Gabriel Coggins had been selling draught kombucha for years at Kava Konnection, his non-alcoholic bar and hangout spot.
It was a consistent part of his business, he said.
While Kava Konnection specializes in kava, a calming tea made from ground roots, it also offered various flavors of kombucha, a fermented and carbonated tea with a typically sweet flavor, which has been growing in popularity in recent years.
Kombucha, which typically contains less than 0.5% alcohol, has always been deemed non-alcoholic by state law and had been readily available on grocery store shelves for years. Patrons at local clothing and boutique stores were able to sip on draught kombucha while they shopped, and locally-made kombucha was sold at farmers markets and health food stores.
But a few weeks ago, Coggins saw a Facebook post warning he would be breaking the law if he kept selling kombucha.
“There was no warning, nothing anticipatory at all, and no formal announcement from the state,” Coggins said. “I literally only heard about it through a random comment someone posted on Facebook.”
Coggins is referring to a rule change in state code that defines what are considered to be non-alcoholic beverages in South Carolina. A portion of the rule changes were aimed at setting a maximum on alcohol content for beers or fomented beverages, but crucially for business owners like Coggins, the rules did not set a minimum alcohol percentage.
Therefore, any fermented beverage with an alcohol content above 0.0% is now considered alcohol by default.
Which means komubcha is now illegal for purchase by anyone under the age of 21.
Some local kombucha producers — breweries, for example — may already have a license to sell or produce alcohol and will therefore not be affected by the rule changes.
But for business owners like Coggins, it means he must now apply for a permit to sell kombucha, which would be a long process that would also bring on additional taxing, if he even qualifies. Meanwhile, kombucha producers that have focused solely on kombucha and don’t have an alcohol license, all operations now must be shut down entirely while they sort through the legal ramifications.
“Effective immediately, all of these producers and retailers will have to cease business until they receive the proper licensing, which will take several months to get if they’re located in South Carolina and the money to get their facilities up to code,” said Brook Bristow, an attorney specializing in beverage law, in a statement about the rule change. “So, until then, no sales, i.e., no money.”
And for consumers, favorite brands may no longer be on store shelves.
“It really just sounds like someone raised the question, ‘Hey, I see this here defines alcoholic beverages as anything fermented, right?’ and someone else said, ‘Alright, sure, that works,’ and they wrote it in and confirmed it without really thinking what it would mean,” said Devin Cox, owner of Greenville-based Craft Beer Exchange.
For the foreseeable future, white plastic cups have been placed over the kombucha draughts at the Kava Konnection, a symbol of what Coggins called “a really sad situation.”
“Of all the things lawmakers could focus on to restrict and take away from the public, kombucha was the last thing I expected,” he said. “It’s a healthy product, and the only logical reason I can see beyond some strange maliciousness toward it is that they just didn’t understand what they were doing.”
