KOMBUCHA MAKERS GO PLATFORM TO SPUR GROWTH By Brad Avery
Just a few years ago, kombucha had broken out into the mainstream as one of the top categories in the emerging better-foryou beverage trend. But recent years have seen its growth slow, even as consumers during the pandemic raced to buy healthy food and beverage products en masse. Matthew Barry, senior consultant for beverages at Euromonitor International, told BevNET that although other functional beverage categories saw extensive growth in 2020, when pandemic-panicked consumers sought out drinks with immunity-boosting or relaxation-based benefits, kombucha only saw mild, stable growth. But the slowdown in the category predates the pandemic, with the market assimilating an influx of new functional beverages that seem to take aim at the characteristics kombucha embodies: gut health-friendly “pops” providing an alternative better-for-you soft drink, yerba mate drinks fueling the expansion of plant-based energy, and probiotic and juice shots meeting the need for immunity and wellness. While many kombucha brands attempted last year to underline the connection between gut health and overall health that 38 BEVNET MAGAZINE – NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021
helped generate increased sales for innumerable functional brands, Barry said that consumers still aren’t making the connection between balanced digestion and immunity that brands want them to see. “That’s been one of the key problems, it just hasn’t really resonated with consumers’ functional demands the way that I think it would have needed to,” Barry said. “I think the challenge is just that there’s a lot of other functional stuff on the market these days. Kombucha once had a particular place as being the healthiest soft drink on the market, and it did have the potential to be sort of the gold standard for functional, healthy beverage. But now there’s just so much out there, it’s hard to seem new and exciting.” Recognizing the increased competition on shelf, some kombucha leaders have even begun looking at the category from a broader perspective. Health-Ade co-founder Daina Trout told BevNET in August that she believed seeing kombucha as its own category could be a mistake, suggesting that it belongs to a much more expansive functional health and wellness food and beverage space.
