As the canned cocktail industry continues to grow with momentum from brands like White Claw and Truly, a hard kombucha beverage made in Chicago is hoping to catch the wave and consumers' taste buds.
Luna Bay Booch, which hit the market last year, sells low-sugar, flavored canned hard kombucha that is non-GMO and gluten-free. Luna Bay’s hard kombucha flavors include ginger lemon, palo santo blueberry, hibiscus lavender and bourbon apple. Each are naturally fermented to 6% ABV and a four-pack sells for $16.
“It’s fresh and delicious,” said co-founder and CEO Bridget Connelly, a Chicago native, University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate and former corporate employee at Lululemon. “You can taste the quality.”
Connelly’s co-founder, Claire Ridge, is an experienced yoga instructor and previously worked as a stylist at Trunk Club.
Luna Bay beverages are brewed with real fruits, herbs and yerba mate tea, which gives the beverage a different flavor than other hard kombuchas that are brewed with green or black tea, Connelly said. Luna Bay produces its kombucha at Pilot Project Brewing’s incubator in Logan Square, as well as in Colorado.
“We launched and right away, our sales were off the charts,” Connelly said, adding that business has doubled each month in 2020.
Luna Bay is just one of many alcoholic kombucha brands on the market, such as JuneShine and Kombrewcha. Non-alcoholic kombucha is often consumed for its natural probiotic health benefits.
Luna Bay first began selling its products at Foxtrot, a Chicago-based convenience store and delivery startup. And this week, Luna Bay began exclusively selling its newest flavor, huckleberry basil, at Foxtrot stores in Chicago.
Besides Foxtrot, Luna Bay can be purchased locally at Binny’s, Whole Foods and Woodman’s, as well as restaurants and bars like Summerhouse Santa Monica and Benchmark.
Nationally, Luna Bay can also be purchased in California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Across the U.S., Luna Bay is available at about 1,000 distribution points. With her Lululemon connections, Connelly was able to sell Luna Bay at the brand’s first experiential store in Chicago, making it the first hard kombucha brand to be sold at a Lululemon location.
Luna Bay currently employs five full-time people. The founders raised funding to get the company started when Luna Bay launched, but Connelly declined to disclose the amount.
“We were taking a risk and trying to prove this was something that was going to take off in Chicago,” Connelly said. “People were in to hard kombucha. All of sudden, it was everywhere.”
