Charlotte's kombucha’s boom fizzled, but the drink is settling into its niche

The following article appeared in the January 12, 2026, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.

by Greg Lacour

Townes Mozer leads me from the taproom to the back, where Head Brewer John Watkins and his team brew beer and Mozer and his team make kombucha. It’s important to keep the spaces separate.

“We don’t want the gluten in the beer to get into the naturally gluten-free kombucha,” he explains, “and we don’t want any of the wild yeast and bacterias that are in the kombucha to get into our beer.”

Reasonable enough. But it’s a boundary that, among Charlotte-area breweries, only Lenny Boy Brewing has to consider. It’s the only one that started as a kombucha brewery — Mozer founded it in late 2011 — and began brewing beer later, in 2013. National kombucha sales continue to rise.

So why, in a city where seemingly everyone and his hamster brews beer, aren’t more brewers brewing ’bucha?

Mozer thinks. “I really don’t know why,” he finally says. “It is still a very niche product.”

Not long ago, though, kombucha seemed poised to break through in the Charlotte market — not overtaking beer, necessarily, but establishing itself alongside hard seltzers and locally distilled liquor as a viable alternative.

Kombucha is sweetened black or green tea fermented for as long as 30 days with a “pancake” of symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, or SCOBY. The SCOBY rests atop the brew and gradually converts alcohol from the yeasts into organic acids. The result is a sour, fizzy beverage that contains probiotics and antioxidants believed to enhance gut health. Kombucha originated in ancient China; the name likely comes from a misapplication of “konbucha,” a kind of Japanese kelp tea.

Health-conscious West Coasters popularized kombucha in the early 2000s. It didn’t really catch on east of the Mississippi. But by 2021, kombucha outlets like Queen B Booch, SUM Bucha and Updog had opened in Charlotte, and Mozer theorized that the city could become an East Coast kombucha capital.

All three have since closed, and while other Charlotte-area beer breweries sell kombucha, none that I can find produce it. That leaves Lenny Boy as the only survivor, and Mozer’s kombucha team — he calls them the Booch Boys — soldier on in back.

“I think the consumer knowledge on kombucha is a lot less in Charlotte and the East Coast, really the South — just the consumer education on it, what it is, why it’s good for you,” Mozer says. “I think maybe the barrier now is inflation and the cost to actually start a company.”

The nature of the drink may impede growth, too, especially compared to beer. Though kombucha contains a small amount of alcohol from fermentation, it’s not enough to give anyone more than the mildest of buzzes. State law designates kombucha with more than 0.5% ABV as an alcoholic beverage, and hard kombuchas usually don’t taste good, Mozer says.

The sourness of standard kombucha isn’t unpleasant, but you’re probably not going to gather a group in a taproom and down eight in one sitting. After a couple, he says, “you’re kind of kombucha’d out.”

I did find one enterprising gentleman who’s willing to at least test the theory. Heriberto Renta, a native of Puerto Rico, founded Borinquen Kombucha in 2019. (“Borinquen” is the ancient Taino name for Puerto Rico.) Renta ferments in a small shopping center on Spring Street SW, in the heart of downtown Concord. He doesn’t brew beer, but he recently added a small taproom next to the fermentation tanks. It has four taps for kombucha; five for beer from Triple C, Divine Barrel, Primal and Royal Bliss, breweries that sell his kombucha; and an array of liquor bottles above the bar. Want a kombucha cocktail? He’ll set you up.

But you don’t have to get drunk, and, at 31, Renta derives hope from his generation’s well-documented tendency to drink less than their parents and older siblings.

“I’m a millennial, and I don’t drink like that. I drink bourbon, and if I do, I might have one or two, and that’s maybe once a month,” he says. “If you’re into alcohol, we can put liquor in. ... But 60% of what I sold yesterday was nonalcoholic.”

Renta began to ferment kombucha as a Central Piedmont Community College student when he discovered how much he preferred it to soda. (His first fermentation tank was a 5-gallon Duke’s Mayonnaise container.) Mozer, 38, double-majored in business administration and environmental science at UNC Wilmington and grew fascinated with the fermentation process, especially when he learned he could work regionally grown, organic products into the beverage. For example, the Strawberry Limeade, one of Lenny Boy’s best-sellers, contains North Carolina-grown strawberries.

Which leads to an obvious question for Mozer: How often do you drink Lenny Boy kombucha? “Every day,” he says with a grin. “Yeah, man.” He adds that the kombucha does seem to have improved his gut health, but drinking Lenny Boy beer has made his gut bigger.

Greg Lacour is a journalist in Charlotte.

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