The last time we spoke with the Future Beverage Group team, back in April, the makers of Better Booch and Live Soda were in the midst of transforming the company into a beverage platform built around a mission of holistic wellness via the gut microbiome. If that pivot was about a change in mindset, their latest move is about adding muscle.
Under the auspices of a new business division, called FutureBev, Future Beverage Group has acquired a 100,000 square foot facility in Ventura, Calif. in which it plans to manufacture its canned products as well as co-pack for others when it goes online in January.
It’s not an entirely new concept for Future Beverage co-founders Ashleigh and Trey Lockerbie; Better Booch has always been self-produced, and has made products for third-party clients in the past. Manufacturing is “a huge skill set of ours,” said Trey Lockerbie, noting specific expertise in functional beverages (with the exception of cannabinoid-infused and energy drinks), teas and carbonated drinks. The timing of the deal was also favorable: the company is profitable, and could buy the plant without raising further equity using its existing equipment financing.
“It’s increasingly rare to find brands that also manufacture their own products these days, and rarer still to find platforms like ours that can harness the synergies between both,” said Lockerbie. “By driving higher throughput from our wholly-owned brands and our co-packing clients, we create economies of scale that benefit everyone. It’s a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ situation—improved margins lead to more profitability, which, in turn, allows us to reinvest in growth through expanded sales and marketing efforts.”
The Ventura site — located about an hour north of Los Angeles, and purchased from hard kombucha maker Fermented Sciences (makers of Flying Embers) — has excess capacity that “really opens up the opportunity” for collaboration, said Lockerbie. Leveling up from its small current brewery is something the Future Beverage Group team has been excited about “for a long time; all key members from Fermented Sciences have been retained and will join with existing staff, he confirmed.
FutureBev may also be an avenue towards growing Native+, the company’s signature ingredient – a proprietary combination of prebiotic fiber, probiotic strains and a clinically studied post-biotic – that is now in all of its products.
“[Native+] helps us fulfill our mission of getting these fermented food benefits into more use occasions, and if we have clients on the co-packing side that want to utilize a similar thing, I think that’s an interesting prospect to explore,” said Lockerbie. “Because at the end of the day, our mission is to get very much in line with the Stanford study that came out two years ago, which showed that the more fermented foods you consume, the lower your inflammation. And that there’s a direct correlation there.”
Upgrading its production power isn’t just about making more drinks; with operations housed under FutureBev, Lockerbie can now redirect his energy back to Future Brands, its branding, sales and marketing unit. That group includes the expanding LIVE Soda (entering Sprouts stores nationwide this month), BevNET Award-winner CHA Tea, and Better Booch, whose momentum has been spurred by dropping from 16 oz. to 12 oz. cans earlier this year, he added.
“To date, my main focus has been getting this company to a sustainable place where we’re profitable, and we found that this blend and this platform is the best way to get us there in the short term,” said Lockerbie. “And so now that we’ve reached profitability and we’ve got this excess capacity to go fill, I have a great team on the operation side that can go and handle that, while I can actually now fully focus on the brands and getting them to their full potential.”