The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

Hello, I'm Kimberly king, and welcome to the mother's Market radio show, the show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, so many trends in the healthy whole foods these days, and another thing that has people talking is kombucha, ever tried it? You may never have even heard of it. But that's beginning to change. Listen, close and learn all about the benefits of drinking kombucha plus later will tell you all about what's new... Its mother's market and what's going on around town.

But first up, Dynatrace is the CEO and the co-founder of Healthy kombucha. Diana, her husband, Justin and best friend Vanessa do, started healthy kombucha in 2012 with the tiny credit card and a big dream that started in their small apartment kitchen, and since day one of hustling around the clock and selling in the LA farmers markets, they have dedicated themselves to making the best tasting and highest quality humbug and pioneering the scaling of this very natural process without succumbing to market pressures or compromised quality, and we welcome her to the mother's market radio show.

How are you doing, Don?

I'm doing phenomenally. Thank you. How are you?

I'm doing well, thank you.

So why don't you fill our audience a little bit on your mission and your work before we get to today's show topic... Sure, so before long before the farmer's markets, I was making kombucha, I learned how to make him borja in nutrition school, so my background is in nutrition, and I fell in love with fermented foods and develop my recipe on kombucha back in grad school in Boston, and I just in general, honed in on my philosophy about food, which is that real holistic food is best, and that healthy has a lot more to do with being happy, or at least has a lot to do with being happy, and it's not just about the science.

And so that's where I fell in love with fermented foods, and I very much developed that recipe along the way, and when we decided to start our own business, it was natural for me to wanna create the most real communion. So that's what we set out to do, and I love that. So thank you for sharing what is Comber to and how would you describe it to someone who's never had it before?

Sure, and there are a lot of people that haven't had it before, although it's been around for thousands of years, so kombucha is a fermented tea and it's naturally rich in probiotics and healthy acids, it's been used across countless cultures for a long time, as I mentioned, usually to promote health, it's naturally low and sugar low and caffeine, but it tastes good, and most importantly, people come back to it because it makes you feel good because of those natural probiotics and B-12, etcetera, etcetera.

So with the decline of sugar, carbonated soft drinks and people really looking for things that are gonna make them feel good, functional foods or at the top of the list, commuters go right along with that, so everything that is made up, it's great. It's a burst of good things in your system... Yeah, it's a very natural product. And it makes you feel good. Which is, I think what people are looking for now, when they go to the store, it's 2017. let's face it, we're busier than we've ever been, so we're not gonna get less busy, so we need something that's convenient and comes a little bit difficult to make... You have to ferment it, it takes a long time. So now companies have come out and they're doing that for you, and the commercial industry is actually growing to be one of the largest emerging markets right now, so it's already out passing coconut water in the beginning days, and you know coconut waters everywhere now, right? For the same reason, it made people feel good and it tastes good, and it was easy, easy to drink, so the way I look at commutes, it's similar to like a coconut water or cold press juice, it's another healthy addition to your diet that isn't gonna weigh you down, it makes you feel good.

So it kind of goes into this question, what do you attribute the recent rise in demand for kombucha, and that's what you were just saying, it's really... It's 2017 now, and everybody wants to be healthy.

Yeah, they wanna be healthier and just something easy that's not gonna wet them down, it's real food, so why should people drink commotion and the health benefits... Let's talk a little bit more, let's kinda dive into the health benefits insured, this is one of the difficulties with selling a food, it's not a supplement or a drug, so it hasn't been studied to see how it's impacting diabetes or cancer or something like that. So it really should be viewed as a food more than anything else, but because of its contents, probiotics, healthy acids, those are the things that are likely making you feel good, and there's a lot of strong evidence behind probiotics, as you probably know, impacting all aspects of health and organic acids as well, I think in general, probiotics have always been important, but our ancestors never had to really worry about that because they already fermented things, their pickles were real pickled cucumbers right now. We've sort of eliminated those natural probiotics from our diet by pastoring everything, the good news is we don't have a lot of food-born illness, but the bad news is we've now got to be a little more intentional about putting those probiotics and life enzymes back into our food, so yogurts, key for sources, real pickles, fermented vegetables, Abuja are now starting to become very popular because they're making people feel so good, it's not that people have needed it more now than before, I think it's just that we've depleted ourselves, so we need to bring it back and all the processed foods and making it a simple to drive through and grab something when it's fast, because it's 2017 and it's bartender, just like what you were seeing.

Actually, one really cool thing I think is fun to tell people when I was in grad school, I learned that there should be more in terms of the floor that lives in your gut, there's already bacteria e-enzyme that should be living in your gut... Right, that we have a very symbiotic relationship with them, there should be more in your gut than there are stars in the Milky Way, which is pretty crazy, if you think about how many stars there are in the Milky Way, and you're just one individual... Right, there's even more probiotics in your gut, then there are cells in your body. So I always say, Who's running?Hotta, right?

