Prost Profiles: Katboocha owner Kat Eddy

Eddy opened Rochester's first kombucha brewery and then its first booch bar. She wants to expand the drink's horizons here.

Here’s the latest edition of the Prost Profiles series, highlighting someone in the local beverage scene. If you have someone you’d like to see profiled, send an email to clevelandprost@gmail.com.

It’s pretty amazing how parenthood totally changes everything. My wife Cass and I really look forward to quiet Saturday afternoons together and try to squeeze in some time to just enjoy each other’s company.

My family makes this all possible by watching our 15-month-old son Audie for a few hours. We’ve tried to find spots where we can unwind and converse. Katboocha, Rochester’s original kombucha brewery, fits that bill perfectly. At its tasting room at 106 Railroad St. in the Rochester Public Market district, folks can find some wildly creative kombucha concoctions and delicious local baked goods. (Because everything pairs better with a cookie from Dope Munchie Crew.)

Kat Eddy, 31, a Canandaigua native who now lives in Rochester’s North Winton Village neighborhood, is the creative force and founder of the imaginative spot, which specializes in unique flavor combinations for the fermented tea drink by highlighting seasonality and some of what makes this region special.

Eddy graduated from a 500-square foot side room at Rohrbach Brewing, where she held a pop-up sale on market Saturdays, to a sparkling taproom and production space across Railroad Street. And she and her “handyman,” her husband Clayton, accomplished all of this during a pandemic. Pretty remarkable and pretty incredible for someone who admittedly didn’t have much business sense when she started this journey through homebrewing in 2015.

Here’s a bit more about Kat:

Q: Let’s start at the beginning — what is kombucha and why should people like it?

A: Kombucha is simply fermented tea (using a SCOBY, which stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast). I always call it the non-alcoholic sister to beer and wine. We use a lot of the same brewing processes and it is a lot of the same concepts. It’s just that the end result has a low enough alcohol content that it’s considered non-alcoholic.

People might consider drinking kombucha, because it has a lot of beloved qualities like other beverages. But it is a quote, unquote “healthier swap.” For instance, if you want to cut out soda, kombucha is a great option, because it is on the sweeter or more flavorful profile but with way less sugar. You can view it the same way with beer. You are still consuming something that is craft, something that is fun, something that is unique.

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Q: How’d you get started with kombucha?

A: It started as a home hobby. I was looking for a way to add more microdiversity to my diet, which was totally a new concept for me. It started in 2015 with homebrewing. I had no inkling of making it a company at that point. I was 26 when I started Katboocha, so I had just the right amount of being young and thinking this was no big deal. Also, I thought I had a pretty good idea. It really just started as I am going to just try this out and see what happens.

Q: How’d you get here? Can you take us through a brief Katboocha-fueled journey?

A: I kinda knew the gravity of the situation. I knew it was going to cost money (to get a business running). I knew I had to get a space. I figured that out. Flash forward to 2017 and I had a value proposition, it’s like a business plan light. And I’m going around and kinda talking to people and seeing what they think about it. I ran across John Urlaub, who is the owner of Rohrbach’s. And he wanted to help me out in some way. Over the next six months, it just took shape that I would take up residency at the Rohrbach brewery on Railroad Street.

I was in a small, separate spot at the brewery, because of the risk of cross-contamination, because they’re a major brewery and don’t need me in the way. I had this tiny room. It was like 500 square feet. And I did the first years of Katboocha out of there. A lot of people probably still remember coming to that spot, especially on Saturdays during the summer. It was just this pop-up tent off the parking lot at Rohrbach’s. We also grew the whole wholesale business out of there.

Q: What went into the decision to relocate across the street?

A: I was also hoping (to find a new space). I like to call (the original space) my little incubator space. I probably stayed there a little longer than the usual incubated business. I always wanted to grow into having a taproom. We were at capacity. Rohrbach was wonderful, but there were limitations to being there. They did everything in their power to make it work. They were also like, ‘OK, Kat, you’re doing alright. You can do this.’ They were kinda nudging me out of the nest a little bit.

I had been looking for an alternative, new space for about a year before I found the one I am in now. I knew it was available, but I also knew it was small. It was very difficult to find the right commercial space, because you want to have a great location, a great landlord. I was running out of options when I called my current landlord. We made the whole space over and our landlord sunk money into it and so did I. We ended up extending the building in the back and that’s where all the production happens.

Q: How did y’all weather the pandemic?

A: We were doing pretty well with home delivery and it seemed like people were really rallying around for us. I just didn’t want to give up on it. I decided we just needed to go for it (and continue renovations in the new space).

Through all these renovations, I am getting married. The week that the concrete slab gets poured at Katboocha, I am getting married. It was a lot. It was nuts. It was a very stressful summer. During all the social unrest (in 2020), we made a lot of donations. I am taking this huge leap of faith. I am taking out a business loan, which I’ve never really done before.

Q: How has your process or production capacity changed in the past five years?

A: I just got my first Brite tank (a vessel used for carbonation and clarification before packaging or kegging). So that feels like I’m growing up. I am so excited. My husband helped install that and put in a glycol chiller. He’s never done that before, but he’s that kind of guy. And then we just filled it for the first time Monday. It has been baby steps. I started in five-gallon buckets and here we are now making it 60 gallons (or two barrels) at a time. We also just got a 7-barrel tank as well. We finally got our license for the new space in January 2021 and I literally wheeled fermenters full of kombucha across the street. They started in one spot and they came to the other.

Q: We’ve really appreciated how great the space is for just hanging out and enjoying conversation.

A: We’re a great little meeting spot for a friend hang. That’s very intentional. We want to be that meeting space where it’s comfortable, it feels fresh and there isn’t pressure. This is my first time doing this sort of thing. So we’re constantly making little changes here and there. It’s a great spot in the summer, too, when we have the garage door open. The street is really blossoming.

Q: Do you have a favorite kombucha you produce?

A: My all-time favorite would be the Vanilla Bergamot, which we make more in the summer months. That one is so good. Right now, we have the Pine Needle out. That’s so unique. It uses spruce tips (which are super citrusy) and juniper berries. It’s so interesting to me, the amount of apprehension I’m met with when talking about it. Because it’s just really nice. It’s really refreshing and fresh. It’s not perfume-y in the least. Doing something different is what keeps me interested.

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