The Alimond Show
Welcome to The Alimond Show --join us as we share our entrepreneurial guests' stories, uncover their secrets to success, and explore the unique paths they've taken to build thriving businesses in our community.
In each episode, our host, Aliyah Dastour, sits down with a diverse group of local business owners, from the corner cafe to the boutique shop, from tech startups to family-run enterprises. We peel back the curtain to reveal the trials, triumphs, and transformational moments that have shaped their entrepreneurial journey.
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The Alimond Show
Stephanie Taylor CEO & Owner of Remnant Farm Kombucha
When life handed them food allergies, the founding family of Remnant Farm Kombucha turned to a paleo diet and stumbled upon the fermentation fad that would pivot their path. Our latest episode features the founder and CEO who whisks us away on their personal odyssey from food sensitivities to the effervescent world of hard kombucha brewing in Haymarket, Virginia. Discover the artistry that transformed a culinary conundrum into a thriving business, and get ready to be intoxicated by the entrepreneurial spirit that bubbles throughout their story.
It's not every day you get to peek behind the curtain of a brand's journey from concept to reality, but we're airing out all the secrets. Tune in for a masterclass in branding, digital marketing, and the sheer grind of daily entrepreneurship. Our guest, seasoned with years as a personal trainer and nutritionist, shares valuable insights on building a balanced team and harnessing the power of analytics and SEO. Their stories of positivity, risk-taking, and making a digital splash are not just inspiring but packed with practical wisdom for any aspiring entrepreneur.
Wrapping up, we sip on the profound connection between dietary choices and health, as our guest reflects on the symbiotic relationship between our food, body, and community. There's something to be learned from their tales at beer festivals where Remnit's hard kombucha turned skeptics into enthusiasts. For those intrigued by the flavorful fusion of health and indulgence, we reveal how you can experience Remnit Farm Kombucha firsthand, whether visiting their brewery or connecting with them online. This episode promises to ferment your curiosity and may just ferment your entrepreneurial aspirations into action.
So I am the founder and CEO of Remnit Farm Kombucha and we are mainly known for making hard kombucha specifically. So we have a brewery right in Haymarket, starting out with being distribution focused and just a couple of years into it and things are moving along.
Speaker 2:So- oh, my goodness, tell me how this started. Like, how did you come up with the idea of why kombucha?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so many years ago I had a couple of my children that had food allergy issues and I started doing a little bit of research into what was going on, why they were sick all the time, and it sounded like they were digestive issues specifically related to our diet. And then I also read that if a mother has issues with her diet, typically it's passed on to her children, and so I knew I had issues with dairy and meat specifically. So from that point I started researching very heavily nutrition. I had already been researching nutrition in general, which is always fascinating to me, and I came across the paleo diet. So the paleo diet is a grain-free diet. It's dairy-free, low-processed food, so you're eating just the best quality food that you can, but specifically cutting out specific things. So I immediately cut wheat out of our diet and then moved on to cutting dairy out. And my middle daughter specifically she went from being the sickest kid to the healthiest. Wow.
Speaker 1:So doing the paleo diet, the hard part was is there were, I felt, like, no treats. I felt very restricted, and this was years ago, so there just wasn't all these alternatives that there are today. I feel like it's constantly. There's great things being added to the market, but back then it felt very limiting and I felt like there was no's all over the place. So kombucha I found kombucha over at Wegmans and gave it a go. I had my first one. I think I got like a green algae one or something and I was like, okay, that one's probably a little too far.
Speaker 1:So then I went the next time and I ended up getting like a ginger flavored kombucha. I love the ginger flavored. And as soon as I had that one, I was like this feels like a treat again. I feel like I can enjoy life as long as I can have this kombucha. So I started drinking kombucha and I started buying it every single day and my husband after a little while was like, hey, your little hobby over here is getting expensive. And I was like okay. And so I was like, well, let's make it.
