Founder Interview: Stanislaw Zaleski & Wojtek Zielinski, Founders of Brothers & Sisters Kombucha

Describe your product in one sentence and tell us about your brand.

Its all about being aware, of food products, ourselfs, our enviroment and just being thankful. Kombucha is about cooperation between microorganism, which day by day develop this beautiful beverage - that's why we decided no name our brand „Brothers and Sisters“ as we stand for cooperation between people and building aware community.

What‘s your story and how did you get started?

In 2016 in Warsaw there was no kombucha on market. Both of us was tired of choosing the lesser evil once standing in front of a shop shelf. Then, one day, we had a discussion about how wonderful it would be to have kombucha drink in our local stores and bars… Few weeks later, from our friend’s mother, we got a jar of 500 ml kombucha starter and we got into kombucha madness!- home brewing, experimenting, testing teas etc, which endend up establishing our own kombucha brand in mid 2017. Our first commertial batch was 600 liters !:)

What‘s your current stage?

We are currently producing around 30.000 bottles per month. The production is being held in a private soft drink facility where we are allowed to take care by ourselves of the fermenting batches and where we produce our final product- we pay for each produced bottle. We are selling kombucha nationally in local stores, bars, restaurants and we are also gettig into some bigger chain stores. We decided to get into kombucha buisness but both of us are working in other jobs. Since the begining, Kombucha was our side project, which has grown up already and now it has become challenging to run everything together. That’s why we decided to let a new partner in to our company to help us grow and build up a solid brand.

What excites you most about Kombucha and its future?

What excites us about kombucha in Poland is that kombucha use to be home brewed in the past in Poland, but because of history issues, it has become forgoten. Communism killed this habit- people were not able to afford or even buy tea and sugar at shop… Now when we are talking to people about kombucha they are telling us their memories about how their grandparents used to brew it at homes and force them to drink that every day! Regarding kombucha future we belive it will soon become a casual and popular drink. What’s wonderful about kombucha is that it’s such a simple stuff!- its only water, tea, sugar and microorganism starter- and then, its developing into such a rich, full of potential product!- we belive that’s why more and more people will be interested into kombucha and our goal is to give them this possibility!

What are your expectations in attending the Kombucha Summit?

We are really looking forward to meet you guys- talk about brewers issues, discuss kombucha problems, brainstorm and share the knowledge. Let's have fun and let's have more kombucha!

Thanks, Stanislaw & Wojtek for the interview! You keep reading — we keep posting more interviews from the exciting world of Kombucha!

For those of you interested in participating in October: You can purchase tickets here (less than 50 tickets left) and in case you have any questions, comments or suggestions, ping us any time at info@kombuchasummit.com or on Instagram.