This is episode number four of the Cult of Startup podcast. Today's guest, Jake and Mike from Wellbird Kombucha. Hello, guys and gals. This is Luke Baird, and welcome to another episode of the Cult of Startup show, where it is my job to extract valuable information and takeaways for you to understand and utilize in your startups.
Today's episode is different because it's the first time I'm interviewing somebody who does not have a tech-related product. They actually have a food product, Wellbird Kombucha. They are located here on the Central Coast. And during this conversation, we go over a myriad of interesting subjects that primarily can apply to a food brand, such as how do you stand out in retail space?
How do you educate consumers about maybe a new product? What does it take to actually get your product into stores like Whole Foods? And how do you find your niche in the long run to get your product into places like that? So I really hope you guys enjoy this.
Here we go. How's it going today, guys? It's going well. It's going well.
Great. We've got Mike and Jake here. What's up, y'all? These guys are a local kombucha company here in the Central Coast of California.
They have grown immensely out of an initial idea to have a homebrew of kombucha that actually scaled over time to now actually being in a number of locations here in California. So without further ado, where did this all actually start for you guys? It started in 2012, but we actually, we weren't selling anything at that point, but we were totally experimenting. We experimented for a solid year, in fact, or a year and a half before we brought anything to market.
But that's where we got our funding through Kickstarter in April of 2012. Shortly after that, we acquired our business license. And at that moment, we were all working our day-to-day jobs and we wanted to stop working for other people and work for ourselves. So that was the true motivation behind starting kombucha.
And the other reason was that we had all been drinking it and we had noticed the great effects it had on our body. And it was something that we could easily get behind and learn how to do. So we learned how to do it. And at one point, we had the owner of Bliss Cafe, David Fentel, and he was really urging us to get our product to market.
This is April of 2013. And he had taken his kombucha off the shelves. And we were just telling him, like, it's not ready yet. Like, we haven't perfected the recipe.
We can make it better. We're working with some other ideas here. And he pulled us aside and he said, you know what? Like, I used to think that way with all of my products, you know, he was making sauerkrauts and all these amazing like vegetarian options at his restaurant.
And he said, it's never going to be perfect. You're always going to be working and striving and making your product better. You just have to put it out there and see how people respond. Plus, I'm out of kombucha here, so you better get it in here quick.
You have to fill the demand. Yeah, exactly. The demand that you created for you. Yeah, he really did create it.
And he was 100% behind our products and helping us grow. And at that point in time, we didn't have a kegerator there. It was our other walk-in fridge. And they had to ring the person up at the front, you know, take 30 seconds, walk into the walk-in fridge.
There was a keg attached to a CO2 tank with a pub spout, like at a party. They'd pour the glass, come back out and hand it to the customer. So now we have a kegerator there. We've come a long way, but that was our very first client and they've been supporting us ever since.
That's awesome. Could you touch a little bit more on the Kickstarter? I haven't heard much about that. What was that?
What was the plan going into the Kickstarter? Did you have any specific things that you're trying to address to make sure that your Kickstarter was successful? We were focused on connecting directly with friends and family and writing them personalized letters, really conveying like why we wanted to start this, what we were providing for the community. We wanted to initially jump in and do farmer's market and start bottling and using fresh juices.
And so that was the motivation there was to get the supplies necessary to get ourselves into farmer's market. And we were able to connect with a lot of wonderful people and people outside of our friend and family group that were able to donate and we were able to raise $10,000. Okay, so that was your essentially your seed money to go, okay, well, now we can actually make this a legit business operation. Right.
So you filed for a business license. What business license was that? It was just through the city. It was a San Luis Obispo city business license.
Yeah. What are you guys incorporated as an LLC LLC? Is there any particular reason why you incorporated as an LLC for essentially like a food and beverage company? You know, when we were doing it initially, we, to be honest, we didn't have a lot of information on why we should do that.
We had no idea. We were kind of at ground zero. So certified. Yeah.
And my two business partners, Molly Handler and Alex Rodney, they, we all kind of joined together and we were talking with other friends and other experienced business people and they recommended an LLC to us. The reason, the main reason that we were told to do that was if at some point we were to be sued, we would be protected by the shell of the LLC. Yeah. So that was the main motivation behind that.
Okay. That's perfect. So anybody who's starting a company protection matters a lot, especially for food and beverage because you're giving something that people are consuming, you know, it's not like an external product. So I think internal effects are a lot more.
There could be more repercussions. So protecting you guys is having, reducing that liability for you guys is a big benefit in the long run. Absolutely. I really like that.
So I want to go maybe into more detail about your initial starting. So where did you guys meet and what, what developed out of that relationship over time? Well, so Jake and I, we met through, do you want to know like how Jake and I started because the company's kind of changed since then. Well, bird kombucha is different than what we started as.
That's perfect actually. Cause I want to, I want to understand the pivot that occurred when Jake hopped on board. So give us a little bit of the story. Okay.
