ÜBER FLAVOUR
SA Craft Ice Tea
With CBD PRODUCTION: David Napier
Über Flavour is blending locally-sourced, all-natural ingredients, in a Cape Town-based manufacturing facility, to create a range of ice tea drinks that Founder Paul Simon is planning to combine with CBD. What’s not to love?
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One of South Africa’s most exciting young beverage brands, Über Flavour – based in Green Point, Cape Town – is embracing global trends to deliver products that modern customers desire. Established in 2015 by entrepreneur Paul Simon (of YDE – Young Designers Emporium – fame), Über Flavour uses all-natural, locally produced ingredients in full to create ice tea-based beverages. There are no flavourings, extracts or additives – the manufacturing process involves brewing fresh rooibos tea from loose leaves and blending with real fruit juice pressed from real fruits. While many brands play on the idea of health and well-being, few are making products that truly have health-promoting ingredients. At Über Flavour, it’s all about local, natural, honest inputs for a chemical-free, tasty, healthy output. The current range includes four flavour variants: Apple and cinnamon, mango and vanilla, honey and lemon, and berry and buchu. The idea for the product came to Simon when he was travelling back to
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South Africa after a family trip to Europe. He was in a German airport waiting to board his flight when his young daughter asked for a drink. He didn’t want to give her something packed with sugar, hyping her up before a long flight, so he searched out a rooibos-based ice tea. After boarding his flight and taking his seat he looked at the bottle and saw that the product was manufactured in Germany using rooibos extract rather than actual tea. There was something that did not sit right with Simon. Rooibos, a South African product, being sourced from Germany, to make a drink but only using extract – it didn’t add up. So, he investigated the potential of using fresh tea brewed with a blend of freshly pressed fruit juices to add flavour. All the manufacturers he approached said it couldn’t be done – especially for export – as the product would have such a short life. Like a true entrepreneur, being told it wasn’t possible only spurred Simon on. Eventually, he found a local company that could handle the manufacturing process, using a method that would allow the product to have a shelf life
suitable for export, using 100% locally grown ingredients. After experimenting with branding and flavour combinations, the product range was completed and positioned as a niche offering – the craft drink of the ice tea market. Distributed widely throughout South Africa, but mainly aimed at export markets, Simon has succeeded in gaining traction in the USA, South Korea and Singapore. The brand is growing, and it is about to embark on a diversification strategy that will launch it to the forefront of another internationally growing trend. HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL It seems the future of the soft drink market is surrounding cannabis, specifically CBD (Cannabidiol). CBD is a product of the hemp plant and can be added into drinks reasonably easily. It has no psycho-active element and is not related to THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the element in cannabis that gives the ‘high’. CBD has been claimed to have strong health benefits.
