Booch Organic Kombucha Uses Unusual and Innovative Ingredients

In her own words: The History of Booch.

Booch’s story is one of health, growth, community, and local love; it’s a story that came to fruition through a mission of healing.

It began when I was diagnosed with Celiac disease after graduating with a degree in Health Science from Western University. When I first tasted kombucha back in 2010, it was love at first sip! I then began brewing my own kombucha at home and shortly after started making 10L batches on my countertop. I quickly developed a love for this ancient elixir that originated in China over 2000 years ago. My love for kombucha, coupled with my passion for cultivating community, spreading knowledge, and acting in the stewardship of local organic food systems, led me to open Booch, which operates on eco-regenerative and sustainable business practices, purpose, and lots of love!

I sold out within the first two hours of my very first market day at the Covent Garden Market in London, Ontario, and I continued to sell out every single week for two straight years!! At this time, the kombucha industry was very new. Nobody knew what it was or how to pronounce it, so there was a big educational component. The demand was more than I could have ever expected, and overnight, a new kombucha craze was happening in London, Ontario. The demand was so strong that it pushed me to move from a 10×10 stall to a 1,000 sq foot space in just four months and to a 13,000 sq ft space just two years later.

After almost nine years of business, Booch is now one of the most recognizable brands in Ontario and is now retailed at almost 1000 locations across Canada, including Metro, Sobeys, Food Basics, Foodland, Farmboy, independents, cafes, breweries and universities. We have a strong team of 11 employees, including an operations manager, quality manager, VP of sales, executive VP, and a mighty production team. We have a fully functioning bottling and canning line, brite tanks, walk-in coolers and even a ‘jungle tap room’ that is open during the week for those who refill large 1L bottles of kombucha, draught-style!

As an entrepreneur, creativity is at my core. After owning and operating Booch for so long, I wanted to expand our product offerings. We now produce Moonbrew (a honey and green tea ferment) and sparkling water.

Our newest product, released just two months ago, is called Squeeze. Squeeze is a botanically-infused, circular-waste sparkling water brand that up-cycles herbs and adds real ingredients into the water without any extracts! When I first started experimenting with the flavours, I wanted to use an ingredient with a story- and one less commonly used in the RTD beverages on the market. Sea buckthorn was the chosen ingredient! It is high in Vit C and antioxidants and has the most beautiful, complex flavour profile of citrus and tang. Given that we already use sea buckthorn in our Citrus Twist kombucha, this was an easy flavour to begin experimenting with. When I added a touch of Ginger, the taste was perfect.

Booch began as a kombucha brand but has transformed into a manufacturer of healing organic beverages that are good for you and the planet. We continue to diversify our product offerings to stay competitive but are also leaders in terms of flavour creativity in the market.

With a love for the unusual and flavourful: Sea Buckthorn is the perfect ingredient.

I really enjoy using Sea buckthorn in our product because of the jampacked flavour profile. It originally started when I met a local farmer in London, ON, that had a surplus of seaberries, and so I bought them… all 1000 lbs of them!! I don’t know what I was thinking!! But the flavour these bright orange berries produce is like nothing else. And so, to this day, we continue to use sea buckthorn because the flavour packs such a strong punch and allows us to use less of the overall ingredient, simultaneously ensuring our COGS are kept consistent and even lower than compared to using other ingredients like oranges.

I first learned about the sea buckthorn plant on a permaculture farm tour back in 2016. Our friends at The New New Age grew organic herbs, botanicals, fruit, and teas, and on our tour, we passed a sea buckthorn tree. We stopped and picked the berries and ate them fresh. Since then, I have always really enjoyed the flavour and appreciated the health benefits they provide. Because our products are certified organic, we began looking for an organic source of sea buckthorn and were so thrilled to find Omega Fruit Co. We have worked together for years now, and their product is high quality. When we are ready to flavour our kombucha and sparkling water, we juice the berries fresh and add it in!

In a competitive market, most brands come up with the same flavours! From one standpoint, this makes so much sense because they are following market and purchasing trends. But if you want to stand out (like we do), we find unique ingredients to create innovative flavour profiles that have never been introduced on the market. In a world full of orange-flavoured kombucha and sparkling water, we add sea buckthorn to set ourselves apart from the crowd, yet mimicking very popular flavours that the public has come to love.

Because we process the berries ourselves and juice them fresh at the facility, it gives our product a high-quality flavour that extracts cannot imitate. We haven’t experienced any real challenges with using sea buckthorn, although we were surprised to learn that the berries have a small amount of fat content!