You had the Kickstarter, you had this guy that influenced you to say, Hey, you should put your product into our cafe. Then Jake came on board. What changed? Right, right.
Right. Yeah. So basically our two partners, one of them, Alex, he actually went left to pursue a real estate up in Marin County for his family's business. And so I was really looking for someone that was more business savvy.
Alex didn't necessarily have a business background, but he had his brother who had started a tech company in New York. And so we were kind of relying on him a lot for insight on those sorts of things. And that's how I met Jake. I met Jake through Alex because Alex was working for shopatron locally here in San Luis Obispo and got to know Jake really well.
And as Alex left, Jake came on board and started living with me. And we had like a crazy party one night and I got really fired up about Jake because of his background and his like strong desire just to start something. He had already started another company. We the music, right?
We the music. And so I couldn't think of like a more perfect fit. And so Jake came on board in October of 2013, shortly after we had already started selling. And he's been tremendous in providing all of our sales analytics and anything kind of technical business advice.
We kind of go to Jake and he helped us with our operating agreement and any contracts that we're writing up. Jake's kind of the go-to guy for drafting those sorts of things. And then he also has the sales experience. So there's actually a lot of overlap between Jake and I.
I don't have as much of the business experience, but we both have a sales background. I worked at Mindbody for two years and Jake worked at Shopatron for about the same amount of time or a little bit longer, actually than that, a little bit longer. So it sounds like you got drunk one night, but then you realized the main drunk that Jake was the asset that you needed for your team. He was going to offer value that you were unable to find somewhere else.
So with that, Jake, could you possibly give us maybe some of your background? I know it's a little bit unique. Yeah. Yeah.
I actually, as I was telling you earlier, I, I grew up in Kazakhstan from 92 until 2000. I was living there, moved back with my family to California and started did junior high and high school here. And that was kind of a culture shock for me, um, as a, you know, as a little kid and coming from that environment from one to the other, not understanding the slang or culture of the middle of California. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and uh, but yeah, grew up, grew up then in the central coast for the second part of my childhood and decided to go to college down in LA, uh, Souza Pacific university. Um, after my undergrad, I immediately went into an accelerated MBA program, uh, where I learned a ton and got actually a lot of international study abroad experience too, which was invaluable, All right.
So I didn't, I was quitting actually. I don't know if you remember that. I was going to quit and I was going to work James, our friend James, who manages Bliss Cafe, he's going to give me a job working part-time just while I could focus on kombucha. And my, my manager, amazing guy, Shadi, he, he offered me part-time there.
And so I could, Did he know what you were doing at the time? He knew what I was doing. Yeah. He knew what I was doing.
And he was 100% behind it. And he told me, I told him, I was like, well, okay, I'll work part-time, but I want to be able to come in kind of when I want and have a really flexible schedule. He's like, done. So I was doing roughly three days a week, six hours every time that I came in and I could roll in whenever I needed.
So that really allowed Jake and I to get a lot of work done in our evenings and I could come in later in the day and sleep in if I needed to. Yeah, I phrased that as our money, rent and ramen money. Yeah, that's what that is. And then Jake...
Yeah, so Mike, Mike managed to finagle that situation. And I thought, man, that is so cool. And I was, I was itching to, you know, be committed full-time to what we were sort of building here. The business at this point in time was very small and we had very aggressive sales goals that in hindsight were kind of hilarious.
What were some of those goals? I always love the pie in the sky, sort of reaching for something beyond what you could actually do. Well, we, our idea initially was that with 10 servicing 10 locations, we'd be able to, we'd be able to financially support both of us quitting our jobs full-time, which in hindsight was all our, all of our kind of adjustments for the overhead and, and the amount per client and contribution, all that kind of stuff, were way off and that was not realistic at all. So...
The numbers never lie. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, that was kind of the learning experience. But as, as I was saying before, I was, I was itching to kind of get into it too.
So I also put my two weeks in full from my full-time job at Shopatron. They were, people were really surprised because I just moved to a marketing analyst position. Oh, you were like promoted? Essentially, yeah.
Which was more of a lateral move, but, but yeah, basically. Maybe better position overall compared to what you were doing. It was a much better job. You know, it was more money.
I guess it was a promotion and it was surprising because it was basically just a month after that. And I said, Hey, I'm quitting. And my manager was not happy. She's a wonderful, a wonderful girl who was actually planning on going on maternity leave because she was pregnant and was putting a lot of a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders right when I told her I was leaving.
Oh, thanks, Amy. We can pile it up on him. Exactly. Yeah, it was uh...
I got a kombucha company piece. Yeah. She was not happy, but it ended up, you know, working out in the long run. Um, when I was about a week and a half into my last two weeks, our VP of marketing called me into her office and said, Hey, we really want you to stay.
What's it gonna take? And she said, do you want more money? Do you want a better title? Like you name it.