Speaker 1:So it was my idea to make kombucha. Well, I got this whole kit online and I made kombucha one time in my whole life and I was like I will never do this again. I did not enjoy the process at all, but I gave it a try, and my husband just happens to have a culinary degree, so yeah. So he sees me in the kitchen fumbling and mumbling around and he's like here, scoot over, let me do this, let me do it. So he makes his first batch of kombucha and he puts in fresh squeezed lemon juice and raspberry and ginger. And I'm not kidding. The very first batch he made. I was like this is ridiculous, I could never compete with this. So he started making our kombucha at home and this is over 10 years ago now and he would make it, and he would make it in a little crock and fill up a growler and I would drink the whole thing and he'd be like you cannot drink the whole thing and I was like, well, it's so stinking good.
Speaker 2:I like it so good yeah.
Speaker 1:So I was like you're gonna have to make more. So our crocks kept getting bigger and expanding, of course. And then, finally, back in 2019, we moved out to Remnant Farm and he just was, I think, really inspired by nature. Just you know, it just seemed like the artistic side in him came out in a really powerful way and he went from making crocks of kombucha to, like these huge vats of kombucha.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:And then we were hanging out at a brewery in Warrenton, virginia, called Powers Farm Brewery, and they're farmed at table. So we were so into the farming and regenerative agriculture we just felt very at home there. And so he was talking to them about fermentation in general and they said you know, we would love for you to make your kombucha here at the brewery. So that's how it all began was 2019. And that was just our regular soft kombucha. So and I'm sorry if I'm talking too much- no, no, no, it's a long story.
Speaker 2:No, please listeners wanna hear this.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, I wanna hear this. Okay, great, thank you. So then I think it was probably a year into making regular kombucha. He was like you know, I really love this, I would love to do this full time. And I was like I just don't know if that's possible to make a living off of making regular kombucha and I'm sure it is, but that you know, that's how my brain was working at the time.
Speaker 1:So I was like, well, what about making hard kombucha? I don't feel like that's really out on the market yet. I don't think I've ever heard of that A lot of people haven't. So I was like it's not saturated yet. It's more of a West Coast idea at that time and still probably is. So I was like, how about make hard kombucha? So it took him six months to figure out how to make hard kombucha.
Speaker 2:He's a little scientist over there.
Speaker 1:He is a scientist. He was constantly just tinkering. He was buying books like this big on fermentation alone, just fermentation.
Speaker 2:I love how passionate he got with your little crazy idea of kombucha making he's like let me do this and he's part of it now.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it was meant to be Like. You know, when I look at our whole life leading up to this, it's like this. I mean him having his culinary degree. He had to put it aside for a few years, but now it's come back in a big way, so I love this. Sure he's happy about that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, he's doing it a lot. It's probably a lot more than he ever thought he would. But no, I mean he's absolutely passionate about it. It's perfect for him. He is a very much a scientist, which I didn't even know. We've been married for 20 years. I had no idea I was married to a scientist, so, but anyway, when he, after that six months you know trial and error he figured it out. And when I had a sip of his first batch of kombucha at Powers Farm Brewery, I was like this is crazy. I cannot believe he figured this out. I can't believe it tastes like this. I'm going to go make sure it gets out there everywhere. So that was like, you know, just that little spark, that aha moment. Yeah, so that was in, let's see. That was in August of 2022 or 2021.
Speaker 1:Wow, it's not recent, but it's not like so long ago, that's awesome, right, I know it feels like long ago, but it's like, oh wow, it wasn't. It wasn't that long ago. So we were just making it for Powers at that time, the brewery and then we learned that because we're licensed as beer in the state of Virginia, we could do a contract brew with other breweries in the area Awesome. So that's how we started selling, was we started selling to other breweries in the area and they were able to put it on their tap as if it's their own product and sell it, you know, like it belongs to their brewery. Okay, and it's an alternative now to their beer, so they have a gluten-free, healthier product. That's in the realm of like cider and things like that. That's awesome. But, yeah, just a no, no middleman needed.
