Meet the Founders - Aqua ViTea
Creating healthy beverages.
For our third meet the founder series, we caught up with Jeff Weaber, the founder of our new portfolio company Aqua ViTea. Aqua ViTea is the 2nd fastest growing Kombucha (a fermented, effervescent, and healthy alternative to soda) brand in the U.S. Jeff tells us about going from brewing beer to brewing Kombucha and from where he draws his inspiration. Aqua ViTea is based in rural Vermont and they are currently raising $3m USD to support their U.S. expansion. To get in touch with Jeff to learn more about Aqua ViTea, please email info@theconduitconnect.com.
Describe your startup in two sentences
Aqua ViTea is a 14 year old beverage innovator and manufacture in rural Vermont dedicated to making healthy beverages, like Kombucha, with the aim of replacing sugary juices and soda’s with organic, probiotic rich tea based beverages.
What gave you the inspiration?
I learned and fell in love with the craft of beverage fermentation brewing beer for a micro-brewery but struggled to reconcile with the negative health impact of making high calorie alcoholic beverages. My wife was studying nutrition in medical school and learned about the importance a healthy gut microbiome has on a person’s overall health which inspired me to combine my passion of craft brewing with and making a beverage with positive health attributes.
What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?
Our greatest success came through overcoming our greatest challenge. Aqua ViTea was an early pioneer in the emerging Kombucha category and was immediately faced with scalability and quality issues as we grew production. The biggest challenge to our company, and the category as a whole, was controlling the alcohol levels during fermentation to remain below .5% alcohol by volume. We were the first company to adopt a technology from the wine industry that allowed us to stay true to the authentic production of our kombucha while also scaling production and maintaining the alcohol compliance necessary to remain a non-alcoholic beverage.
How has Covid-19 affected your business?
We had to quickly adopt a new road to market for over 40% of our volume due to covid in late March of 2020. We had a very healthy keg business within the grocery channel that disappeared overnight. We quickly added a 4 pack can option to our portfolio that helped us recover all the losses we endured as a result of Covid.
What kind of impact do you strive to achieve?
Aqua ViTea is focusing on two main points of impact: UNSDG 3 - Good Health and Well-Being and SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth. As the initial mission of the company was to offset unhealthy consumption of soda drinks, we measure our Health and Wellness progress in the growth and popularity of the category we helped to pioneer and continue to grow. Creating quality jobs in a rural economy can be measured in many ways and we are exploring the best ways to measure and monitor this. So far, we are proud to be able to mark our progress after being voted one of the "Best Places to Work" in Vermont.
When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was little I didn’t want to grow up.
If you weren’t doing this, what would be your plan B?
I would team up with my wife to transform her medical practice into a multi-disciplined health and wellness centre that integrates the natural environment in the architecture and treatment philosophy of the clinic.
What would you save in a fire?
Everything living under the roof.
Who is your role model/ greatest influence? And why?
My greatest influence would be Alan Watts. His book called The Book opened my eyes to a whole new reality and lead me to India where I met my would-be wife who was searching for the same answers I was.
What is your happy track?
Anything by Andrew Bird – he whistles a lot
What’s your motto?
Be Nice To Each Other People
What are you most looking forward to in 2021?
Every recognizable moment of development of my kids.