And because of the Mike's experience, um, I said, You know, you don't have to pay me more. Just let me work part-time and come in whenever I want and I'll do it. And they said, Okay. And so then me and Mike both were working part-time at these companies, able to support ourselves while uh using the rest of our time to do kombucha.
So that was invaluable because both of us, especially due to our projections, not being on, we would have had to get um, had to get other jobs and that would have really slowed down the progress that we could have made. So we're incredibly thankful for, you know, the managers that we worked with. Everyone was so cool and supportive. And, you know, even the companies that we worked for allowing us to do that.
It was incredible experience. So we really owe a lot to that, honestly. That's great. So let's say a listener is maybe in a similar position.
They've got a company and it's got a little bit of traction. Something's happening there. What should they say to their boss in order to get out of where they are, but possibly still have that rent and ramen money in the background? I think what's most important is, first of all, you have to be coming from a place where you're doing really well in your job and that you're contributing something that's valuable to that company because they're, to their a business.
They're not in it for, you know, necessarily supporting your entrepreneurial uh ventures, even though those people as individuals might be supporting you. So um both me and Mike, Mike was doing incredibly well in sales and mind body and I'd obviously just got moved to an awesome position that I was happy about. Um and I really enjoyed the work despite wanting to move on to doing my own thing. And so the conversation for both of us really revolved around, Hey, we can make a contribution to this larger business and still be valuable employees in this capacity.
And this is what we're willing to like trade. As opposed to the conversation being, I really need this because I'm trying to start this. So um we were still in that time that we were working part-time. We were making very valuable contributions to those other businesses and um you know, we managed to do more with less.
And that really was what the conversation revolved around, not necessarily like us needing this as people. Awesome. What's your mic's match? Yeah.
Yeah, the other thing too, that's also, that's really important, but you also have to be willing to lose the job. So you have to be willing to have the balls to say, you know, I don't want to work here. I'm not gonna say I don't want to work anymore. I like working here, hopefully.
Um, but you know, I'm off to other things that I'm truly passionate about. Um, and I'm sure, I'm sure the listeners out there, they know somebody else that owns a coffee shop. You know, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you got to be social and you got to know all these other people. Um, and any, and so you have to put yourself out there and I'm sure that you can find that part-time work that you're looking for.
So willing to lose that, that great job to work that part-time to make the money just to get enough to get by until your business can really kick in. That's awesome. So you guys both leave your jobs, technically like I mean, you guys got one foot in each door. What were you guys at during that point?
So were you working from home, working out of a garage? And then lead me up until you guys get into this facility that we're actually in right now. Sure. So I quit in, I quit February 25th, um, 2015.
Yeah. Um, and at that point in time, we were, we were working at a commissary kitchen when I was fully out during the part-time work. Great. So when we were part-time, um, we were still working out of our garage.
Um, and it wasn't until Jake, what, what was the exact time that we moved into the commissary kitchen? Do you remember that? Into the commissary kitchen. Oh, that's right.
That's right. So we were working at Moses kitchen when Jake and I were part-time. And it was this amazing man, this Egyptian man, Moses Ben Salim, he runs Baba's Foods. Um, and they do pita chips and hummus and all sorts of cool stuff.
And he was renting us maybe just a little space for a rack to fit in. Um, and then we could use his burners for essentially boiling water, heating water, steeping tea, melting sugar. Um, and then it wasn't until, uh, the date that we moved in here was, what was that again? February, 2014, that we moved into this warehouse unit.
Uh, it was just warehouse unit one, just off of South Hagar Street. Um, and it was bare bones. It was 800. It's 800 square feet.
Um, and the electrical wasn't properly run. Originally it was meant for a motorcycle repair shop. That was the previous renter. Um, and uh our, our partner at the time, Molly Hemler, her dad, electrician, plumber, just handyman extraordinaire.
He came in and totally transformed this place. Um, ran new water lines. Um, he moved all the, like installed new electrical boxes for every, all of our uh thermostats that we'd be running for temperature control. Uh, he painted everything.
We laid in uh new uh floors so we could easily mop and sweep. Um, and that was over a process of a couple of months. But uh that was Bill Hemler and he stayed here for roughly a month living out of a hotel room and just coming here day to day. We'd feed him.
We'd get the supplies that he needed and then he just went to work and a huge blessing for us. That's incredible. So I want to maybe touch on how did you guys decide your layout for this place? Because I'd imagine you had to figure out some sort of efficiency in selecting that layout.
The I mean, the layout, we ultimate taste test. I think that's a big value for a startup to use, that you should like the product as well, and somewhat be married to it, and if you like it and it works well, it likely will work well for multiple people. So I want to talk a little bit about what's your biggest failure with the flavor. Which one were you crashed and burned?
Probably be the coffee kombucha. You want to talk about that? Sure, yeah. Yeah, coffee kombucha.
