Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Tetragrammaton.
Chapter 2: How did GT Dave's upbringing influence his health philosophy?
I was raised by two very kind of holistic spiritual parents who raised me a vegetarian. So I was raised with this strong belief of like food can be medicine or food can be poison. So following that philosophy, my parents brought a lot of weird things into the house from noni juice to aloe vera juice to wheatgrass, tofu, you name it.
But in the early 90s, one of the things that they brought in was this thing called kombucha. And I remember it very clearly because it was a very defining moment. My dad came home one day with a kombucha culture, which if you've seen when they're kind of these like rubbery circular pancakes, so to speak. And he came home with it in a Ziploc bag.
And he goes to my mom and to my brothers, like, hey guys, I'm going to make kombucha tomorrow. It's called the drink of immortality. And both of us were like, okay, dad, you're crazy, whatever. But that next day and every day after that, I noticed that he became obsessive with making it and drinking it. And the way he would make it was very pungent.
Like kombucha is pungent on its own, but he would make it incredibly pungent to the point where only him and my mother could stomach it. I tried and I was like, dad, I love you. I've tried a lot of the crazy things you brought into this household, but I just can't.
So then fast forward two years later, it just became more and more integrated into the household and then ultimately played a very strong role in my mom's health.
Before you got involved in the business of kombucha, it had a healing effect on your mom?
Oh, yeah. So the way kombucha was introduced to my parents is that because my parents were on that kind of spiritual, holistic health path, kombucha was circulating a little bit in LA. There was this underground movement of kombucha in the early 90s, And I think it was primarily because it was getting buzz about how it was helping individuals with HIV AIDS and or cancer.
And so that's where it was like getting, and you know, AIDS back then was like this unknown. So the fact that it was doing something positive, I think was giving it attention. But my father's friend was very skeptical. He was like a raw foodist, only lived off of fresh pressed juice, primarily vegetable juice. So he gave the culture to my father saying, hey, everybody's raving about this.
My wife thinks it's like better than anything she's ever had. He's like, but I'm not buying it. Will you try it? So that was the beauty of it. My parents kind of just took that leap of faith. They didn't have any preset expectations, but they immediately resonated with it.
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Chapter 3: What led to the introduction of kombucha in GT's household?
Yeah. So it was his wife that actually took a trip to the Himalayas and came back with the culture. So I think that's actually how it originated coming here. I think people- Which street was it on? Do you remember? Yeah, it's on Beverly in Orlando. Yeah. It's still there. It's still there. Unbelievable. Isn't that crazy?
I haven't been in a very long time.
Yeah.
Which is admirable because you think of all the different juice brands that have come and gone, the fact that he's still there says a lot. And they still do it the same way? They still do it the same way. They press it daily. They make what they can sell. And then if they sell out, they sell out. It's like a beautiful business model. I mean, in many ways, it's what I still emulate to this day.
But no, back to your question, like when kombucha came to the household, I was just a kid. I mean, I was like 13, 14 years old. I think that's number one why I was even unable to embrace kombucha, because it was too far out from my young, tender age. But then wouldn't have seen my parents fall in love with it.
And then, you know, ultimately what happened, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Wow.
About two years after she had been drinking the kombucha. And, you know, both my parents were plant-based, spiritual, athletic, like picture of perfect health. And so my mom went to the doctor thinking she was pregnant. And they're like, Mrs. Dave, you're not pregnant, but you do have something growing inside you. And it's a very large cancer tumor in your right breast. Wow.
And it was so large, the tumor was this big. She thought it was a muscle, surprisingly, because we had this big Doberman pincher that she would walk up the steep hill that we lived off of. And she thought it was just from him pulling her. They're like, no, it's not a muscle. It's a cancer tumor that you've probably had for four years.
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Chapter 4: How did kombucha impact GT's mother's health?
I wanna see my kids grow up. I wanna see life unfold and all of that. But you could tell she was so scared. But ironically, you know what happened, Rick, is like then two weeks later, it was almost like deja vu. She took us back out to the same table in the same backyard and was like, hey, I have some more news.
And she said, I was called into the doctor's office and I was scared because normally that's when they had bad news. But she said, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that they didn't have bad news, they had good news. And they shared with me that my cancer has not spread. It has not gone to my bones or anything like that. And they brought me in because they wanna know what I'm doing differently.
