What began as a small home-brewing experiment in a Toronto bachelor apartment has grown into a national beverage business producing about 1,000 cases a day, according to the founder of Tonica Kombucha.
Zoey Shamai, founder and owner of the Ontario-based company, says the kombucha maker is now operating from a 12,000-square-foot production facility in Woodbridge and selling products across Canada through major retailers, after starting the business two decades ago with no intention of building a company.
“When I started kombucha, there was zero kombucha anywhere.”
At the time, kombucha, a fermented tea drink, was largely unknown in Canadian retail markets. Shamai said it existed mainly as a home-brewed beverage passed through communities over centuries before appearing among health-focused groups in North America.
Her introduction to the drink came while studying yoga and living in an ashram in New Mexico, where kombucha was commonly made.
“It was the first time I had ever seen it,” she said. “The next day for my digestion, it was so amazing that I fell in love with it, started making it, brought it back to Toronto, and that was the beginning of what was Tonica.”
Today, the kombucha category has expanded significantly in grocery stores, where entire sections are dedicated to the drink. The brand was at the forefront of introducing the beverage to Canadians.
From kitchen batches to production facility
The business began modestly. Shamai brewed kombucha in her apartment while working as a yoga instructor and waitress. Her first commercial opportunity came through a Toronto restaurant where she worked.
The establishment, one of the city’s early raw vegan restaurants, agreed to place the beverage on its menu.
“It tasted like a delicious soda or like an alcohol substitute,” she said. “From there, people started to ask if they could buy bigger bottles, and it sort of organically started to grow.”
That early arrangement lasted about six months before the restaurant decided to produce its own version of the drink. The setback led Shamai to pursue retail distribution.
Encouraged by her mother, an entrepreneur who helped pioneer a hemp consumer packaged goods company in Canada, Shamai began gathering signatures from consumers who said they would buy the product if it were sold in stores.
She then approached a health food retailer in Toronto with the list of potential customers.
“He said, ‘If you get insurance, I’ll do it,’” Shamai recalled. “So that’s how it started.”
The company moved out of Shamai’s apartment and into its first dedicated facility in 2009. As the business expanded, production operations shifted through several locations before settling into the current Woodbridge facility in 2018.
“We’ve had five different facilities as we expanded,” she said. “We’re starting to get close to outgrowing this one too.”
Building a national beverage operation
Tonica Kombucha now produces multiple formats, including bottles, cans, kegs and private-label products. The company distributes its beverages through brokers and distributors across Canada.
Shamai estimates production reaches about 1,000 cases daily.
“We run all through the week,” she said. “We have litre bottles, small bottles, cans, we do kegs, and we also do white labels.”
The product line includes about 10 flavours, with variations between packaging formats. Shamai said she initially developed the first group of flavours herself before expanding the process with a quality assurance team.
“My goal was to make kombucha not a health food, but to make it so delicious that anyone would enjoy it as a regular soda,” she said.
She credits the lighter flavour profile of Tonica’s beverages as a factor behind its expansion into major retail chains.
Growing alongside the category
Shamai said Tonica’s growth has paralleled the rising popularity of kombucha among consumers.
“When I started bringing kombucha to stores, there was no kombucha category. It was nowhere,” she said. “Now you walk in and you see shelves and shelves filled.”
She believes consumer awareness around nutrition and digestive health has played a role in the category’s development.
“I think as baby boomers started to age and the generations after became much more educated about the foods that they eat being essential to the health they have every day,” she said.
Despite the category’s growth, the company’s expansion was largely self-funded. Shamai said she reinvested revenue back into operations during the early years instead of seeking outside investment.
“For the first 10 years, there wasn’t anything to put into advertising or even pay myself,” she said. “It was really just customer loyalty, repeat customers and incredible retail partners that helped us grow.”
Dragon’s Den exposure
A turning point in brand awareness came after Shamai appeared on the television program Dragon’s Den in 2012.
She said three investors offered deals during the episode, including Arlene Dickinson, Kevin O’Leary and Jim Treliving. Although she initially accepted an offer involving O’Leary and Treliving, she later declined the partnership after the show during due diligence.
“I realized I really didn’t want to have them as partners,” she said.
Shamai returned to the program in 2016 for a follow-up segment highlighting the company’s progress.
She said the exposure helped open doors with large retailers.
“We had Metro reach out,” she said. “Then Shoppers Drug Mart, Farm Boy. To get into those big doors, it really was Dragon’s Den that helped open the door to the awareness.”
Scaling production challenges
One of the biggest operational challenges in building the company involved scaling production of a fermented beverage that many manufacturers were reluctant to handle.
“A lot of beverages are co-packed, but nobody wanted to touch kombucha because of the bacteria in it,” Shamai said.
She approached multiple co-packers and beer producers but found little interest.
“The challenge was figuring out how do I scale up this very delicate process,” she said. “It’s easy to make a couple of batches, but scaling it to volume with forecasts and numbers to meet that was one of the biggest challenges.”
Expansion and new products ahead
Looking ahead, Shamai said the company is preparing to introduce new products outside the kombucha category for the first time.
The development comes as the company nears capacity at its current facility.
“We’re about to launch a bunch of innovation, not kombucha, for the first time,” she said. “That’s really exciting.”
To mark its 20th anniversary, Tonica is introducing a DIY Kombucha Kit, giving Canadians the opportunity to brew their own kombucha at home using Tonica’s starter.
Despite the company’s growth, Shamai said the business developed gradually through operational improvements and reinvestment rather than a deliberate expansion strategy.
“I didn’t really have a plan to grow it into such a big company,” she said. “I just kept improving the systems and putting everything back into the business.”
Reflecting on the company’s path, she said early success was driven largely by customers returning to buy the product.
“It grew naturally,” Shamai said. “Customers felt it, they loved it, and they came back for more.”
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