Founder Interview: Patrick Switzer, Co-Founder of NYCHA Kombucha

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

Our Swiss-made kombucha is brewed with loose leaf first flush Darjeeling green tea and offers four unique effervescent flavour journies for the palate with organic/vegan combinations of refreshing herbs, spicy ginger, rich fruity/herbal quince-pear and natural "PURE" kombucha all with a distinct harmony between sweet & sour. The accompaniment of high-quality natural ingredients for each kombucha flavour tells a story with an enticing beginning, juicy middle and a long sweet aftertaste. NYCHA is found across Switzerland mainly in mid to high-end cafes, bars, local deli's, restaurants as well as organic grocery stores, spas, and yoga studios.

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

In 2012, at roughly the same time while Christoph (Swiss) was working towards his PhD in San Diego/Illinois and Copenhagen (where NŸ gets its Danish inspiration) and Patrick (Canadian) was racing the world cup downhill skateboarding race series they were introduced to and began passionately experimenting with brewing kombucha. Christoph invited his twin brother Michael to the project to begin scaling up production in Switzerland and together produced the first batch of 3k test bottles in 2015. The three met in the fall of 2016, founded NYCHA Kombucha in 2017, produced 10k bottles and introduced craft kombucha in the Swiss beverage market. Together we combine our expertise in engineering, science, marketing, and gastronomy.

What‘s your current stage?

The company has experienced steady organic growth nationally with the main hub being close to home in german-speaking the northeast of Switzerland. NYCHA has been a hobby of passion next to our full-time professions and made possible by gypsy brewing in our free time in partnership with a beer brewery where our hands and minds are focussed on developing production process and the quality of taste.

What excites you most about Kombucha and its future?

Fermentation is having a re-birth in Switzerland and becoming a household topic. The era of industrialized foods is changing rapidly as people are choosing what they consume by how it makes them feel, rather than the price. Through fermentation workshops, presenting kombucha at food/beverage festivals, schools, and slow food initiative events we realize how the interest and demand in a "food is medicine" healthy lifestyle is rapidly increasing.

What are your expectations in attending the Kombucha Summit?

The Kombucha Summit is foremost about building a European kombucha brewer's community. We have all gathered immense knowledge surrounding the craft and have the ability to support each other through the stages of our companies. The kombucha industry (on the sides of production & awareness) in Europe is in its infancy and can be accelerated by a united effort to spread the word and collaborate in offering fabulous tasting kombucha!

Thanks, Patrick 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 10 days: You can still purchase the last tickets here and in case you have any questions, comments or suggestions, ping us any time at info@kombuchasummit.com or on Instagram.