We actually just made a batch show for Coastal Peaks, their coffee company just across the street from us, and we tried to recreate it again this time around, and so it's very clear in my mind why we weren't able to get it to work, and it has something to do with, and other kombucha companies out there, they're doing it, and I think they're doing it better than we are, so we haven't figured it out. But I think it's the combination of coffee and carbonation, is the bottom line that it creates this off-flavor acidity. There's something about coffee that it just feels like it should not be carbonated. And we're still going to be toying around with it.
The original flavor was just straight coffee grounds that we let sit in the fermenting kombucha. We actually used to flavor our kombucha at the beginning of fermentation. We've changed that now because we realized that kombucha culture prefers very basic things, black tea, green teas, to make the bacteria and yeast at their optimal performance, essentially. So we used to do that and we would sell it to, of course, our coffee shop in Bliss Cafe, and some people loved it.
They loved the coffee flavor. And then we had other people that would just turn and run. Like, I came all the way down here to get my kombucha, and it's just coffee kombucha. So I think that if we add some other unique things to it and maybe mess around with some gas blends, maybe lay off the CO2 and go with maybe a nitrogen, potentially, it could balance the flavors a little bit better and that might be something that we do in the future.
But we have a ton of amazing flavors that are in the pipeline right now that we would rather pursue than that. If at first you fail, try, try, and try again. That's what it sounds like. Absolutely.
What about any other flavors? What's your bestseller? Our bestseller right now is our Jasmine Bliss. Why is it that you think that's the best seller?
Is it because of the brand name that's with it, or is it the most palatable? What is the consumer maybe... I'll give you my input and then we can pass the phone to different guys. Jake, I think it's the bestseller because it's, I think it's one of the smoother flavors, and it's one of the more well-balanced flavors.
It's got notes to it that people recognize immediately. Like people like fruit, you know, maybe like something a little flowery in there, too, like on their tongue. Like, you know, hibiscus is a very popular tea. So in it is jasmine green tea, hibiscus, rose hips, currants, and raisin.
So there's a lot of, it's very fruit-forward. It's very floral. So it's not going to be necessarily as intense as like our ginger sarsaparilla, or we have some other unique flavors like our cava kombucha, which is a little bit more earthy. It's just, it's very straightforward, very clean finish.
It's very nice, very crisp on a nice hot day. And yeah, I think that's the reasoning behind it, so. All right, what about you? I think Jasmine Bliss is our bestseller for a number of reasons.
Number one, compared to our other kombuchas, it's a really vibrant red color, which is cool. So people look at that and they say, what is that stuff? And then when they try it, like as Mike was saying, it's a flavor that people are familiar with, who aren't necessarily familiar with kombucha. So someone comes up to our booth at farmer's market and they say, what is this kombucha stuff?
You know, what do we got here? And we give them the explanation and talk about fermentation of teas and probiotics and microorganisms and all that type of thing. Sometimes they're a little scared, and I don't know. I always pour them a sample of the Jasmine Bliss, and then I watch their face when they drink it.
And you can tell immediately that they are pleasantly surprised that it's not something completely disgusting. And I think the reason for that is because it's that flavor profile, the black currants, raisins, hibiscus, rose hips. It's something that people are used to drinking, like in a beverage, something that's sparkly, has that fruit taste to it, and then it has that sour taste to it too, that maybe they weren't expecting, but it fits nicely with it. Whereas compared to some of our other flavors, you know, with ginger and a sarsaparilla, that's a little bit more of a, you know, that's something that's a little more extreme for some people who are used to drinking sodas.
They're used to drinking, you know, iced teas or maybe just coffee or anything like that. What's the sugar content difference possibly between a kombucha versus like a Pepsi? I don't know. It'd be like a quarter of what's in it.
It's substantially less than soda. It does have sugar in it, of course, you know, that's the basis of the fermentation. But yeah, it's much less and you're getting, you're getting something that, you know, makes you feel a lot different after you drink it than it does a soda, even though it has that same, you know, fizzy carbonation and the, and the, you know, the nice coldness of a beverage. So, but yeah, that's why I think Jasmine Bliss is our bestseller, although, you know, all our flavors really do very, very well.
So, and that's, that's kind of, kind of the goal is to have flavors that are even keel and palatable. So awesome. So the next two subjects I want to go into is a little bit about marketing and you guys' branding. I know you guys changed your name.
In addition to that, I want to talk about how you guys set up your distribution because you guys are all primarily on tap. You guys don't bottle anything. Just on top, yeah. So I think that's, that's a very unique thing that a company can do.
Like, oh, well, we create a beverage company, let's bottle it. You don't always have to go that avenue. There's other avenues and you guys might've found a space within that. So let's first talk about the whole entire branding side, because I know you guys changed your name from Complete Kombucha to Wilburd.
Very different branding association. You know, complete is wholesome. It's healthy. Wilburd Kombucha, kind of generic, a little bit different.
