UK | The probiotic drink, also known as ‘booch’ to its fans, contains live bacteria that maintain good gut health.
Current interest in gut health has seen other probiotic foods such as kefir, kimchi and miso also become popular in the UK in recent years. Tesco now includes kombucha as part of its popular Clubcard Meal Deal.
The move has helped establish kombucha as one of the fastest-growing functional drinks in the UK, with demand up 65 per cent at Tesco in the last two years.
Tesco drinks buyer Emilia Riant said although it’s been around for more than 2000 years, kombucha has only recently become popular in the UK due to growing interest in probiotics and hydration in general.
“Since lockdown, there has been a general uplift in shoppers looking for functional food and drink, so Tesco decided to make kombucha available as part of our Clubcard Meal Deal, which has helped boost sales,” said Riant.
“And whereas kombucha might have been thought of as a health drink only a few years ago, it is now winning over everyday shoppers picking up a bottle to go with their lunchtime sandwich.”
A lot of that repositioning is down to Remedy Drinks, an Australian business that is one of the most prominent kombucha players in the world.
Remedy began trading in Britain in 2019 and is now the UK’s leading kombucha manufacturer, with a 36 per cent share of the market.
The business said it saw ‘massive potential’ to launch in the UK but realised that kombucha needed to widen its ‘functional drink’ image to increase.
The company realised the potential for kombucha to be thought of as a chilled juice drink and brought out a series of exciting flavours, including Raspberry/Lemonade, Ginger/Lemon, Wild Berry, and Mango/Passionfruit, to widen its appeal.
It has certainly worked with recent data from AC Nielsen revealing that the UK consumed 4.4 million litres of kombucha in the year to Oct 2023 – an increase of more than 800,000 litres to the previous 12 months.
“The essential part of our mission to establish Kombucha here in the UK has been to transform its image from purely being a drink aimed at the health market to an everyday thirst quencher that has zero sugar, has less than five calories per can and tastes great,” said Remedy Drinks Commercial Director Ian Hadley.
“We’ve done that by launching different funky flavours, and Tesco has helped widen that appeal by including our Wild Berry and Raspberry Lemonade flavours as part of its Clubcard Meal Deal.”