Speaker 2:And so that's how we started when they sell that and they pass it as their own. I guess are they able to give you, like, some type of credit or anything? It's up to the brewery.
Speaker 1:Okay, so because of ABC, the laws are pretty strict and we have to be careful and adhered to that. Yes, so we can't go to a brewery and say, you have to give us credit, okay, but of course a lot of them do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was gonna say like get your name out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we have a relationship with most of these breweries and I guess all of our breweries, and you know, it's something where they want people to know that this is coming from remnant farm. I love that. But I have bumped into some people in very far away, as far as DC, Fredericksburg, and I say, have you ever had a hard kombucha? And they say yes, and I'm like, where you know, like how dare you right?
Speaker 1:Where'd you have it? And they're like at this brewery. I was like, okay, that was my kombucha, that's fine, you can have that. So but yeah, we recently signed on with the distributor and that's just very much what you do when you own a brewery and they started, you know, helping us with the distribution, and so now we're getting into restaurants, grocery stores, whole Foods yeah, places right here in Leesburg. So, yeah, things went from, you know, little batches. We also moved our facility, our production, into Great Main and Haymarket and you're all over now. Oh, yeah, no, we, yeah, we've, it's been, it's been moving, but we went from being able to make 120 gallons at our max to now 900 gallons Holy moly, yeah. So we really ramped up production. So this whole year is about me selling, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I'm gonna have to buy one, because these look very delicious. Yes, very refreshing. So do you mind showing the bottle off a little bit and tell us about the flavor and how you come up with these concoctions?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. This is our Ricky Bobby is what we named it. It's a ginger and lime flavor, so play on a Moscow mule and it's literally fresh ginger and lime that goes into this one. It's about six and a half or 7% on the ABV, so it doesn't taste like it, but it definitely has a house of hall in it.
Speaker 2:I love that little saying right there. That's a fun one.
Speaker 1:So there's a story behind each one, on the crazy person behind all this. So we have a friend named Ricky and he is one of the owners of Truvye Brewery in Haymarket and he's a single dad. He's the owner of the brewery and he's also a triathlete. And one day he said this, this to me, which was Stephanie, you just have to take the bitch out of your heart, and I was like that needs to go on a logo.
Speaker 2:Who says things like that?
Speaker 1:So anyway, so that's where this one came from and, yeah, this one's obviously been doing very well, being very well received, so we really really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:So this one's ginger and lime, and then this one, and we have a few, but these are just two of our. These are probably our most popular right now and this is our Jerry's Jungle Juice. So this one came about because my husband literally like had a bunch of leftover tea. That's how we flavor most of our kombucha and it's like an herbal fruity tea. So he had some like pineapple tea, some mango tea, dragon fruit, and he was like I only have a little bit of each, so I'm going to stick it all together, and he said it reminded him of jungle juice. So, anyway, that's how we came up with the Jerry's Jungle Juice.
Speaker 1:I love that yeah so each one, each one we try to be, you know, that's kind of yeah just trying to have fun because it's alcohol and that's what the breweries do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly so, and I love the little designs and the little memorable pieces. Almost like an inside joke, but we're all in it.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. It gives you know a story to tell when people like to hear that story. Exactly. But yeah, now I work with a company that's local as well Tisgy, right out of Herndon. Yeah, she's a woman-owned business CEO and I could not do any of this without them.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:I have so many amazing people around me.
Speaker 2:And is the red one. Oh, it's hard too. I see that Okay.
Speaker 1:I brought only hard today, that's okay.
Speaker 2:That's totally fine Tell us about the soft one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we do have our soft kombucha, but, believe it or not, I think and unless I'm wrong, somebody might correct me I believe it's actually harder to sell soft kombucha than hard kombucha, and maybe that's what we were thinking. So we went through the process of getting approval on the hard side and now we've just gotten approval on the soft side. So with our soft kombucha, obviously we make the soft to make the hard. Yes, yes, yes, we are just now starting to ramp that up and get that product out as well now, yeah, so that's that's amazing.