So what was the decision process in doing that? Yeah, the conversation actually started fall of 2014 and one of our friends who worked in the wine industry, uh, he suggested to us, you know, he looked at our logo and we had been hanging out with him and he said, you know, you guys should think about changing your logo. And we were like, uh, no, like, like, come on, you know, uh, what's, what's wrong with you? And, uh, but really when we, we started thinking about it more and more, started entertaining the conversation and he was right.
Um, the complete logo that we had, it was good and it's beautiful. It has sort of like these vector lines that create a water drop in some circular formation. Um, and on the top handle looked nice. Um, but, uh, it wasn't very distinctive.
What we can realize is that it blended into all the other kombucha companies when it was marketed next to them, our poster next to theirs. Um, if you notice a lot of kombucha marketing, especially back in the earlier days, you know, earlier than 2014, the marketing was very much, uh, Eastern religious iconography, sacred geometry, um, psychedelic type of imagery, the very, the hippie, the yogi, that type of thing. And while that was great and those are the people that were drinking the kombucha and many of those people are our friends as well. That's our scene.
Um, it, uh, it sort of alienates people who, you know, otherwise wouldn't put themselves in that category. And our brand blended in perfectly with those. It just fit in with one of those. So we decided that we wanted to take a, um, take a tip from some of our favorite beer breweries, like, you know, delirium brewery, Belgium, or, uh, even like yellow tail wine.
And we wanted to use an animal to represent, uh, our brand. And you know, we thought on the tap handle, that's going to be something that stands out. I love animals. Mike loves animals.
Who doesn't love animals? They're recognizable and it's a anthropomorphic symbol that can represent a brand in a really powerful way. So we just lined up a million different animals and whittled them down one by one. And this really interesting, uh, drawing of a flying whale actually captivated us in such a way that over time it became just obvious that that was what needed to represent us.
Um, you know, whale, there's whales in the Central Coast. Um, they're sort of a symbol of this area and pairing it with wings. Um, it's something quirky, two things that don't really necessarily go together in real life, uh, together on the symbol. Uh, same as kombucha, you know, it's bacteria and yeast.
It's working together to make something that, um, you know, it's a little quirky, a little strange, but since we You get the keg back, you clean it and originally it was selling farmers market in glass bottles and we realized there was a tremendous amount of work involved in the bottling process, not to mention also the labeling on the bottles takes longer than actually putting the kombucha in the bottle. So we didn't want to spend eight hours a day bottling and so Jeremy showed us these kegs and how to keep them well maintained. And so we started moving forward with those kegs. And since then we have only been selling kegs and we self distribute all of our kegs.
Originally it was that we were providing kegerators to people. And so Jake and I, we would go find a particular prospect, talk to them about the kombucha, like, all right, yeah, we're into it. We would then buy all the materials. We would go to Costco, we would buy a mini fridge and then we would go online.
We're using Adventures in Homebrewing, which is a normal retail website. And we would buy, you know, your tap tower, the lines, all the disconnects for all the kegs, CO2 cylinders, everything that we would need to build this kegerator. And then we would go to town on building these kegerators, provide it to the client. And that's kind of how it started was providing kegerators.
We soon realized that that's a lot of work doing all that. So we started searching out, once we kind of got a stronger foothold on the market and understanding of where kombucha would do well, which we determined were cafe style restaurants. Of course, we're a coffee shop, Bliss Cafe. They're two of our best clients for that very reason, just because of the kind of people they attract, people come into the work there.
And so we start looking for other places like that that had a tap system already set up. And so now our goal is we want to really focus on making the kombucha. You know, we make kombucha. We're not a kegerator company.
So that's kind of where we are now. And we've been really fortunate to find a tremendous group of different retailers that are highly interested in and they happen to have tap systems. So I've been very fortunate with that. So it's really interesting that you guys were able to find a specific market for your product.
I would imagine most people traditionally, I'm a soda beverage company, we got a bottle or we got to put in a can. But there's a lot of costs and a lot of branding and all that stuff that goes along with creating that kind of stuff. You said, well, it sounds like mid-sized coffee shops or that attract a certain type of person are the best clientele. Was that because you just went and spoke to them or you ended up just putting your product in there and it started working?
Which one was the best? Yeah, it was looking at the numbers, looking at our sales tracking that Jake built us, the analytics of how many kegs were going through per month. Recently, though, we've actually moved. We've taken the company in a new step that's super exciting in that we've started working with larger grocery stores, high-end grocery stores.
So Whole Foods, Lassen's Market and California Fresh are all carrying our product now. And while you would think it's kind of not the environment, a grocery store for a tap system, those places do incredibly well. And partially because of our really robust growler program. So people fill up growlers there, 32-ounce bottles there.
