Mr Viral
Thai tea and herbs specialist Ms Organics believes that consumer impatience to see beneficial results is the kombucha sector’s greatest challenge, and this can only be overcome by prioritising product taste.Ms Organics is the parent company behind kombucha brand Fermenthe as well as herbal tea brand T-Revive and herbal candy brand Luck Yim, all of which have tea and herbs as core ingredients.
When it comes to the kombucha sector, given this tends to be marketed as a functional drink, the firm has found that consumer impatience is a major issue to overcome in getting them to consistently continue consumption.
“Kombucha is definitely beneficial for gut health, but the issue is that it is not a drug and will take time for the benefits to really be seen or experienced clearly as it has to work by improving the gut,” Ms Organics Managing Director Siriboon Naddhabhan told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“This means that consumers need to continue drinking it on a regular and consistent basis before seeing the benefits – but this is very difficult to do if solely depending on the benefits themselves as these will not be seen at the very beginning.
“The only way to get consumers to repeat consumption is therefore ensuring that the taste of the kombucha is optimum, good enough that they actually enjoy drinking it and will come back to purchase more even before the benefits are apparent – after some time, when the benefits are clear, then this might shift to be the major purchase motivator but not in the beginning.”
The firm has already made waves in Thailand with a canned RTD kombucha, which it has touted as having the world’s highest concentrate of kombucha content, and given the longer shelf stability of this pasteurised product compared to fresh kombucha, it now has plans to take on more international markets.
“The Middle East for example is a region where we see a lot of potential – it is actually very rare to find kombucha in markets like Dubai or Saudi Arabia, but Middle East consumers are actually very interested in the product,” she said.
“This is because many consumers in this region are experiencing issues with the gut, particularly intestinal or liver discomfort, so want to find solutions to improve the digestive system, such as kombucha.
“We have already started exporting into Dubai, and moving forward we are also looking at markets such as China and the United Kingdom in the longer run.
“Closer to home, we know that places such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia are also showing a lot of interest in kombucha and there are quite a few brands popping up here, so Asia as a whole is definitely a market to watch closely and explore further.”
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