IT BEGAN on a visit to friends at their boat house by the Thames in Hampton Wick 20 years ago today, where they would serve a strange fermented tea to visitors…

There was hatched a quest to make the UK’s first commercial kombucha tea brand, an accidental entrepreneur was reborn, and so commenced the trials and tribulations of running an ethical business in a far from ethical world…

How I made it through two whole decades intact building up my little business organically I can only put down to fate; although I didn’t know it at the time. I had only offered to provide the start-up capital to help my friends scale-up their boathouse kitchen hobby into a fully-fledged commercial brand, in those early years brewed at Rocks Organics, who specialise in organic fruit drinks aimed at children.

But running a kombucha business was clearly one of many things I am/was destined to do, no matter how accidentally it fell into my lap…

Originally I had planned this to be a post about the most valuable lesson I have learned on my path growing the UK’s most respected and successful Kombucha brand over 20 years - the only brand entirely free of all debt and growing year by year - but truth is I’ve a book’s worth of inspiring and empowering anecdotes, valuable lessons learned from the many knocks and setbacks, and more than a little wisdom picked up along the way that I want to dip into, so I’ll be sharing my story - and many secrets! - throughout this anniversary year.

I’m greatly looking forward to reminiscencing over the last two decades, and how I view the evolution of the sector I pioneered and paved the way for. I’ll be dispensing useful tips to anyone starting up a small business - including for the first time imparting some valuable lessons learned that may be able to save some other Kombucha businesses a great deal of strife and grief (any authentic, homegrown producers out there who need some 1-1 guidance FOC, just email me!)

I’ll be pulling no punches and I’ll also be honouring those whose kindness, good grace and generosity of spirit helped me along the way, and to whom I’ll always be grateful from the bottom of my heart.

Gary Leigh, 19 January 2023 ❤️