Hannah Taylor is the owner of award-winning drinks business, Gut Feelings Kombucha.
Hannah has grown her love for kombucha – a fermented tea originally from China that’s claimed to be good for gut health – into a working passion since starting the business two and a half years ago.
Her aim is to offer a handmade, local alternative to the big-name kombucha brands found on supermarket shelves.
As well as being local, personality and transparency are key at Gut Feelings Kombucha.
Hannah regularly updates her social media pages with engaging stories and new products, such as seasonal kombucha flavour ranges.
With several refill stations dotted across the north-east, the business also aims to appeal from an ethical standpoint by encouraging less throw-away packaging.
With all of this in mind, you maybe wouldn’t have guessed that Hannah started it all at the age of 24 and without having any prior entrepreneurial experience.
“It’s never something I would’ve predicted,” says Hannah.
It’s been totally transformational to be honest.
“I never did business management and never really thought that I was going to end up running my own business.
Global beginnings
Before Gut Feelings Kombucha came to life, Hannah worked as a chef before travelling for a few years, which was when she was first introduced to kombucha.
However, with the drink continuing to follow her around on her travels across south-east Asia, Hannah took it as a sign for what might lie ahead.
“There was a very inspirational [kombucha] company in New Zealand,” says Hannah.
“They were living a fantastic life, making a beautiful product and it just sparked an interest for me.
“I was also in south-east Asia for a few months, and kombucha just kept popping up into my life.
I thought, ‘maybe I need to experiment with this’.
Slow and steady
Hannah came back home to Scotland in 2017, and began trying out her own kombucha recipes, learning from online videos and hearing from other people’s experiences.
She later set up her own cleaning business during this time to allow her to “test the waters” for a kombucha business idea she had bubbling in her mind.
“I started very, very slowly,” she says, and with several initial obstacles to overcome, slow and steady allowed her to win this kombucha race.
“I’m not the most confident of people,” says Hannah.
“It’s been hugely challenging having to go into places with a certain air of confidence and trying to convince people about a product that they’d never heard of before.
“[But] it’s definitely been huge for learning and for personal growth.”
Award success
In 2019, Gut Feelings Kombucha officially launched with Hannah picking up an award for the Young Business Woman of the year, from Highland Business Women Awards in its first year.
The business’s refill stations are situated in several local cafés and zero-waste shops including Refillosophy in Aberdeen and Butterfly Effect in Banchory.
With popular flavours like sweet and fizzy raspberry and mint always on tap, Hannah also recently launched a range of 300ml bottles to entice new customers.
Health
Making kombucha isn’t difficult, Hannah feels, but unravelling fact from fiction behind its health benefits is a little more complicated.
She says: “There is bacteria in it and it is very much a live, fermented product… [which can] put a lot of people off trying to make it.
“Once you’ve got a rhythm on the go, it’s not very difficult to make.
“I think from experience you see people’s gut health and mobility really improving quite significantly just from drinking kombucha.
“But, there’s not the scientific lingo to be able to understand what’s really going on yet.
“I think it’s a really big problem within the kombucha industry.
“A lot of people are throwing these claims around as a way to sell their products, but there’s just not really the evidence behind a lot of it as a lot of studies are still ongoing.”
Local
She goes on to add that there’s “a really big difference” between her local, handmade kombucha compared to the alternatives currently sitting on supermarket shelves.
“I was in Sainsbury’s the other day and there were three different brands of kombucha on the shelf which had all come from different places in America,” says Hannah.
“They have a minimum of four or five grams of sugar per 100ml, a lot of them are pasteurised… a lot of them are flavoured with concentrated extracts.
“For me, it’s really important to have a lower sugar content, it’s really important for it to be alive so I would never pasteurise it.
“I use the whole fruit and the whole herb and it’s that side of things that attracts me the most to kombucha.”
Personality
Another way Gut Feelings Kombucha separates itself from larger competitors is its focus on transparency with its customers.
Particularly over social media, Hannah openly talks about her business highs and lows as well as her personal wellbeing to connect with her followers.
“One way that you can really make that trust with your customers is by talking about everything that’s going on,” she says.
“You’re picking up the personality and the story behind the drink itself, as opposed to those big brands that you don’t know the background of.
“It’s the thing that separates you from being that faceless brand.”
Community
Gut Feelings Kombucha has been revelling in the sweet taste of success as a small, local drinks business.
Now, it’s given Hannah a constructive dilemma going forward: to grow or to stick to what she knows.
“I have constant encouragement from other people saying I should try and make it national, but I’m just not sure if that’s really what I want,” she says.
[There’s] a lot of time and care put into pretty much every single bottle that goes onto the shelf.
“The whole process behind it is supporting local businesses; it’s interjecting into the community as well as being its own business.
“The more local it can be the better, I reckon.”
A round of questions with Hannah Taylor of Gut Feelings Kombucha…
If you were a drink, what would you be and why?
A warm, cup of red bush tea with oat milk and half a spoonful of honey.
Best food and drink pairing?
I can’t get tea and biscuits out of my mind! Tea with a good oat biscuit that crumbles a little bit while you eat them.
If you were stuck on a desert island, what three drinks would be there with you?
Obviously kombucha – I couldn’t not say that! Then probably prosecco and also red bush tea.
You have to serve your favourite superhero or celebrity a drink. Who is it and what do you serve them?
I feel like I don’t have a favourite artist or celebrity. But one of my favourite music artists is a woman called Alice Phoebe Lou. I would serve her a rhubarb and ginger gin with tonic because I think we’d be really great friends.
Most underrated drink?
Water.
Worst experience with a drink?
My sister once made chilli tequila and it was dreadful. It made everyone feel really sick.
Any secret tips of the drinks trade?
Probably the biggest one would be patience. Sometimes you just have to wait. But once you wait, it’ll be good.
This article originally appeared on the Evening Express website. For more information, read about our new combined website.