'How we launched a kombucha brand from our bedroom'
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“Not another bloody kombucha brand." This was the unexpected response Josh Puddle received when he excitedly went into one health foods store with a first homemade batch of the fledgling soft drink. “I had spent two years of my life throwing everything into it,” he says today.
Josh and wife Lisa had started the early forms of Momo Kombucha from their kitchen in south east London before turning an upstairs bedroom into a fermentation room. They made their first batch on New Year’s Day in 2017 and launched the business 18 months later.
Once they started to find traction, the pair signed a lease on a railway arch at New Covent Garden Market, the London wholesaler location. They have since expanded to two railway arches and into a larger warehouse with more fridge space storage. “This will hopefully give us the headroom to expand over the next couple of years,” says Josh.
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Despite the early stockist setback and keeping to their ethos of producing high quality kombucha, they became Europe’s highest scoring B Corp company in the category in 2022. The husband and wife team now hope to hit revenues of £10m in UK sales by 2026.
Their business vision is to undergo another fundraise, following an initial £1m investment, and move into larger premises under one roof. It is a world away from their first homemade production, a decision which has served the duo well.
All brewing — using organic ingredients, including a blend of teas and slow pressed organic juice — and bottling was conducted from their kitchen into 10 litre glass jars, with Josh carrying buckets up and down the married couple’s stairs.
“We had jars everywhere and had five fridges down one wall for a year,” recalls Josh. “It was a messy way to start but it meant we could give it a go without the significant investment in rent and rates.”
Their decision to remain in bottles has been a shrewd one and followed a later trip to meet Hannah Crum, billed as The Kombucha Mamma, and other producers where Josh soon learned that the best version of the drink was made in glass jars.
They had originally discovered kombucha on a trip to New York in 2016. On the plane, Lisa had first told her husband about gut health and the rise of kombucha. At a whole foods store, they were then struck by the fact that the drink was the biggest category in the fridges.
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“It has a unique flavour profile,” says Josh. “Importantly, we felt that if it’s available in our coffee shops we would be buying this every day.”
The couple both had full-time jobs at the time, Josh as an equity analyst in the City of London and Lisa in marketing at luxury fashion outfit Net-a-Porter, before taking the start-up plunge.
“We’ve built the business steadily,” adds Josh. “As we’ve done all our own manufacturing, it has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the process of how we make it has driven our success but has also held us back as it is labour intensive. But we were comfortable with that trajectory and strategy.”
Between 2016 and early 2018, kombucha was pretty much non-existent to most Britons. Thus, their dream to launch an untapped soft drinks start-up left most of their friends questioning the decision.
“Most people we would tell that we were quitting our jobs to ferment tea had no idea what it was,” says Josh. “Friends and family thought we were crazy as it was such a new thing.”
Then came a proliferation of kombucha brands in 2018 after the drink took off in the US. “What has served us well has been focusing on producing the highest quality kombucha as possible,” adds Josh.
“It can either be chilled and stored in the fridge and more authentic. Or you can go ambient, which means it’s been pasteurised or brewed from concentrate. A lot of brands have gone down the latter route. We have stuck to our guns and our authenticity messaging.
“I was at a point in my life where the bigger risk was not doing anything. I had an interesting job but I didn’t like the lifestyle and felt pretty defeated by it. Lisa was seeing a similar experience.”
Josh says he was under no illusions that the category would see a similar trajectory to the US, even though the duo had no experience in the drinks sector. “But we had relevant skills,” he says. “I had a commercial and finance side and was able to raise money and my wife had the branding skills. If it wasn’t going to be us then it would be someone else.
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“Without doing too much research we had 100% conviction in the category. Our aim before launch was to try and produce the UK’s best tasting and highest quality kombucha. If we could aim for that it would give us a better chance of success, survival and being number one.
“It can be unusual at first with a vinegary tang, but over time you can really acquire a taste for it. Almost to the point where it’s a positive craving. I would see kombucha as having an adult flavour profile, but with children they absolutely love it. And that’s encouraging for the long-term view.”
Behind the brand: Co-founder Josh Puddle on…
Risk factor
In the early days, a few friends had said: “If anyone can do it, you can.” When I’ve had my lower days, I’ve thought more about them and wanting to prove them right rather than prove the naysayers wrong.
Coming back to that feeling of the conviction in the category, massive credit goes to my wife, who couldn’t see how we wouldn’t be able to do it and had faith in us. We are six years in and by no means out of the woods. We are growing fast and still in that chaotic start-up phase.
Gut health rise
I still feel like the science is only just starting when it comes to fermented products. The gut health trend will build over the coming decades and something we will become much more aware of. And for kombucha that is great.
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