Get to Know: Rachael Walker of Life’s A Buch
Those who know Rachael Walker say she and her kombucha are one and the same: bubbly and effervescent, organic and friendly, a no-bulls*** pick-me-up when you need it most. In fact, ‘no s***’ is why she started brewing kombucha in the first place. After discovering fermented tea as a miracle antidote for her tummy issues, Rachael Walker set out to create a simple, all-natural, low-sugar kombucha to replace her medicine cabinet and share with friends. Five years later, she now shares it with over 80 stores from Laramie to Littleton, making Life’s A Buch one of the largest kombucha companies in Colorado. Below is a conversation about the company’s humble beginnings, surviving the pandemic, and the importance of reciprocity in a thriving community of small businesses.
Life’s A Buch is celebrating its five-year anniversary on Saturday, Feb. 11, 2-5 p.m., at Sweetwater Brewing Co. Learn more here.
This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Austin Lammers: Give me the origin story of Life’s a Buch!
Rachael Walker: Well, it was 2016, and I had really bad acid reflux. I was on medication from Canada, got a double endoscopy at 25 years old, and nothing was working. I got a CAT scan and they told me I have IBS and acid reflux. I was like ‘no s***, what do I need to be doing?’ (Like, that’s the pun… no s***.)
I was working at Whole Foods when one of my team members suggested I try kombucha. It was GT’s – the Trilogy flavor that everyone knows. I started drinking it every day and noticed I wasn’t having as many bouts. Eventually, it was almost completely gone. So I got a SCOBY from my friend and started brewing in my basement apartment. I would bring all my little flavors – blueberry chai was actually one of the first flavors I brewed – to all my friends at Whole Foods. They all loved it and before I knew it, people wanted to buy it. And so I started Life’s A Buch.
AL: So you’re going on six years of brewing now?
RW: Yeah, it formed pretty quickly. I opened a new Whole Foods in Longmont and was a manager there. So I’d get off at 11 p.m., drive back to Fort Collins, sleep for a bit, then have to be back at 7 a.m. And I knew I couldn't do that while starting a business. So I left Whole Foods for a sales job at Basemakers, repping kombucha brands and natural food brands. That's where I gained experience on the inside. They were very supportive of me starting the business when I worked with them. I was able to deliver my kombucha and do sales for my kombucha while doing sales for that company. It just kind of blew up from there. I left that job three years ago and went full-time kombucha.
Courtesy of Life’s A Buch & Miranda Kate Creative
AL: Thinking back to your basement brewing, how was the learning curve? Any horror stories?
RW: Lots of trial and error. That apartment was like a dark dungeon. It had one window and was dark and misty and musky – perfect for fermenting things.
The first batch I ever brewed was moldy. I didn't clean everything. You have to disinfect every single thing that touches the kombucha. I did not do that [laughs]. I used old tea, and a week later I went to open it and there was mold everywhere. I used to use juices and tea bags. We make our chai tea in-house now, but I would steep tea bags from Old Town Spice and add it to whatever flavor I was doing. I would also ferment the fruit in the bottles so the bottles would have little berries and stuff in them, which you could eat! I used to add chia seeds but there’d end up being a big glob you’d swallow.
The first big batch I brewed – 15 gallons – had fruit flies all over it. It was like a week before going to my first commissary kitchen and I was so excited. Then I opened the barrel and the fruit flies had laid eggs in the SCOBY.
AL: Oh yikes.
RW: Yeah, pretty gross. But I got the two big issues out of the way before I moved into the kitchen, and we’ve never had issues like that since.
Courtesy of Life’s A Buch & Miranda Kate Creative
AL: Has your brewing process changed over the years?
RW: We started brewing in gallon jars because I wanted to keep the integrity of brewing small-batch kombucha. That quickly turned into two-gallon jars, and it wasn’t long before we realized its inefficiency. So we got the five-barrel tank and the six-barrel tank when we moved into our kitchen. We used to naturally carbonate kombucha – that's when you just leave the kombucha out at room temperature to carbonate. Now we carbonate how beer brewers carbonate, it stops fermentation. When we were naturally carbonating the berry lemonade, for instance, the citrus in the lemon would explode. I give away so many free bottles.
Now that we’re in this kitchen, we have our recipes down and we're very consistent. We bottle on Tuesdays, we brew on Thursdays, and we have no issues. And if anyone does have an issue, I trade the bottles out for fresh ones, and then we drink them so it’s not wasted. No booch left behind!
I had the help of a brewing friend who was once an employee and now brews for Funkwerks. He taught me all of this. I wouldn’t know any of it if it weren’t for him. And now that I know, I can troubleshoot everything. If something comes up, we have a plan A through Z. So I've learned a lot. It's an art. It's easy brewing on small scales, but getting into larger scales is harder. But with the help of the brewers in the industry, we've been able to figure it out.
Courtesy of Life’s A Buch & Miranda Kate Creative
AL: I bet you’re happy to be doing this in a sour beer hotspot.
RW: It’s fantastic. Everyone knows about brewing and the process. We couldn't get bottles for three months this year, so Jessup Farm would let us take bottles from their warehouse, which we would replace once our shipments came in. I didn't have bottle caps last week because someone (me) forgot to order them. But Funkwerks loaned some to us. So we all lean on each other in the business. I love the connections we have in our community. Without them, I’d be SOL.
Courtesy of Life’s A Buch & Miranda Kate Creative
AL: What did the kombucha landscape look like in Fort Collins when you popped onto the scene? Were we still getting used to it? Or were we well underway?
