Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
A popular locally made fermented tea drink, known as kombucha and sold in Asheville as Buchi, has temporarily been pulled from the shelves at Whole Foods/Greenlife. Whole Foods pulled all kombucha drinks to make sure they were tested and shown to not exceed the .5% alcohol limit on the drink.
Sarah Schomber and Jeannine Buscher started making the drink in 2008. The fizzy quencher, sweet and vinegary, is known for packing B vitamins and healthy probiotics and enzymes. What started as a small business in Bushcher’s Montford kitchen has grown in popularity, and the two recently renovated a large warehouse in Reems Creek to increase production so they could meet demand.
Here’s the story from the drinkbuchi.com blog:
Beloved Community,
Whole Foods contacted Buchi along with all the other kombucha producers on their shelves across the U.S. and informed us that kombucha could not be sold in their stores until a third party certified that our products were indeed below the 0.5% alcohol limit to be labeled nonalcoholic. We are still delivering to all other retailers as normal.
Their email indicated that they had some of the national brands tested and found that many of them had mildly elevated levels of alcohol (above 0.5%). Buchi was not one of the companies tested, as we only have ties with Whole Foods through their recent acquisition of Greenlife. Due to more demand than we can supply Buchi had already sold out its inventory at Greenlife before Whole Foods requested suppliers to hold future shipments until third party testing is completed.
We are in the process of getting third party lab testing done on all our batches as a preemptive protocol to continue the flow of Buchi to our awesome community. Despite these new challenges for the kombucha industry, Buchi is well positioned to quickly adapt to the new protocols as our expansion is just getting underway.
Our desire to remain a regional brewery is a huge advantage for us and this new industry protocol presents an opportunity for our regional growth. Since Buchi is produced so close to its retail outlets, we can insure that it’s fresh and of the highest quality when it reaches the consumer. This allows us to serve our local community in a much more effective way than the nationally distributed brands.
To be clear, Whole Foods is attempting to regulate the consistency of all the kombucha on their shelves by establishing protocols that will help ensure that the alcohol limit is indeed below a 0.5% limit. We welcome these protocols and support the efforts of our industry to self-regulate and ensure all kombucha sold meets the limit.
Be Well. Drink Well. Drink Local.