Speaker 1:You got a busy month year ahead of you. Yes, I think I have a busy year ahead of me.
Speaker 2:That's a good thing, so I'm happy for you, thank you. Thank you. Tell me about marketing for your kombucha drinks. How are you on social media website? How are you getting out there?
Speaker 1:So again, this company, tizgy. They not only help me with all my logos and labels and everything like that, but they run my website for me. Okay, they have come alongside me to help me with my social media, because you obviously have to have social media, yes, so yeah, they make posts for me. And then over the past couple of years I've had friends come along, some of you that are business owners, and they're like Steph, you have to have social media, because I was very bad about it.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know, we all start somewhere I know.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so we've all just been helping out with posting online, trying to come up with content, but really the main focus has just been getting the product out there and then letting people know where it is. Yeah, and I think for running a business, it's like you can just constantly be a little all over the place all the time, and that's how I typically am wired. Every morning I wake up I have a new idea.
Speaker 2:I love that. Your husband's like what you got for me today, sweetie.
Speaker 1:He's actually like hey, one thing you know, and I have an operations guy too and they're like you're zooming Calm down Like a cat, let's focus on it, yeah. They're like you need to calm down and focus on this one piece at a time, and I appreciate that because I think they're right.
Speaker 2:That's why you guys are good for each other. Balance each other out. Yes, Just like Kabucha.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's important to have a team. And then I do have somebody on my team specifically that's on the back end and he's looking at the Google Analytics and the SEO, and so, yeah, we are trying to be more than a mom and pop. Yes, we are running our company very intentionally. So I do have an operations guy and I do have a marketing person and I have a CFO in the company Perfect, yeah. So I was like I never wanted to come into this and just kind of do it. I was like I want to create something, All the way.
Speaker 1:All the way, yep, all or nothing. All or nothing. I want a national brand. I want a lot of employees one day Okay.
Speaker 2:When you get really famous. I'm going to be like we interviewed her first, maybe.
Speaker 1:Possibly. Yes, no, definitely it's happening. I was going woo, yeah, so, but yeah, no, I mean, I think you have to. You know, if you're going to go and do something, you have to go and do something and you have to be intentional about it.
Speaker 2:So On that note, there's a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs listening in. What advice would you give to anybody who's thinking of, like you know what, I want to start my own thing, but I don't know if it'll work. I don't know where to start, I don't know. I don't know anything. Yeah, like should I do it, but they want to. It's always in the back of their mind, yeah, what advice would you give to them?
Speaker 1:I mean it might sound silly, but I do listen to a lot of motivational speaking every single day. I don't go a day without putting positive words into my mind because I think that's important. But I would say number one is you never make the shots you don't take. You know. So we can go through life and be content with you know where we are, or you can make the decision that you want to go out and you want to do something, and I will say if you give 50% effort, you're only going to get 50% return. 70% effort, 70% return. So when you become a business owner and an entrepreneur and you're going to go do something, don't look for balance in your life, because it's probably not going to be there, but if you give 100% effort, you're absolutely going to get a return.
Speaker 1:I believe that there's plenty of room out there for all of us to be successful. It's just the effort that goes behind it. So you don't have to be the most well educated, you don't have to know it all. There are people out there that will come alongside you and help you and you learn along the way. And so I think if you're a lifelong learner and you go into it knowing that this is going to be a learning process. I really do believe that we, all you know, have the ability to do whatever it is that we're after. But again, I'll be honest, it's not hard, or sorry, it is hard.
Speaker 1:I was like wait, sorry it is. It is hard, but it's doable, you know so anyway, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm sure they're going to appreciate that piece of advice. For any people who are having some doubts, can you tell me any hardships that you've had while trying to start a business and how you overcame, or if you learned?