Yeah, so if we're constantly depleting those, it's not surprising that aspects of our health might be compromised, and so simply with food, with real food that's closer to the natural state that it was intended is gonna start making us feel better.

Right, and so maybe, yeah, one last trip to the Starbucks line, or sorry to put it out there, but... Right, they start starting to put the right foods in our systems.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so what makes a health aide unique? I would like for you to talk a little bit about your company health aid in the brewing process and that fermenting... I really want you to dive into that.

Yeah, so fermentation is an art.

Yeah, so it is very different than baking cookies, I can't just stay up all night and make as much commutes, heart desires, it's a really interesting long process that's humbling because you have... It very much tells you what it's doing, it's much more like farming carrots or something like that in the ground, and you do your best to cultivate the soil to make the best care. And what you get is what you get. So if you may compute to the real way, it's very much a dance, and because I believe in real food, and I mentioned my background about holistic nutrition, etcetera, etcetera, I had to make a computer that was made the old school way, so take me back for as well, 'cause I wanna know how you got... So we make it the same way we start it at, so I'll walk you through it, and the only thing is we've improved efficiencies in our bottling line and stuff like that, but the most important part of common... How you start with commutes for simple ingredients, sugar tea, water and a scope. The scope is the thing that takes the sugar tea and water, which is something you're probably very familiar with, the sweet tea into kombucha.

The scope is called a symbiotic culture of bacteria, is it is the culture that actually turns sweet teen to kombucha, similar to the culture that's using SAADA red key for yogurt, even old school beer back in the day when they would do open permits.

So it's nothing new to food, but it's not something you usually as a consumer would see, because it's not in your end product, you don't... Okay, I see what you're saying.

So this goby is like sort of like a plant that sits on top of the T, it eats the sugar, and in exchange infuses all of its goodies into the beverage, and in the end, because the sugar goes down and the asset goes up, you have something that tastes like what you're drinking there, it's a delicious slightly effervescent, slightly sweep and not really that sweet, slightly tart beverage, when you put the scope on top, you to ferment it. What fermentation Mees is basically sitting just in a heated room, and in that room, that's when all the magic happens that I mentioned, the sugar gets eaten, the acids go up, etcetera, etcetera.

So in that stage, the vessel you use is really important because it's a very active process, if I was to put a peach in at this stage, it would turn into a pit, it is eating everything in every... So we're one of the only commercial commuter companies that ferment in glass, and that one of the reasons I ferment in classes because it's the most inner vessel, if I'm gonna be using plastic, that's gonna be getting into the beverage.

So these are the types of things that we do that make us more expensive, but certainly make a better taste cohesion, certainly a higher quality competition to add also, you're drinking our chocolate reset and if you try your coil press line, everything we flavor with is coalesce. We press in-house, we buy from the local farmers markets as much as possible, so these are the kinds of things we do.

I don't hate in fermentation with any engineered probiotics, nothing comes from the outside, it is As you would make it at home, and there are pros and cons to that, the pros are all for the consumer, and the only con... Or is just dealing with the hassle? The reality that when it rains in LA, that changes somehow how the fermentation happens, so we gotta deal with that.

So it's a little bit difficult, more difficult for us as a company to sell a product like this, but we think our consumer cares about real food and the higher quality product, so that's why put out there.

Wow, okay, so from the point in time, when you begin this process, how long does this fermentation happen?

It depends on the flavor, because when we add cold press beads, for example, that's natural sugar to hasten the fermentation process, so anywhere between 14 and 21 days... Oh my goodness.

It's a long time, but yeah.

So it's not like they can... Cockatoo talked about the ingredients that go into it, so for instance, what you said, I am drinking is the chocolate flavor, this is your newest flavor... Yes, that's our news player. We're launching it today.

Oh, chocolate computer, by the way, he said When I first had a sip, I was like, Whoa, it pops, it really has an energy about it, and it's good. So thank you for it.

I feel honored.

Of course.

So in this particular bottle bottle, how many ingredients are in this or What can technically... Oh yeah, all of it.

No, I mean, I was just counting in my head and I'm not great at math, so... Give me a second there.

Six, and they... So sugar, tea water, if you remember in the fermentation process, the sugar almost goes down to zero, so there's almost no sugar, and that's a very... That's in every commute it was made with a scope, but that's now been taken out... Right, 'cause it's a onitsha S the fourth. And then in this particular one, we have COCA, which is the chocolate part, which is the chocolate, and then reaching mushrooms, and is that also in every bottle of it, this is a reach chocolate commute, so that one has rich chocolate, so if we eliminated those two and let's say you had our Pink Lady apples, Kombucha, the only thing we would add there is cold-pressed organic Pink Lady apples, so it's got as simple as you can make it, we don't add any additional sugar or nothing else.