RW: That’s a good question. I feel like Fort Collins has always been a hub for local foods. Where I'm from in southern Colorado, people appreciate local food, but it's not as recognized. Turtle Mountain and Wild & Free were both around, but Turtle Mountain was the first kombucha company in Fort Collins and they paved the way for everyone else. I actually took over June Kombucha’s kitchen space when Scott sold. He helped me get started, which was awesome of him. There were a few other companies that had come and gone, so people were used to it. But seeing a new company, people are always pretty excited. We started out at the Drake Farmers Market, which isn’t around anymore. And the next year, we went to the Old Town Market and just blew up there.
Courtesy of Life’s A Buch & Miranda Kate Creative
AL: Now that you’re the only kombucha company in Fort Collins and there’s space for more, what advice would you give to someone trying to strike it out on their own?
RW: Don’t be afraid to ask questions. There are a few of us kombucha companies in Colorado that are very tight-knit and will help each other out if we need it, which is wonderful. I lean on those people. The thing is no one tells you what to do. You don’t know exactly what you need, it's like you’re running around bumping into things until you figure it out.
So it’s like, please come talk to me. Ask me any question. I've made so many financial mistakes, and it’s not worth it when you can just reach out and ask. The Small Business Development Center can only do so much, they can’t give you everything you need. So we'd love to help anyone out be like, ‘hey, here's what you need to do, here’s how to not waste your time.’
There’s plenty of room for more kombucha companies here, especially since we’re the only one now. It’s the same dynamic with breweries. We should all love each other and support each other because there’s plenty of room for all of us in the market.
Courtesy of Life’s A Buch & Miranda Kate Creative
AL: We love a ‘rising tide’ mentality. Simple question: what’s your best-selling flavor of kombucha?
RW: Berry Lemonade. We can barely keep them on the shelves during the summer.
AL: What’s the craziest flavor combination you’ve experimented with?
RW: Cotton candy grapes. I made it for one of my friend’s birthdays a few years ago. Sooooo good. That one is, unfortunately, way too expensive to make. We did a cherry lime flavor this year too, and people liked that one.
AL: Any ingredients that you’ve wanted to experiment with but haven’t had the chance to yet?
RW: We did dragon fruit this year. I’d like to do passionfruit, but tropical fruits are so hard to come by. I love a lychee martini, so I’d love to do a lychee kombucha, but lychees are also hard to come by. Orange Dreamsicle would be good too. I’ve even come across a maple bacon flavor before.
AL: Have you messed around with kombucha in other forms?
RW: Yes! We’ve revamped and are selling our fruit jerky in three flavors. It was Kyle and Ava’s idea to make kombucha vinegar. It’s literally just kombucha you add sugar to every month. It sits for a few months, turns into vinegar, and then we flavor it. We have a berry lemonade flavor we’re going to sell this summer. They also want to pair up and make face masks.
Courtesy of Life’s A Buch & Miranda Kate Creative
AL: What roadblocks have you encountered as you’ve grown this thing into the local behemoth that it is?
RW: Every roadblock possible. Supply chain issues were the toughest. I already mentioned bottles. I’d have to buy ingredients from Lucky’s or Whole Foods at a way higher price because I couldn’t get them elsewhere.
Sugar was a huge thing during the pandemic because you couldn’t buy more than one bag at the store. At that point, I was buying organic sugar from Costco. We get it from Golden Organics now in 50-pound bags from Denver. But I remember the first three months of the pandemic, every time I went to Costco, I'd have to talk to a manager and say ‘hey, I own a small business and I need 15 bags.’ Finally my luck ran out and he said ‘this is the last time.’ I recently saw a Facebook memory of me asking people if they had extra sugar at home they could donate so we could keep brewing.
But what's given me an advantage specifically is that I have sales experience. I know how grocery stores work, I know how distribution works, I have a lot of experience with that. So I feel very lucky. I can walk into a store with confidence, get the sale, get the good shelf placement, and keep a good relationship with those stores.
AL: Any pleasant surprises?
RW: Employees. Up until Kyle, our current head brewer, I always had friends working for me. And I'm so lucky that it worked out employing friends because I know that doesn't work out a lot. But my friends and I always had respect: work is work, personal is personal.
Kyle was my first hire outside of the company and after him was Ava. I was very nervous about hiring someone off a Facebook ad. And they have both, like… I'm just so lucky. I think about it often how lucky I am to have the employees that we have. I’ve learned a few things: push aside your worries, doubts, and stress. Give people ownership when you hire them, because mutual trust is key. When you hire good people, it’s okay to let your guard down and let them thrive. That’s the most pleasant surprise: I’ve found people who bring balance to everyone’s plates.
AL: Sounds like you’ve learned a lot about yourself as well.
RW: There've been a lot of not-pleasant surprises in this business. But I’ve learned not to stress the big things. If it’s out of my control, I give it the minute of emotion it needs. As humans we’re taught to ignore our sadness and anger, but why don’t we give those emotions the same attention we give our happiness and joy? So I give myself time to be like ‘alright that sucks.’ I cry about it for a minute then it’s ‘what do we need to do?’ And I’m pretty proud of myself for that!
Courtesy of Life’s A Buch & Miranda Kate Creative
Celebrate with Life’s A Buch
Celebrate five years of bitchin’ booch with Rachael and the crew on Saturday, Feb. 11, 2-5 p.m., at Sweetwater Brewing Co. Try a one-off Blackberry Lavender kombucha and win local goodies in a fundraising giveaway for the Colorado Kitty Coalition.
Find Life’s A Buch
Click here to find a Life’s A Buch retailer near you.