Speaker 1:something from that? Yeah, sure, so absolutely. I mean I feel like in any business venture, very quickly you have to learn that part of the process is problem solving. So I think, over a little bit of time, you don't expect things to go smoothly You're going to expect to hit roadblocks, and so when those roadblocks come, the more that you overcome, the easier it is to get through them. So problem solving number one is huge. And I think another thing too, as a business owner and for me personally with my own story, is you really do have to be able to believe in yourself. If you're not confident and you don't think you're going to be able to do it, you're probably not going to. So you have to be able to have the confidence to stand up for what's right for you and your company and you cannot worry about what else is going on around you.
Speaker 1:I did have to make some changes in my company. I had different team members last year, but we didn't line up. It wasn't the same vision. They don't have the passion and the belief that I have. They don't treat people the way that I do. We don't have the same values and so therefore, now they're not part of my daily operations and since removing them, things have gone very drastically in a much better direction and at the end of the day, I put the responsibility back on myself because that was my fault, that I was allowing other people to come in and have say over something.
Speaker 1:That is my dream, this is mine, and so, anyway, having the right team around me now, where they're my support system, we don't override each other, we work with each other. So, but yeah, and along those lines as well, is learning how to work with others. We're all wired very differently. And again, my operations guy, he came in and he was like your standards are very high, that's very clear. We understand you, we get that, but if you're not going to be able to learn how to work with others, you're not going to get very far.
Speaker 1:And he basically told me he said, most successful companies out there are companies that learn to work with others. And I heard him loud and clear. I was like give me the tools. I don't have all these tools, I don't know everything, but once I hear it I'm like, ok, well, I'm just going to have to trust the process and, little by little, when I've taken his advice and I've applied certain things, I'm like, ok, he was right, he was right again. So, anyway, I've learned a lot in a short period of time. But again, that was part of what I wanted through this process.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, too, that you're also able to take feedback and use it into your own. A lot of people are reluctant to be like no, I want to do it my way. So, as he said, you have to learn how to be with different kinds of people and also take advice that maybe you don't necessarily think or want to do, but then when you try it, it's like OK, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's not easy. I mean especially when you're the boss, when somebody's coming in and giving you some constructive criticism. I think that's another piece of being successful A leader is. You have to be able to take that and appreciate it and learn from that and not take it personally. You have to be able to put your feelings aside and say OK, if I truly want to grow as a person, as a leader, as a boss, I'm going to have to take the constructive criticism, because if things aren't working one way, why is it? And if somebody comes along and says this is the reason, it's up to me to listen. But I'm not going to lie. I mean, it's definitely hard. It's hard yeah.
Speaker 2:Hey, you're telling it like it is.
Speaker 1:I'm like I'm going to be a humble pie for sure, Yum yeah.
Speaker 2:And can you tell me a little bit about the sustainability that kombucha, the process of it? Like I read a little bit about it but I'm kind of like mind boggled about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So thing number one is that it's tea-based. So we're dealing with a product, and I could get into the weeds on this. But, talking about sustainability in general, there's a lot of crops in America that are being grown as a monocrop. And what's a monocrop? I'm sorry, a monocrop is like one field of wheat, one field of soy, one field of barley, and that's just commercial agriculture in general, and I don't want to sit here and trash what that is, but I believe in regenerative agriculture. I'm not even practicing it yet, but that's something that I want to move into. But along those lines, when a lot of products are made, they're taking something that's been commercially farmed with monocrops, and in order to grow monocrops, you have to spray pesticides and things like that on them to keep the insects from tearing it up, and so, anyway, we have no products like that in here. So it's a product that I would like to have more sustainable one day by the sugar.
Speaker 1:So Remnit Farm is a small hobby farm right now, but ultimately, what I would love to do is have, you know, fruit that I'm able to grow on my farm, that I'm able to put directly back into the product, but then, on top of that, we also don't pasteurize our product and there's no preservatives in it. So, again, going back to that sustainability right now, my product's probably not the most appealing for a nationwide right now because it has to be refrigerated, but to me it's a healthier product. Yes, and the feedback that I'm getting from a lot of people is they're like I'm not getting a hangover, like I felt that last night, but I don't have a hangover and I'm like because all these products that we're consuming, unfortunately do you have, like I said, the monocrop, which means it's been exposed to who knows how many toxins, and then it is pasteurized and it does have preservatives. It's got the sulfites in it. Some of them are higher in sugar.