Wow, so your other flavors... And I'm sure I'm getting ahead of myself.

Oh, that's okay.

We have 14 skus now, so instead of listing them, I'll just tell you my favorites... Okay, ginger lemon. It's amazing if you like ginger, it's got a shot of Cole presenter shadowcat press lemon juice pomegranate. We get our pomegranates from Danube California. Amazing farmer up there, poaceae, he makes farm puffin, oh my gosh, I make the best stone fruits you've ever had, and pomegranate have several trees out there with our company logo on them because nobody else can take those pomegranate.

That's true.

Omega, and it's definitely one of my favorites, Pink Lady apples, one of our most popular. And then rise chocolate is, I'm a big chocolate fan. So I was on, I was driving this flavor very much, I love it, which hence The Pink Lady that's your pink hair tetouan right now, I have an Aalto weeks ago, I had blue hair. So it's a thing for me, and that's the next flavor coming to overhear CT, I see how you were... Well, this is great information and don't go anywhere, we're gonna be right back with our Pink Lady Dina, stay with them.

And welcome back to the mother's market radio show. And we wanna remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download the show from our website, mother's market dot com, click the link for radio and listen to the past shows, plus download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com. And now back to our interview with Health Aid, CEO and Co-founder Dynatrace, and we're talking about kabuto. I didn't wanna say kombucha, it's come to an OAU background with the nutrition help, you get to where you are today, you know?

It's funny, when I was a nutrition school, I didn't really think this all out, I was really interested in... Always really interested in bringing real food to people of the masses in whatever way I could... The reason we started Health was more of a different reason, although now I've come back to my original passion of driving the real food movement.

The reason we started health it is the three of us, my best friend, my husband started this with me, the three of us really wanted to make a mark, and we didn't know exactly what business we wanted to start, it was... We started an entrepreneur club, we had no money, I mean like 600 bucks total. We would meet in our car and just come up with ideas, and we would sit on my Abuja while doing that, and we'd be like, cheese, what can we do?

Anyway, long story short, we ended up deciding to sell it in the farmer's markets, not really knowing where it could go, and that summer was just so crazy in the farmer's market, we were selling product like in an hour... I mean, 60 cases in an hour and we couldn't make enough, and eventually at the end of that year, maybe seven months, we all decided to quit our jobs, which were comfortable, secure jobs, and everybody was like to... To that crazy. But we decided to take the leap because it just felt right, and it's the reason our tagline is follow your gut, it's so much more than just Follow our gut to kombucha probiotic. It actually is more like a way of business for us, because the three of us started this, we didn't know where it would go, we're just following our intuition what we feel is right, driving this thing as fast as we come forward... Fast forward four years later, we're one of the fastest growing brands in the category, top performing in the nation, 6000 accounts in all states, that 80 employees.

Owen's a very humbling. I don't take enough time to stand back and look at what we've... But it's the most fulfilling part is for sure, the people, because they're just as passionate of the product I made in my kitchen four years ago that I am, and here we are talking, but they're over there, 30 of them just beaming and they believe in... Obviously, they believe all... Yeah, yeah.

And they believe in it, it's not even a job to them, so it's just really awesome, and it's not amazing, and all started with your passion.

And look at where you are today. And I love the fact that you say you're sitting in your car with 600, and that's really inspiring, so... Thank you. Sharing that, yeah. Oh yeah, there's all kinds of stories. We got evicted from our apartment, our apartment turned into a brewery. That's what you have to do.

Yeah, yeah, so you have to do... To start a business from scratch, it's true, and it's not always... It's not always those positive stories that are the fact that you're a risk taker and an at where you are today. So thank you for asinine that in. Congratulations, thank you.

Thank you.

And I love your tagline.

Oh, thank you.

What do you wish more people knew about real food and Why are you such an advocate behind this movement?

Okay, so here's where the nutrition part comes in, I think we all... We've all made food at home, and we know how that makes us feel, and then we've all gone out to eat a gladness meal or something that's maybe not as healthy, and we know how that makes us feel.

I feel like we deserve as things advanced technologically, I think they need to as well on the commercial shell, and we deserve Real Food on the commercial shelf. We don't have to make it at home. I think the new advancements that need to be made are as good as you can make it at home, it should be available on the shelf for you.

