more than a drink

Products and practices that support good health, community and opportunities for connection.

We are Cruz Kombucha

It all started with a visit to a kombucha bar on Maui. The kombucha was light & refreshing. There was also a sense of connection and community that created a very special experience. That feeling stuck with me and I knew I wanted to create something like that back home.

 

Let’s Get Brewing

I started to make kombucha in my home kitchen and experimented with various flavor combinations. I eventually moved into a commercial kitchen. This gave me space to develop additional flavors and to brew larger batches to make our kombucha available at farmers’ markets, cafes, breweries and other local businesses. And that is how Cruz Kombucha came to be.

Family Owned

We are a small family business (woman owned). We enjoy creating interesting and delicious kombucha flavor combinations, sharing information about the benefits of kombucha, and combining that with opportunities for community and connection.

I've paired my background in the hospitality industry with my experience building and scaling several large organizations to develop a unique approach to creating and operating a functional health beverage business.

Our focus on health, community & connection shines through when interacting with employees, customers, vendors and partners.

FAQs

  • Kombucha is a refreshing sparkling fermented tea drink.

  • Cruz Kombucha is 100% natural and made with just a few ingredients…filtered water, organic tea, organic cane sugar (for the fermentation process) and organic live kombucha cultures. Then we flavor the kombucha using locally sourced organic fruits, herbs, roots and other botanicals.

    No added sugars or fillers.

    We source local produce from farms including Rodini, Oya, Live Earth, Far West, Borba, Pleasure Point Orchard, P&K, Kashiwase, Spade & Plow, Ground Swell, KEM, Schletewitz, Rodriguez and Lee Family Farms.

  • Kombucha is a rich source of probiotics, B vitamins, amino acids and antioxidants. It can help with digestion, gut health and building immunity. Kombucha is recognized for its detoxifying, energizing and health-supportive properties.

    Our Kombucha is organic, vegan and gluten-free and we use all locally sourced organic produce in our flavors.

  • Sugar is one of the ingredients in kombucha and is mainly used by the SCOBY during the fermentation process. Most of the sugar ferments out during the primary fermentation process resulting in a low sugar, low calorie drink. All of our flavors have under 3g of sucrose per 8 ounce.

  • Kombucha is tea that has been fermented. We use white and green tea in our base so there is some caffeine but not much. The fermentation process naturally reduces the amount of caffeine. Even people who are sensitive to caffeine can usually drink kombucha. Our kombucha has under 11 mg of caffeine per 8 ounces.

  • Cruz Kombucha is considered a non-alcoholic kombucha.

    There may be trace amounts of alcohol from the fermentation process (under .5% alcohol).

  • A SCOBY is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast and is formed as part of the fermentation process.

  • We continue to find ways to eliminate waste and conserve resources. We purchase in bulk from local businesses, compost our tea leaves, compost our fermented fruit or use it in other recipes. We encourage everyone to bring back their clean glass bottles & growlers for refills (we offer a credit for returned bottles). We keep our food packaging to a minimum, avoid plastics in our manufacturing & distribution, and source organic local produce from nearby producers.

  • It is important to us to make contributions back into the community. We will donate 5% of sales to local organizations. We have selected Common Roots Farm Santa Cruz https://commonrootsfarm.org/ as our organization for 2022, 2023 and 2024.