Speaker 2:Basically, all the stuff that we shouldn't even be having in our bodies are not good for us, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the human body is amazing. I've studied nutrition for many years, yeah, and so therefore I know what the human body is capable of doing, and that's up to our body to process and to get rid of it. But you want to try to eliminate as much as you can, if you're aware. As Americans, we wonder why we feel like junk so many times. And it's because of the stuff that we're putting into our body. I believe it. Yeah, so again, with our farm, we have other farms around us. We don't do everything perfectly.
Speaker 1:We're nowhere closer in here, but we do try to be mindful about getting our products, if we can, from local farms that are farming the same way as we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, and can you tell me why that's important to you? I know you have a little bit of a background with your kids not being able to digest certain foods. Why is that important to you? Why else?
Speaker 1:So I believe that well, so, first of all, the word remnant means to me to live a life that's set apart, and that's why it's a tagline in my branding as well.
Speaker 1:I believe that we live in the land of convenience and we're so comfortable and everything's so convenient, but I just don't think that's the right thing.
Speaker 1:There's a reason why a lot of people get sick and don't feel well, and so I've been a personal trainer, a CrossFit coach and nutritionist for many years, and I have felt the difference of putting the right things in my body, putting the wrong things in my body, and so that's how it became so important to me personally. And when we moved down on our farm and actually started doing the farming, growing and raising, we've had animals on our farm and then we've also had fruit trees and berries and things like that. And I think the other piece to it is when you grow your own food or when you see things happening. The connection is so different than when you just go into the grocery store. And again, I know that none of this is convenient. I'm not saying this is how everybody needs to live, but that's what means so much to me personally is having a little bit more of a connection, a more understanding, and then therefore, I have a more appreciation of what's going into my body and why I'm consuming what I'm consuming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely I also have kind of maybe a dumb question, but I know Kombucha has the probiotics in there. Does it die when it's in?
Speaker 1:contact with the alcohol? Yeah, no, that's a great question. So there's a lot of science out there. There's some companies that say that the probiotics are in there. There's some science out there and some companies that say there's no way. So we had to do a little bit of our own research to come up with our own answers and we sent our product off to a lab. We do believe that the healthy bacteria in Kombucha cannot most of it cannot survive in a higher ABV, so most of that healthy bacteria is killed off. Unfortunately and again, this is our own research, I don't want to say definite, but it does look that way.
Speaker 1:However, the cool thing that I never here talked about is that the healthy acids that you find in any fermented foods so we're talking sauerkraut, kimchi, everything, all the. It doesn't just have probiotics, but it has these healthy acids in them. That is 100% carried over in our hard Kombucha, which I thought was fascinating. Yeah, so I. And then what these healthy acids can do in your body is it can actually help you not absorb all the carbohydrates that you're taking in, and if that's the case, I think that is another reason why you don't feel like junk the next day after having the hard Kombucha.
Speaker 2:I also like I see sometimes when I pick up a Kombucha from like whole grains, whole grains, whole foods, they always have like that little stuff at the bottom. I don't like it, it creeps me out. And I don't see that on yours, so I really like that. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:No, no, that's, that's the good, healthy bacteria. Well, I'm sorry, but it creeps me out. You need to drink it. No, I'm just kidding, Got it? Yeah, I totally understand. A lot of people are weirded out, but that's all it is. It's. You know, not not to gross too many people out there, but Kombucha is a living. It's a living thing. Bacteria culture yeah, Exactly, the bacteria in the culture. It's alive. There's, you know, I don't know if there's like billions of strains in there, but it's a lot. So that's what you're seeing. Okay, I just drink it, but you know.