And so she said like, you know, I told them simply like I exercise, I'm vegetarian and I've been drinking this pungent tasting tea for the last couple of years and it makes me feel great. The doctor said, well, Mrs. Dave, that's great. Whatever this tea is, like continue to drink it. Cause it's clearly helping you. And that was the catalyst for like understanding more.
Cause I think up to that point, it was just like the pseudo quasi healthy thing that they didn't really know why it was healthy, but they drank it and they felt it felt good and that was it.
But it's got a lineage for thousands of years of people drinking it as a health tonic.
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, if you think of kombucha, Dairy or water kefir, miso, tempeh, sauerkraut, kimchi. I mean, these are foods that like cultures relied on. I don't even think they really knew what was in it, but they just knew that there was like this chemistry that their bodies needed or resonated with.
Honestly, that moment, something happened where I was like, this needs to be shared. And then on the flip side, Rick, I was getting ready to drop out of high school. because I was a young gay boy growing up in LA in the 90s. And unlike today's world, for the most part, it was not welcome. And I was being bullied. I was being ostracized.
And so I was on my own path thinking, like, I'm going to need to make a hard turn of some sort because I'm not on a path that I feel good about. And so that mixed with kombucha and how it helped my mom all of a sudden together became my new purpose. I look back sometimes, I did an ayahuasca ceremony two weekends ago and the medicine brought me back to that moment.
Because a lot of times our lives are defined by these pivotal moments that sometimes we ignore or we don't remember. But that was definitely a pivotal moment for me.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did GT face in the early days of kombucha production?
And that's where we would grocery shop. So naturally that's where I wanted to sell it. I used to shop there too. It was a great store. Great store, great store.
So yeah, at the time, the only thing that was considered cutting edge outside of wheatgrass and like those more staple kind of apple cider vinegar staple foods, Edwalla had just expanded out of Half Moon Bay slash Dinuba, which is Northern California, and started to expand almost nationally. And they were doing press juice, carrot juice. They had a four-day shelf life. I mean, it was incredible.
But then something happened. They had their first recall. I remember that too. Yeah. And that shook me to my core, to be honest, because, you know, I was a young boy at the time and there was no playbook for me to follow. So I'm trying to find kind of piecemeal inspiration to like help define my path. Like who can I learn from? And I, you know, honestly really admired at Wallach's.
I was like, these are people that are celebrating food from the earth, food that's been unprocessed, unpasteurized, just like basically juiced to the bottle. But then like six months after that, I remember going into Air One to deliver and their cooler was empty. And it was, there was a sign saying there's been E. coli in their apple juice.
And it like seriously caused some people to get very ill or even led to a death. And it was scary because it all of a sudden changed the narrative. Like fresh and raw became dangerous. And so that actually became a cross that I had to bear throughout my next five to 10 years because I was very passionate about kombucha can't be kombucha unless it's raw.
If you try to pasteurize or something like that, you're wasting people's time and money. It's like milk. Exactly. Pasteurized milk is dead. Just like a baby calf. If they drink pasteurized milk, they'll die.
Yeah.
But I had to overcome this negativity and misinformation about raw, unprocessed food.
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Chapter 6: How did GT's kombucha brand evolve and gain popularity?
But back to the point, I admired them, but I learned from them. Because after the fiasco, they came back with a pasteurized product. And then later sold to Coke. And I said, I'd rather not make my product than make something that I don't believe in.
Because my parents would believe that you really want to consume the juice within a short period of time after the cells have been cracked and all of that, because it starts to oxidize. I mean, that's why it's so important to eat fresh food, because there's a life force in it that isn't indefinite. It'll fade out. It's like vital energy.
Yes. It's in the food.
Yes. And you lose that with time quickly. What's the shelf life on kombucha? It varies from the ingredients we use, but I'd say on average, like three to four months. That's pretty good. It's good because it's fermented, right? So it has, that's the duty of fermentation.
And that's actually how I came up with the name Synergy, is that to me, because I was big into fresh pressed juice and at the time, because of Edwalla, there was really no fresh pressed juice because now everything had to be pasteurized for food safety reasons, right? But we were able to bypass that because kombucha has a low pH because of the fermentation.
So it has naturally preserving qualities, natural even antibacterial qualities that would synergize with the fruit juice and allow it to last longer. So it would be more like kimchi or sauerkraut. Yeah. where you take something that's normally fresh and highly perishable, but through the fermentation, you like extend and preserve its freshness, but also preserve everything that's good about it.
