Candice Barnard has turned her hobby into a successful business and in the process also turned her life around with a healthier diet.
Losing weight but gaining a profitable business sounds like the perfect scenario, but for Barnard it wasn’t that simple. This was the start of her journey to creating the brand Kanbucha.
Two years ago, the mother of two from Glenlily was working full-time as an investigator for the government when she was diagnosed with Lupus, which affected her joints and mobility.
Barnard said: “I was diagnosed with Lupus and I asked my specialist what I could eat to change my situation. She advised me that there was nothing I can do and that I would live with this for the rest of my life – my diet wouldn’t change anything.”
She did extensive research and concluded that it would benefit her to eat more fermented foods but she took a liking to fermented drinks. Because of her busy work schedule, Barnard preferred to have something healthy to drink than to do a meal prep in the morning and this was why kombucha became a viable option for her.
Kombucha is a fermented tea and milk kefir is a fermented milk and Barnard found that both energised her, helped with weight-loss and her overall health issues.
She left her job in March last year and realised she could turn her hobby into a viable business and has been brewing kombucha and milk kefir at home since then.
Late last year she started sharing her brews before eventually selling it to family and friends.
Barnard said: “I connected with like-minded people on the internet and got great advice from a vegan chef in New York and another brewer in Canada who gave me the confidence to buy the equipment needed to brew from home.”
By the beginning of February, Barnard said she had more than 50 loyal customers, and then the lockdown came into effect. Her business had spread via word of mouth but the lockdown brought both good and bad effects.
Barnard said in the second month of operation her business dropped drastically and she had less than 10 clients. But business soon picked up when lockdown levels eased.
“What the lockdown actually did for my business is that people became more health conscious during the pandemic... A lot of people gained weight and somehow more and more people reached out to me.”
Advertising on social media was working and so was the word-of-mouth referrals about Kanbucha.
Barnard has developed five variants of Kanbucha, a seasonal citrus kombucha, ginger and chai spices, grapefruit and tonic, ginger and buchu as well as a rooibos variant.
She said: “I’m now making more than 500 litres a month and delivering it all over Cape Town.”
“My plans would really be to get onto the shelves of the supermarkets and increase my distribution, getting Kanbucha all over South Africa and Africa.”
Before the end of the year she is hopeful that her website will be up and that she can streamline an online ordering process.
Barnard said she wanted to sell people more than a chilled drink, and open their minds to a healthier lifestyle. She said: “You don’t have to stay overweight and sick, if you make simple changes to your diet – feed your good bacteria and starve your bad bacteria – and you will feel a lot better.”
Weekend Argus