So for me, that's the movement I'm trying to drive, and we're not the only company in the country trying to drive this movement, there are real sour crowds, there are real people that produce produce eggs meets in a very natural way. Like you would want it to be made. And they're trying really hard to put it on the shelf and compete, but the reality is, for the past, at least in the past, this hasn't been as important, and so the ones usually already on the shelf in a lot of cases, are not caring about this real aspect of food as much, and they're just processing it in a way that makes it last longer on the shelf, so it's hard to compete for these newer companies 'cause they're usually more expensive, it always the case, and then they also usually don't last as long, but I think the consumer, at least with healthy, this is proving to be true. The consumer is okay with that, they don't mind that their product isn't gonna last 12 months on the show, they're okay with it lasting three months because they wanna eat it right away, and they're okay with paying an extra dollar for their sour crowd because they know it's the one that's made real, it makes them feel good.

So it's all about educating the consumer about things are made, and I'm out there a lot, speaking to consumers, telling them every dollar you have as a vote, if you start buying only real food, guess what, everybody's gonna start making real real food.

And so take the time to look at the products and compare, and I can tell you the products that are making it right are gonna be telling it every which way they can on their bottle, on their box, on their website, on radio, wherever they can, because it is a pain to make it like that, and that's what differentiates them, so you don't have to look that far out to it, you have to do some kind of investigation, you'll see that we make it in glass, it's on our bottle were the only ones that have it on our bottle, because I trust me, if you made it in class, you'd be putting it everywhere, 'cause that thing is... It's not easy to do in class, by the way, we do it in two and a half gallon jars, so they're really small, we have 150000 of them is... Yeah, anyway, so yeah, I'm gonna put that all over my label, right.

Yeah, so that's what's driving me is I just... I think we deserve it. As I mentioned, it's 2017. let's together get there as a population and start really realizing that with every dollar we have, it's a vote on that last line.

So when you say real food and going out, how can us as a consumer, how can we help move that movement forward, how can we help with what you buy every day and where... I mean, stores like Mother's markets and natural food stores, but even conventional stores now are realizing that... The growth is happening in this space. I think I read somewhere that the organic market is up 50-ish percent versus 3%. Owais already happening. That's great, but it's much more than just organic, it's also about, you know how the foods made... And as representing mother's market, I'm sure the buyers are feeling the same way, they're just looking to the consumer, what do you want consumer... That's what we'll put on our shelf, the people, I think especially younger people that are becoming more educated or saying loud and clear, they want real food, they want healthy food that makes them feel good, and that's organic. And so I think people are doing what they need to do... Right. Yeah, just keep doing it.

Yeah, we've spoken right.

Yeah.

Where do you see the real food movement going in the next few years?

I think it's going up Erie.

I think it's going up. I think there are gonna be a lot more substantial things happening in the universe of food besides just more of it coming on the shelf, I think there'll be legislative changes because a lot of legislation has been around to protect in the past, the issue of safety, and so we made a lot of laws around safety, which totally makes sense, you don't want your food to get you sick... No, but what we're realizing now, and probably our ancestors in their graves are laughing at us 'cause they're like, Yeah, we already knew this real food already has natural protectors in it in a lot of cases, so... There are a lot of instances where pasteurization makes sense, for sure, but then there are a lot of instances where it's not necessarily needed, and there are natural ways that you can create protection from food born on this.

So computes an example, it's naturally acidic, and acids are national preservative, that's actually why they rent things 'cause they didn't have bridges... No, yeah, right, right. So already, we had to prove in order to sell this in your store, we had to prove that it was as good a pastor as pastors at killing off those food-borne illnesses, and it is naturally... We don't have to pasteurized it.

So these kinds of legislations are starting to change because we're realizing as a public weight, let's challenge those laws, maybe they should only apply in certain categories, and so I'm really excited about those changes, and we certainly have people in Capital Hill, you're speaking on behalf of Real Food fermented foods, especially, because the whole point of a fermented food is you don't wanna pass arise it, you don't wanna kill those probiotics, that's what I... That's what... That's what doing... We're making a good freestyle.

Exactly.

In all of the work there.

So I'm excited for that.

Well, that's excellent. And good luck with that than... Do you have any tips or tricks to others out there that are growing their own compute... Sure, keep going.

I'll tell you the first few batches I made didn't quite work out, and you gotta find your own recipe, also the second point I would make is there's no right or wrong way to make it, it's all about the flavor you like, so if you think it's too sweet, let it ferment a little bit longer, if you think it's to integrate, let it ferment a little shorter, have fun with flavor and just have fun with it. Excellent.

Yeah, thank you so much for your time, dynamism. Great advice today, we appreciate your knowledge and... Yeah, sure. We look forward to having you on again, but in the mean time, get more information on Dina and the website is health aid... A-de dot com. We look forward to your next visit. Thank you, thank you so much.

Thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show, and for shopping at mother's market, the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.