Again, as Mike was saying, they're sustainable, they're reusable. You keep these growlers and you bring them back to the grocery store. And while you're picking up all your groceries for the week, you get your growler filled with kombucha. And so for a lot of people in the community, that's become like a stop for them.
They go to the grocery store, they're picking up whatever, and they get their kombucha. So it doesn't have to just be the type of thing that you sit down at a coffee shop and you're doing some work at and get it. You can take it home in a growler. And that's actually been hugely successful at those places.
So as we grow, we're discovering that there's a lot of different places that kombucha can fit in. Grocery stores are huge. Coffee shops are huge. Anywhere that has a restaurant with a serious lunch crowd or people that want to sit down and enjoy a glass of kombucha, that is the spot for it.
So do you believe that the environment is changing, that people are more into self-serve? Because I know Whole Foods, you have it completely out in the open. So I can walk up, grab a cup, fill it up, go pay for it. Yeah, you know, that's that's interesting.
Self-serve is becoming more and more popular. In fact, we sell our kombucha at a place downtown San Luis Obispo called Blast 825. If you've ever been there, they actually have a really cool system where they have 40 beers on tap, some wines and kombucha. And for all their taps, you go in there and they give you an RFID chip that you put on a little bracelet and then you hold it up to the taps and it unlocks it and you pour.
And then when you're done, they just charge you per ounce and everything's tracked. So, yeah, self-serve in places like that or places like Whole Foods, it is becoming more popular and it allows people to get accustomed to taps. There is a little bit of a learning curve, you know, if you can hold the bottle wrong and you can spill kombucha around. I'm sure there's some loss that occurs in that.
There is, there is. And, you know, for the retailers, though, that's OK, because the customer experience is great. The novelty that probably outweighs the loss in a small amount of product. And, you know, for the customers, they probably feel like, you know, the first time I remember, you know, pulling on a tap and stuff, it feels like there's just this magical elixir coming out of the somewhere, you know, you don't really see.
But that's something everybody gets to do. Yes. A bartender pulls a tap. Not your everyday person pulls a tap.
Yeah. So there's some sort of maybe exclusive. I'm doing this myself. It makes you feel special.
Of course. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
And I love the concept. I feel like I go to the grocery store and I bring my reusable bags, but I also bring my reusable growler. Yeah. You're tying well into that entire market as well.
That's awesome. So we talked a little about future plans. So you guys are planning on different flavors in the coming future. I know we talked a little about this before we began, maybe selecting a certain vertical, similar to maybe energy drinks or something like that.
What kind of details can you guys share about that? You know, we're going to have some new flavors on the way. We're going to have some things that are exciting, some new ways that you can drink kombucha. We don't necessarily want to spill the beans yet on all the stuff that we're going to have, but we do have another exciting flavor that's coming this summer that we're really, we're really excited for and that we managed to pilot last summer and it worked extraordinarily well.
We figured out how to brew it in a really successful way. And beyond, beyond those new flavors, for anyone that potentially wants to try some experiments that we'll have in the future, coming to our tap room Mondays and Wednesdays from 4 to 7:30 is the best place. Sometimes we'll have, you know, some stuff that we're just trying out on tap for people. But our other plans for the future, really, we are focused on being a wholesale brewery.
And that's what we want to do. We want to distribute our kombucha all around California. And that's kind of our first, our first big goal. And our kind of our, our midterm goal for the end of the year is to, you know, we can't necessarily be driving a kombucha around in a truck, you know, up and down the coast every day.
It's like fun though. Yeah, it could be a lot of podcasts. But we want to be working with a distributor and someone who, you know, that's their focus and they care about that. And they're, they're putting, you know, all the ambition that we're putting in this business, they're putting in their business of distributing products.
And they do extremely well. So we want to use them and some distribution company to kind of unlock these geographical areas that are outside of our reach for now. So, you know, that means LA, San Francisco, San Diego, and even farther. So, you know, that's, that's kind of what we have our eye on for the future for us towards the end of this year.
Yeah. Are there similar brands like yours popping up in these metropolitan areas? Yeah, we have some, we have some close competitors. In the San Luis Obispo area, in the Central Coast, we are fortunate enough to be the only manufactured kombucha.
But there are some close by. Most of the other brands, there are a lot of big brands based in LA, but their focus is on bottling. So, you know, you can find synergy, you can find healthy and you can find a lot of our other competitive brands in bottles here in SLO. But as far as on tap, that's really where we differentiate ourselves.
And we, there is a lot of, a lot of opening and a lot of space for us to move into a lot of different areas in California and beyond on tap. So while we may in the distant future end up bottling our kombucha for now, focusing on tap has been just extremely exciting and allowed us to get into places we might not have been able to. So, yeah, it Talk about your guys' marketing as a whole. So are you guys on social?
Are you guys on doing advertisements? Where do you guys feel like your best platform is for marketing to your users? You know, we focus primarily on Instagram, actually. We do Instagram and Facebook.