Speaker 2:I'll close my eyes and drink it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll just say it doesn't bother me, but I understand. I've been drinking it for a long time now Okay, so I trust you.
Speaker 2:I think you know what you're talking about. And then can you tell me any stories? I keep saying can you tell me? Oh no, it's okay, it's okay, it's fine. Would you mind sharing with us any memorable experiences that you have in your journey with people drinking your kombucha or just anything silly when you're making it?
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, okay, yeah. So I think some of the funnest stories for me are probably when we go to a beer fest. So again, we're licensed as beer, so we're kind of hanging, we're hanging out with the breweries. So you know, you can imagine like my husband and I show up with breweries and we've got hard kombucha and especially in the beginning, they're looking at us like we're crazy hippies and I'm like I get it, we are, it's fine, we got it, we know who we are. So we've had a lot of people come up to us and be like kombucha, like they just always I don't wanna say always there are those critics out there that think they know what it's gonna taste like. They have a negative mindset behind it and then when they come and try it, they're blown away. So I do have a couple of recordings on my social media of some people that you know they walked around a beer fest and we're talking like 30 plus other breweries that they went and visited and then they were like ah, okay, we'll try the hard kombucha. And this is one of my favorites.
Speaker 1:This one was out at Fred Tobrefest in Fredericksburg. It was a couple of guys. They were dressed up as if they were in leader hosans. Okay, what is that it's like? I mean Fred Tobrefest German beer. You know? Yes, I know these guys, they were all decked out, and I mean the biggest, most masculine men there you know, Kombucha, yeah, and they're like, oh gosh.
Speaker 1:And they told me that what they did is they took my sample and they walked away, and they and I didn't know any of this, because there's people all around and they were close to a trash can. So they're like just in case we hate it, you know, we'll toss it, you know. So they go and take a sip of it and they come back over to me. They're like this is the best thing we've ever had.
Speaker 1:Thank you, yes, this is the best product here. And then they wouldn't leave my tent and they kept hanging out and it was the Ricky Bobby that pulled them in. That's funny. I love that. It was a great testimony. So I went ahead. I was like I'm sorry, but you guys are gonna have to go ahead and you know we're gonna have to record this. And they were very happy to give the feedback. And it wasn't just those two men, there were quite a few people there that day that ended up hanging out with us and we're just like we cannot believe that this hard kombucha tastes like this and at 7% alcohol, it just blew them away. They were very impressed.
Speaker 2:Now they're fans of kombucha. Now they're fans of kombucha. Whether it's hard, it's kombucha, Exactly exactly so.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that's definitely one of my favorite stories. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Thank you for sharing that, and just to wrap things up here, if you could have one message that you could leave with our listeners, what would that message be? It can be in relation to kombucha, sustainability, life, anything.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. Well, this is what's been on my mind recently. I feel like, as you know, business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders, whatever you wanna call it people that are just out there after it. I think, at the end of the day, the best thing we can do is try to find balance in our life and, like I said in the beginning, I have not gotten there yet.
Speaker 1:I don't feel like I'm 100% where I wanna be, but that's where my heart is today is I want to, you know, have a successful company, do things for others, but I also wanna be able to have that quiet alone time, peaceful time at home with my family on my farm, and just be, you know, present in the moment. My children I have three children, 1917 and 13, and I'm watching them grow up so quickly and I'm like this is going very fast. So I would say, you know, as much as you can, try your best to find those little moments to slow down, be present in the moment, enjoy it, because those little kids, or, you know, your spouse or whatever it just life goes by so fast and you don't wanna miss it. So, anyway, that's my advice.
Speaker 2:That's a great note. No, Thank you so much for sharing that with us, and where can our listeners find you?
Speaker 1:So you can find me at either our brewery, which is in Haymarket, Virginia. We sub lease from Great Main. You can find us on our social media. We're on Instagram and Facebook and our website, and it's all remnantfarmcumbuchacom Perfect.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1:This was awesome, thank you.
Speaker 2:Appreciate it.