With the sanctimoniousness of a perturbed monk, he decries competitors who have “bastardized” kombucha. These well-funded competitors are eating away at Dave’s first-mover advantage, putting him on his heels and prompting him to fire off defensive potshots. There are more than 350 kombucha makers in the world (most in the U.S.), and they’ve slurped up roughly $340 million in funding from venture capital, private equity and big conglomerates like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, which paid $260 million for GT’s biggest rival, Kevita, three years ago. His $3 to $4 bottles can be found at retailers like Walmart, Costco and Kroger. 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. The day we spoke, it was Fuyu persimmons.George Thomas Dave convinced America to love a tangy, tart, fermented beverage from Asia called kombucha-and it made him a billionaire. ![]() He starts with a blended cold-pressed juice (he likes the spicy greens) from his Juicero-a $700 juicer popular among the Silicon Valley set-before he piles in coco kefir (young, raw coconut water rich in probiotics), chia seeds, spirulina, raw bee pollen, a frozen banana, blueberries or raspberries if he has some, Plant Fusion pea protein powder, and, depending on the season, whatever fruit he can find at the market. This is just the beginning of the one-and-a-half-to-two gallons of fermented tea he drinks every day.Īfter his morning kombucha and meditation, GT Dave (Yes, this is his full name) makes a smoothie. “What I love about kombucha, when you consume it in the morning, is it kind of establishes a nice solid foundation for your stomach and gut and appetite for the rest of the day,” he says. ![]() But the 39-year-old Californian, who lives in Trousdale and grew up in Bel Air, is serious about GT’s Kombucha, the company that launched the probiotic beverage into the mainstream and made him a fortune. This might seem like an exercise in branding for the founder and CEO of the world’s most successful kombucha company. The first thing GT Dave does every day is drink kombucha.
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