We've been incredibly fortunate, though, that especially the whole time we were complete kombucha, we didn't focus on marketing at all. There was no focus whatsoever. And the reason was even now, at this point in time in our business, we're able to sell every drop of kombucha that we make. We never have a backstock.
So marketing for us has always sort of been an afterthought, but we're starting to become more involved in it, mostly because it's really fun making posts and engaging with our customers. The most recent sort of little marketing stunt that we did that was really fun was on April Fool's Day. We made a post and a video announcing to the world that we were doing drone-to-home deliveries of kombucha growlers. I watched the video.
Yeah. And, you know, we had actually a fair amount of people who believed it, which, you know, is really inspiring because it means that they would look at us and think, these guys could manage to figure out how to do drone-to-home delivery, even if, you know, Amazon or something couldn't do it. So while that's totally false and we do not have that capability, it was a really fun experience and a way to really connect to our customers. And for anybody that did ask us or want to be part of the program and get a drone home delivery, we gave them a free growler.
So, you know, we love doing that kind of thing and connecting with people. And so, yeah, marketing has been more fun and games than anything else for this business thus far. And so, you know, when you look at our marketing material, that's what you're going to see. And we're fortunate that we really can rely on it in that way or that we don't rely on it in that way.
So we can just have it be fun. And that's given our company a really cool voice and we can honestly just say the things that we want to and have fun with it. So that's what's important in our minds. I love that.
And I feel like, I like what you did with the virality sort of with, you know, we have drone-to-home delivery of kombucha. That creates virality for your brand. So, you know, X friend tags X friend in this post. You're driving way more traffic to your Instagram account and people in the center goes, hey, what's going on?
What's this? Then also you guys talked a little bit about quality content. So you guys are sharing experiences mainly on your Instagram account. It sounds like you're always just sharing, hey, here's the product.
You know, check out a product and buy it. It's more about the fun things like creating an experience by delivering via drone. You know, yeah, we do do that. And sometimes it is a challenge.
We have clients that, you know, that want us to showcase certain things on Instagram. And we want to as well. We want to let people know where they can buy it. Most recently, actually, Lassen's market that just opened up on Foothill.
They were doing they're doing a sale on our kombucha and selling for a great price. And so we wanted to be able to showcase that. So the post that we'd make on Instagram for something like that is, you know, it would be it would have been really easy for us to just show a, you know, a picture of their poster or something or make some sort of announcement. But that kind of thing's boring.
So we all went there, me, the three of us, me, Mike, and then Lee, our third partner, who is not here. And we, you know, held balloons and made funny faces in front of the thing and took a cool picture. And and that's the kind of thing that people really like to see on Instagram is, is us having a good time, you know, making great kombucha and just, you know, not taking ourselves too seriously. So very lighthearted, very human, very, very lighthearted.
And so, you know, we, we try to find creative ways on posts to highlight our customers and, and sort of the the details that are, you know, more like businessy in a way that's fun and light. So that's awesome. And I saw the poster where you guys got in Lassen's and I was like, you guys like next to a sign, like, what's up? Like, we're here.
This is cool. You know, you guys are present there. You're not absent from that. And that means a lot to the end consumer that, Hey, these guys are actually involved in being part of the community.
Yeah. And you know, that's, that's an ongoing conversation as we grow. We're not sure how scalable it will be for people to really like know who we are personally, who are making the kombucha and that type of thing. But we definitely want to try.
We want to try to make that scalable. We want to try. People want to see who are the guys that are making this kombucha guys or gals and who, you know, who's involved in this and what kind of lives do they live and, you know, are they having a good time or are they just, you know, working in some sort of sweatshop, like pumping out kombucha. So, you know, when we can show them like, Hey, these are real people in the community that are doing something like that really means something to a lot of people.
And we have a lot of customers that that resonates with them for that reason. So I believe that is really a market trend that's happening with a lot of millennials that they don't want to buy products that are the big brand. They want to buy products that have some sort of backstory to them or have some sort of significance to them. They're human really.
Yeah. They want to, I mean, people want to know that, you know, their friends are ones who have started a business or that they could do the same thing. And, you know, it could inspire them to, you know, be like, I want to make something and offer it to the community. It's, it's, it has more of almost a sharing vibe than like a business vibe, really, which is, which is important.
And obviously, you know, we're, we are a business, we're selling our kombucha, but the more it feels like we are just contributing something to the community, the better, because that's, that's what we want. So excellent. So you touch on a point there that I had as a question at the beginning of this interview and didn't ask it, but turning your passions into profits. So you guys are passionate about kombucha.
Maybe you could talk a little bit about turning your passion into a profit. Uh, yeah, you know, actually, um, the first kombucha I ever tasted was some that my kid given me. So I had no idea what it was before. But as we were talking about, you know, our story beforehand, um, I was passionate about entrepreneurship and passionate about adding value.