And that's why I liked Synergy because my first brand was called Kombucha. And yes, like the diehards loved it. But when I tried to turn on my friends to it, and again, I was a teenager at the time, they'd be like, yo, it's like, sounds too far out. I'm not into it. And so I thought, okay, I need to like rebrand it. So I need something American.
And they used to be next to each other because I remember I used to drink the kombucha. And then when the Synergy came out in the same bottle, I was confused because they looked a lot alike, but they were branded differently.
Yeah. And that was a blessing and a curse. I think the blessing was as we grew, we never felt too big on the shelf because we almost intentionally diluted our brand presence. But then the curse came from...
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Chapter 7: What was the significance of the name 'Synergy' for GT's kombucha?
And just like sitting back for like 30 minutes and the store opened and people would come in and they would rather walk by it or look at it. Because I was on the Fresh Crest juice shelf. I was actually sharing the shelf with the Beverly Hills Juice Club because that was the only store that he would sell his bottles to every day outside of his storefront, right? And I remember someone grabbed it.
Further down the same block. Yeah, they're both on Beverly.
Yeah.
He was next to Fred Siegel's. Yeah, exactly. And Nowhere, which was another health food store. That was a cool store, too. Very cool. Yeah. But anyway, so but that like was my first moment of fulfillment. Right. Because honestly, Rick, I think what I what I was seeking, even though I didn't know it at the time, I was seeking something that would fulfill my heart and soul.
And seeing that on the shelf gave me that first taste. And then the second was maybe about like a week or two later when I got my first positive feedback where somebody called the 800 number that was on the label, which P.S. was like an answering machine in my bedroom. And it was a female. And she said like, hey, I hope this is getting to somebody.
I just want to let you know that I discovered this unusual kombucha on the shelf and I bought it, didn't know what it was, but I had some and my headache went away. I just want to say thank you. Like this made me feel good. Beautiful. And how many batches did you make at that period? Oh my gosh. I mean, at some point, 80% of the room was filled. So I was delivering daily.
myself, and I was delivering probably like 12 to 20 cases a day. Was that the only store? It was my first store. But then after that, I went to like Co-Opportunity in Santa Monica. Yeah, that's another great store. Yeah, another great store. One Life, May They Rest in Peace in Venice. Because there was no Whole Foods at the time. There was Mrs. Gooch's.
And I aspired to get into Mrs. Gooch's, but they Honestly, they were getting a little too corporate at the time that something as cutting edge as kombucha was actually against what they were looking for. So I kept on getting rejected. So I was like, all right.
They were more mainstream.
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Chapter 8: How did GT navigate the challenges of scaling his business?
you know, later on in my career, like call it by year five, it was trying to gain traction. And so now call it opportunistic individuals started to come into the fold and they started to give me advice. Like one was like, Hey, put it back in plastic. You'll save a ton of money. I was like, no, I got out of plastic for a reason. I'm not going back.
Also they'd say like, Hey, like the stuff floating in it, like find a way to get that out. Cause it's like off putting. And I said, Okay, but there's a mother in apple cider vinegar, and that's what people look for. So if you're turned off by that, then maybe you're not ready.
So I had a response for things, and I really was anchored in my, even though I probably didn't know it, but I was really anchored in my way. So I was able to somewhat avoid some of these bad advice that I was getting. Well, they were giving you good business advice. Yes, on how to mainstream and scale.
But not good advice for what this was that you were doing.
Yeah. So luckily, I was able to kind of stay steady and say no to a lot of those kind of bad suggestions.
What do you think it is about you that was able to keep true to the mission?
I think it really is, Rick, is that all I wanted was to do something that I believed in that I knew was going to resonate with others. And I didn't really have in my mind, like, a threshold or a milestone of like, I need to reach a million people or I need to sell a million bottles. It was just like, I want to make one great batch that's going to affect one person or more.
It was like, I had this low bar. And I think by being so young and being so curious, but also like unaffected by the material world, it allowed me to lead with such purity. Well, it's the reason it worked. Yeah. And I try to bring myself there more often than not these days, because this world can change you, especially right now. And, you know, I'm 48 now.
I have three kids and, you know, my life is crystallizing more as like a human, but I'm trying not to forget like this origin story, so to speak, that I was born from. How did you make the labels in the beginning? You know, I designed them on my dad's computer. They were black and white. My mom was a big source of inspiration.
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