When their active lifestyle was not enough to combat unexpected health concerns, The Good Seed founders Ivy Ong and Adrian Soon started looking at their diet. This article first appeared in the January/February 2022 edition of Food & Drink Business.
When life gives you lemons, turn them into lemonade the age-old saying goes, but for Ivy Ong and Adrian Soon, instead of making lemonade they created a functional beverages company offering a water kefir and the prebiotic fibre-rich beverage, Sorted.
In 2016, the pair were experiencing health problems that were impacting their quality of life.
“We’re both really active people and at that point in time I was training for an 85-kilometre ultra-marathon and Adrian had become a tennis coach. We decided we needed to eat better for our health.
“Little did we know that we’d become incredibly passionate about gut health and start sharing our creations with our community,” Ong says
Looking for an easy to digest and better-for-you drink, the couple discovered water kefir, a natural dairy-free probiotic solution.
Similar to kombucha but maintaining a softer taste profile with a more diverse probiotic content, water kefir is made from adding water kefir crystals – which are a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) – into a sugar solution. During the fermentation process the sugar is consumed by the crystals and turns into a bubbly probiotic drink.
Sowing the good seed
When a friend would no longer accept their kefir for free, Ong and Soon decided to try selling their product to a broader market and in 2017, The Good Seed was born.
“It was a steep learning curve for us because like any other food manufacturer we needed to meet food standards, so we started researching the best and healthiest practices,” says Ong.
Unable to work out of their small apartment, Ong and Soon found a shared space at the back of a little café in Camberwell, just outside the Melbourne CBD.
Ong would stick the labels onto bottles and Soon would fill them by hand.
They would then whip around in their little Honda Jazz, selling the kefir at farmers’ markets as well as doing home deliveries.
It was about four months into their venture that interest began to grow when small-scale retailers at farmers markets expressed interest in selling the kefir on their behalf.
“Then we were approached by a distributor and we realised we needed proper facilities and equipment,” Soon says.
At the start of 2017, the couple bought an old butcher’s facility in Hastings on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula and four years later acquired their second factory in Carrum Downs in south-east Melbourne, providing ample room to grow.
A new direction
When the pandemic came along, Ong and Soon decided to redirect their focus from retail to direct-to-consumer and launch a second product, Sorted, a prebiotic fibre-rich drink.
Sorted is a 100 per cent natural low carbohydrate soft drink offering an alternative to artificially flavoured and sweetened beverages.
Ong and Soon determined the ideal flavours for their prebiotic drink after studying the market for several months.
The couple handed out samples throughout lockdown, tweaking flavours based on consumer feedback until they settled on Watermelon & Mint, Blood Orange, and Blackcurrant flavours for its launch.
“The flavours were developed via understanding our customers’ taste preferences.
“It turns out we all miss the nostalgic orange and blackcurrant flavoured sugar filled drinks that were once guzzled down without a second thought,” Soon says.
Within the first week, The Good Seed pre-sold 70 per cent of its first production run for Sorted and received multiple repeat orders.
“Sorted has a lot of potential because there isn’t anything like it in the market,” Soon says.
“For Sorted, we prioritised ingredients over cost. We use a sweetener that doesn’t contain sugar alcohol, is easy to digest, and does not cause bloating,” he explains.
The pair worked with food scientists and used the latest research into the microbiome and digestion to use thaumatin in the drink. It is a protein-based sweetener which doesn’t spike blood sugar levels.
“We also use Acacia gum, a very gentle fibre that the body can easily absorb has been made suitable for keto and vegan diets,” Ong says.
Currently, The Good Seed is outsourcing Sorted’s manufacturing while they wait for packaging equipment to arrive for their own production facility.
Since Ong and Soon first started sticking labels on bottles and hand delivering orders in 2017, they have witnessed firsthand the growth in the better-for-you category.
“Globally, the interest in gut-health has really picked up. The fact we are both health-focused people made it easier for us in developing our products and brand because we knew what was missing in the marketplace.
“Not only did we offer a different palate profile, but it was also a different type of fermented drink,” says Ong.
While Water Kefir got The Good Seed’s foot in the door, Ong and Soon see Sorted as having the capacity to push it open.
Their goal is to see Sorted on the shelves of major supermarkets and convenience stores.
Plans are underway for exporting Sorted to Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, with the pair saying they will share more in the near future
“We will most likely have our product in Malaysia by Q1 next year and see Sorted as an easier proposition for the general population,” says Ong.
With Sorted tasting like a soft-drink and containing prebiotic goodness, that just might be an offer too hard to not accept.
Water Kefir was the first foray into functional beverages.
Founders Ivy Ong and Adrian Soon wanted to plant a good seed for their gut health.