So something to me that's always been important is I want to add value in a way, like I want the product or the things that I create to be an offering to the community at large. That's going to be something that's valuable, not necessarily taking value or not just moving value from one hand to the other, but rather like actually enhancing the overall wealth of like the community or something. So what we've created now exists because we've put like the work into it and that we've created it. So, um, I can't claim that I was passionate about kombucha before starting it, but I sure am now.
And, um, and it's, uh, you know, it's, I really am invigorated with that passion when I see people uh taking something valuable away from like from us and, and uh trying the kombucha and seeing them love it and seeing them drink it around town. And, you know, that, that lets me know that, you know, we're doing something that's worthwhile here. So, um, you know, I think Mike uh Mike started drinking kombucha in college because he thought it would make him a better surfer and uh it didn't, it didn't still not that great. Uh, but, uh, you know, um, even even that, like that's a, you know, he's figured out a way to add value, you know, maybe not with being the greatest surfer in the world, but making kombucha.
So there you go. All right. I want to sort of wrap this up with a handful of rapid fire questions for both of you guys. First one is what is your favorite documentary?
Slumdog. Jiro dreams of sushi. Why? That's an interesting one.
Uh, it's, it's about pursuing your passion. It's about, um, well, actually it's not even necessarily about pursuing your passion. It's about doing something every day consistently for years. It's about mastery.
And that's something that I knew very little about growing up very fortunate in an affluent area when you get things just handed to you. So yeah, again, I guess that's what drew me to it was that you don't have to be good at something at all. You don't even have to be naturally talented. You just start something and continue doing it.
And if, as long as you're not looking back and you're always looking forward, next thing you know, you might be good at something. Awesome. I've got two other questions for you guys. So the first one is what book would you recommend to somebody who is running a startup or what is your favorite book?
You can answer either one of those. And then I want you to talk about you know, be open to new ideas and open to other very experienced people in your community. I've often heard that good entrepreneurs are good listeners. They're not always the person who knows it all.
They're willing to listen to other people and get educated about what their experience is so they don't have to have the same pitfalls in their experience as an entrepreneur. Absolutely. Awesome. What about you, Jake?
Yeah, mirroring what Mike said, mentors have been insanely important to us. You know, Chris Waterbury, as you mentioned, Jeremy from Bang the Drum, Molly's dad, who built all our stuff. And we've gotten advice and help from so many people. And what I would recommend from mentorship is we haven't really had one person necessarily that's, you know, this is the mentor or somebody that we go to for everything.
Yeah, it's exactly like the, you know, exactly we said when you need help, you go to someone who knows that specific thing. So we're fortunate enough to have people who have really, like, invested in us in various different things that we can learn from and in categories of knowledge and we use them heavily. And me and Mike are both the type of person, thankfully, who when we don't know something, we're very comfortable asking someone. And so, and that's a really important quality, I think, because, yeah, we don't know it all.
In fact, we don't really know much of anything. You know, we get our flavor ideas from a lot of other people and we've learned how to do our stuff and we're kind of just an amalgam of all the knowledge that we've learned from dozens of people. So, you know, anyone can really get, do this, basically, you know, hard work and dedication and get help from other people and ask them. So, you know, I can't necessarily name a singular mentor, say, yeah, have this person for your whole life that's gonna, you know, do this and that.
Get help from other people, absolutely, and get help from a lot of other people and get a lot of opinions. And, you know, the more people you have that are willing to give you that and invest in that, that's when you know you're on the right path because people are caring about what you're doing. And if they're willing to share that with you, then you really have something special. Yeah, value the time and value the attention that they're actually giving to you as a whole.
Yeah. Well, I'd like to thank both of you guys for taking the time to meet with Cult of Startup today. Yeah, thank you. Awesome opportunity.
Thank you. To your facility and to try some new kombucha. I just tried the green tea one. It tastes amazing.
One last question is, where could people get in contact with you guys? Yeah, come to our brewery. We're at 3576 Impleo Street. We're in Suite 1.
That's in San Luis Obispo, California, 93401. And we have open office hours Mondays and Wednesdays from 4 to 7:30 p.m. We also have some contact information on our website, just www.wilberkombucha.com and Facebook forward slash Wilber Kombucha. We're also at Farmer's Market on Thursday nights.
That's the Slow Downtown one from 6 to 9. Yeah, send us a message if you're not local and have questions for us. We'd love to hear from you. You guys are on Instagram as well.
Is that? Well, yeah, we're also on Instagram at Wilber Kombucha. Awesome. Awesome.
So listeners, send a message to them anytime. Well, thank you all for tuning in today. As always, you live. There you have it, folks.
That was Mike and Jake from Wilber Kombucha. If you like the show, please subscribe and leave a comment in the review section of the podcast. Also, feel free to reach out to me anytime on Instagram, Snapchat or Twitter. I'm at the handle of Cult of Startup for all of those three platforms.
Until next time, take care.