Booyah
Lisa Driver, founder of Booyah Vitality and a naturopathic nutritional therapis.
What is your background, and was it a natural progression to what you do today?
Lisa. I’ve been in the nutrition and fitness industry since 1995. I taught general fitness and nutrition. Philip, my husband’s background is a commercial diver. When we had the children, he had a break from diving, had various businesses, and went back to diving in 2008. The kids were relatively young, so I couldn’t carry on with what I was doing working evenings. So I sold up my business, which I had for 15 years. But my heart was with nutrition, and I was very interested in how you could use food as a medicine. So I studied for a three-year diploma in naturopathic nutritional therapy in London and qualified in 2017.
I then qualified as a Pilates instructor, went back into teaching, conducted one-to-one nutritional consultations, and created an online course called The Body Reset, which I am still doing.
In the pilates classes, I mentioned to the members a recipe with some turmeric; if you start having it regularly, it may help your aches and pains. So they told me that if you make it, we’ll buy off you. So I started making the turmeric drink. I then started making kombucha, and the members again bought it. Through my nutritional therapy course, we learned about fermented products. How good they are for your health, gut, liver and immune system. Many people who go down a nutritional therapy route have had a few health issues and want to feel better. I also wanted my kids and family to live healthy lives, so I wanted to gain more knowledge to make that happen.
When the pandemic hit, Philip was working abroad, diving; he came back on Christmas Eve of 2019. He didn’t have any work abroad with the travel ban. So I said you better learn how to make the kombucha. I knew how to make small batches. So yeah, I threw him right in there, and he started to make it in larger quantities.
During the lockdown, our son Leon was in Australia and couldn’t travel back home. So our daughter Phoebe was teaching singing online via Zoom from one room. I was teaching pilates online from the dining room, and Philip was brewing kombucha in the kitchen. Our garage was set up for the first fermentations of the kombucha. Leon’s bedroom was repurposed as box storage.
We started delivering to people we knew and my class members on Fridays through lockdown, and demand grew. We had the opportunity of taking on one of the huts on the Hastings Pier in the summer of 2020. It went bonkers. Yeah. In the first year, 90% of the people we spoke with didn’t know what kombucha was. By the second year, it was about 50%. By this year, 20% of people didn’t know what it was.
We were approached by a local company that had just started up themselves called Larking (wearelarking.co.uk). They are great, by the way, and passionate about what they do. They asked whether we had thought about doing a rebrand.
Our branding didn’t feel right, I’d made it more or less myself, and I’m not a graphic designer, so we said yes. It was black and gold and in clear bottles. I’d always wanted to use brown bottles because it helps retain the vitamins and minerals because of the dark glass. But, you have to make sure the bottles are substantial enough for kombucha. Some glass is too thin, and bottles can explode.
“Many people don’t drink alcohol, so kombucha is a great alternative. But many people drink alcohol, so it is good to get the balance and have it with something healthy. So I put together the cucumber, mint and lime kombucha to go with a gin.”
Who came up with the name?
Lisa. We were at home; sat around the dining room table, suggesting names for the business: 1066 Kombucha and many words associated with Hastings. Philip had briefly left the room, and as he walked back in, he shouted booyah! We all said yes, that’s it. So people knew our drinks were healthy, we added the word vitality. I Googled what booyah meant and the original name; although it is like a feel-good factor, it also means a healthy stew. We get a lot of comments on the name; people love it, as do we.
It took a while to get the taste we wanted as we did not want to use concentrate or flavour enhancements. We want to keep it fresh; so many people say our kombucha is the best they’ve tasted. We want people to feel the health benefits.
What health benefits come from drinking your products?
Lisa. The curcumin in turmeric is anti-inflammatory, but you need to have enough of it to make it work. So you can sprinkle some on your food and stuff, but you probably need more. Some shops sell little bottles of a turmeric shot, like what we do, but it might be 97% apple juice, which is excellent, but you still need to get enough turmeric in there to do the job it’s meant to do. So we do put a lot in so that people feel the benefits. It’s turmeric, ginger, cayenne pepper, lemon and filtered water; there’s not one calorie in there. It is pure and medicinal; people will have a shot a day. Some people have two on our recommendation, one for maintenance and two for aches and pains.
We are getting fantastic feedback from people who feel the difference sometimes in a week. We’ve had people tell us they have started running again. They hadn’t run for years because their joints ached so much. It can also help reduce cholesterol as well as have many more benefits.
Some people don’t like the taste, and we say add apple juice, that’s fine or add your honey. We’ve just won a few Great Taste Awards for pureness and the medicinal side of the product.
The kombucha creates probiotics and contains antioxidants, organic acids, vitamins and minerals. We have won a star for the cucumber flavour and two stars for our lemon and ginger. Unfortunately, the others still need to be submitted, but we will undoubtedly enter them for next year.
I’d been making dandelion coffee for myself. So we added that to our range; the dandelion root is excellent for detoxification. Also, it is a prebiotic which helps the probiotics in your gut flourish. So there isn’t any coffee or caffeine in it; it’s just an alternative. I usually have it with almond milk, which brings out the flavour. You pour some out of the bottle, warm it up and then warm your milk up, and you can drink it like a latte.
It sounds like a real family business, and your set-up is growing.
Lisa. Our son Leon is now full-time; he has just finished his supervisor role for the RNLI working between Camber and Bexhill. He came back from Australia mainly because he could see what we were doing and wanted to get involved.
We have invested in new machinery, so we are up-scaling. Through lockdown, we funded our living through second jobs. Philip started driving
for Sainsbury’s. He still does that twice a week. I still teach pilates and do my nutrition. So that keeps us ticking over; any money the business has created to date, we’ve ploughed back into it. Now everything is based in one unit, production, distribution, refrigeration storage and our office. We all work closely together; it is so much more enjoyable as a working environment.
As I mentioned, Phoebe has her own sing school business, which is thriving and in high demand. Still, she has always done the deliveries for Booyah Vitality. she handles shipping orders and local deliveries on Fridays and gets involved with our social media. It is unique having all the family involved in one business. Also, we have Lilly, a full-time team member, and although she has been brought in as a sales representative, she helps with everything.
“Hastings pier has been brilliant for brand awareness; we’ve had the last three summers there. So people have been able to try before they buy.”
So what are your plans for the Booyah Vitality?
Lisa. We are working on a new kombucha flavour and a few other products, so we look forward to adding them to our selection. We want to stay niche by stocking our products in the more farm-style shops and avoiding the larger chain supermarkets. We did our first trade show in Olympia in London, in the new businesses section. We got fantastic feedback and interest from Harrods, which would be amazing.
In 2023, we’d like to concentrate on getting out by doing festivals and markets. People want to chat and talk about their health, which is excellent. That’s my passion; I love talking and helping where I can. And some open days at the unit and give people a tour. People are welcome to come to the unit as we have created a counter for customers to try a taste and buy if they wish.