods, a business with an estimated $275 million in sales.

His greater challenge: surviving the rush of competitors flooding a market he once had all to himself. Please recycle.George Thomas Dave convinced America to love a tangy, tart, fermented beverage from Asia called kombucha-and it made him a billionaire. They're always refrigerated, have visible culture strands, and offer a bright, tangy bite. But don't just take our word for it you can see the authenticity in every one of our bottles. When heated (pasteurized), filtered, or made from concentrate, Kombucha's innate nutritional goodness is compromised and weakened. Raw is Real: If Kombucha is not raw, then it's not the real deal. Gently on sheets of light, our own books we write, grace is the pen, and the word is life. I promise to always craft with pure love and true intentions, to nourish your body and nurture your health. To this day, every small batch is traditionally cultivated in 5-galloon glass vessels for 30 days - the longest ferment of any brand - using heirloom living cultures to naturally develop the most nutrients possible. That is the standard I set when I bottled my first batch of Kombucha in 1995. Boulardii: 4 billion organisms, Lactobacillus Bacterium: 4 billion organisms, L(+) Lactic Acid: 100mg, Acetic Acid: 75mg, Glucuronic Acid: 1400mg, Gluconic Acid: 650mg). 9 billion living probiotics (Per 16oz, at time of bottling: Probiotics Bacillus Coagulans GBI-306086: 1 billion organisms, S.

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