Moncton Kombucha Maker Says Excellence Award Was Given To ‘The Real Winner’
MONCTON – ALIVE Kombucha CEO Louis Leith says clinching the Environmental Excellence Award at the Business Excellence Awards gala is well-deserved and a long time coming.
“We thought that we were the best [in our category] to win that. Obviously winning that award was something that would make sense,” Leith told Huddle. “We’ve been in different contests and stuff like that and sometimes, you know, it’s not always the real winner wins.”
ALIVE Kombucha was presented its award at the October 18 event – the first in-person awards gala since 2019.
RELATED: Award-Winning Moncton Salon Owner Says Market Is Growing For Her Services
Without specifying what past contests and awards ALIVE competed in, Leith said it was gratifying to gain recognition for the work he and his staff of five are doing, on the large scale of an awards gala for the entirety of Greater Moncton’s business community.
“For me it was good. It’s the biggest award for us and it’s the most important thing,” he said.
Leith told Huddle that ALIVE generates 100 percent of its own electricity with an array of 96 solar panels on its roof, at its 71 Toombs Street location, producing about 40 megawatts a year.
ALIVE bills itself as a zero-carbon business, and has been since planning to open it started in 2018.
RELATED: Greater Moncton Chamber Celebrates Business Award Winners
“It’s hard for us to get closer to helping the plant than what we’re doing right now,” he said. “We’re probably the greenest company in all of New Brunswick right now.”
The Environmental Excellence Award recognizes some of the recent challenges ALIVE has faced since its official launch in 2020.
Leith said the ideal kombucha yield is about a million bottles per year but that, like most companies, ALIVE has weathered supply chain snags that have kept it shy of that goal.
“The facility is rigged to do a million bottles. But with that being said, we’re not there yet. We’ve had some shortages for bottles, caps and the like – so we need to limit our production right now,” he said. “But this should be resolved very soon.”
RELATED: Newcomer Entrepreneur Of The Year Describes ‘Heart-Warming’ Win
Leith said ALIVE’s kombucha, which it sells by the bottle and keg, is a form of probiotic-rich fermented tea, is a health alternative to sugar-heavy drinks on the market.
Most of the effort is making sure the bacterial cultures used to ferment the tea are healthy.
“You need to grow that culture and incorporate it in the process of making that drink. It’s not just, like, mixing water with other stuff – it’s unique,” said Leith.
That can be complicated because ALIVE can only honour orders at the rate its bacterial cultures grow, which means business requires planning in advance.
“Let’s say we get a big order from Sobeys or Loblaws. If you’re going to do 100 liters, you can grow it to 200 liters and 400 liters and you can double up,” he said.
“If you’re at 400 liters and someone is asking for 100,000 liters, you can’t do that. You can grow it to 800 liters and then 1,600 liters. That’s the complexity with this product.”
ALIVE currently exports kombucha to 300 points of sale across Atlantic Canada, and plans to expand into other provinces in the coming months.
Leith said the process of fulfilling orders from businesses can be challenging, but noted ALIVE is ready to make the leap to distributing to the rest of Canada.
“We’ve got the space and we should be good. It’s not going to cost us much more.”
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].