The Grabar family moved to Latvia from St. Petersburg 5 years ago. They worked with coffee there, but in Latvia – with kombucha. They named their brand Rudy’s – to honor their beloved pet – a dachshund named Rudy.
Before we start talking about kombucha , a few words about coffee. Did you have a cafe in St. Petersburg?
EGOR:
At one point, yes. Even before the specialty coffee boom. We opened the first coffee shop with a roaster in St. Petersburg. By the way, it was still the smallest of all local cafes. Even made it into all the tourist guides. From opening to closing, there was a constant line.
DARIA:
Yes, yes. Back then I worked as a beer sommelier in one of the bars in St. Petersburg. Egor’s cafe used to be right next to it. I had to get to work half an hour early just to get in line and get coffee from them. That’s where we met, by the way.
Yes, such lines are definitely a sign of quality.
EGOR:
And then Crimea happened. When running your business, you can feel that serious changes are taking place earlier. You can see, for example, how the price of coffee, chocolate, and milk changes – and at that moment we realized: not the best of times are approaching. That’s also when we started thinking about where we could move forward.
The choice fell in favor of Kuldīga?
EGOR:
Not immediately. First we moved to Ādaži – I designed and built a brewery there. We started brewing beer, started a business but after some time I realized that me and the director and investor of this event did not agree on how to build a beer business in general. However, at this point Dasha and I had already started making kombucha.
What an idea – fungus at home, gosh.
EGOR:
Yes, in the beginning we made kombucha at home in the dressing room. We grew our first mushroom in a ten liter jar. Started mixing it with currants and raspberries, in short – we experimented. Realized that it turns out very tasty and thought it was time to pour our kombucha into jars – those tin ones. However, it turned out that it is impossible to get such in Latvia.
DARIA:
Yes, cans were not produced in Latvia at that time. But we found a way.
EGOR:
We started buying jars and caps from a guy in Estonia. Then we met another man from Lithuania who knows how to make special devices for turning lids. That’s how everything started to turn – from that moment we started pouring kombucha into jars.
So that’s how it all began. Excellent.
EGOR:
Yes, just like that. I was still working in a brewery, designing the second one. At the same time, preparing kombucha at home in the evenings.
DARIA:
After that, we moved to a four-room apartment – the dressing room was not enough. We lived as a trio: kombucha and us. One room was our bedroom, the second was our kombucha workshop, and the third served for kombucha storing purposes.
EGOR:
It was funny how we chose the apartment. We looked at the options and things like, “Oh, this is great, just in time for both of us,” but then we realized, “Damn, where’s the kombucha going to be stored?” Due to the fact that kombucha was living with us at the time, we had to look for a larger place to live.
DARIA:
We placed 5 barrels of 100 liters each in the new apartment. We started working, marking cans at night. Then the first orders went as well.
How did you start promoting your kombucha?
EGOR:
At first we just went to local places. In Riga, for example, we came to the Herbarium at Rudolph’s for the first time – and we are still friends. It was the first person we agreed with, our first place and generally just a cool bar. And then came the orders. Dasha delivered kombucha to various locations with her white license.
DARIA:
However, I passed the driver’s license test on the first try.
EGOR:
At the same time, we agreed to rent a small corner in one of the breweries in Ādaži. There was also a canning machine (a device for packaging the product in cans – ed.note.). This was important, because before that we did everything by hand, meanwhile the number of orders only grew – and it became simply impossible to handle it all by ourselves.
DARIA:
Just as we had started to organize everything, Covid started.
Yes, it was unpleasant to say the least.
DARIA:
Yes, but actually Covid helped us.
EGOR:
At one point, our orders just started growing to a point where we simply couldn’t keep up. It was necessary to take a breather to reinvent and recreate the entire production process. And there was Covid. Everything was locked. The number of orders was a perfect zero. On one hand, this is, of course, sad. But on the other hand, it was time to organize everything properly.
You never know what exactly will help and when.
EGOR:
Yes, that’s true. But really, it was friends and acquaintances who helped us a lot in the beginning. It seems to me that without their support it is very difficult to take such a step – from something you do while crawling on your knees to a big business.
Did you expect success when you first started your “knee business”?
EGOR:
Our main goal then was to become completely independent. We didn’t look at this project through the prism of how much money we would make or how popular we would be. I remember we sold a whole pallet and back then I thought – ” wow “. But in general, when you do your own work, there is a completely different motivation – everything becomes mildly interesting. You become your own boss – and you must demand everything from yourself.
DARIA:
And I remember there was this one week, when we sold 55 jars of kombucha to AirBaltic. We thought, now this is something!
How did you get to Kuldīga?
DARIA:
By the way, we moved to Kuldiga during the second wave of the pandemic. And there we immediately got into the business incubator. Now it seems that without the business incubator it would have been very difficult to develop any further.
You aren’t limited to Latvia and other Baltic countries, right? To what other countries is Rudy’s delivered?
EGOR:
Apart from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, we also work with Finland, Greece, Portugal, Austria and the Czech Republic. We just made the first shipment to Norway. There will also be England, Netherlands, Germany.
DARIA:
Yes. Recently, we also attended exhibitions in Dubai, Japan.
What market do you dream of? Does one exist?
EGOR:
We have a mindset: “Rudy’s in every home”. We want kombucha to be everywhere, just like Ikea. However, from a pride point of view, I want to go to America. There’s just a huge kombucha market out there – big, diverse, cool. And competition stimulates development.
DARIA:
It’s great to grow and develop. Traveling to exhibitions, producing new products. We also recently started coffee kombucha production with Rocket Bean.
Coffee Kombucha?
EGOR:
Yes, it’s like sour coffee. Little is known about it here – it seems like a strange and incomprehensible product. But, for example, in Dubai it recently got the first place – there we won an award – “Product 2022”. I made this coffee kombucha with the guys from Rocket Bean. They also got 1st place in a competition in Milan for that.
Have you ever experienced burnout at this pace? Like “that’s it, done with this, we’re tired”?
EGOR:
No. Because there are no limits to development. I know what burnout is from the coffee shop experience. Everything is quite usual there: the same job, day after day. Meanwhile, here we constantly go to exhibitions, meet new people. We are constantly innovating and experimenting. We create new flavors, launch new products. Always interesting, always wanting more.
But in conclusion, I will say one thing. Maybe a little weird. Everything happens exactly when you don’t expect it to. Just like that.
