GT Dave's kombucha origin story is the stuff of legend—at least how he frames it. But when the LA Times broke the story of a judge awarding workers nearly half a million dollars in back and overtime pay, citing GT's abuse of employees and contradictory evidence, a different story unfolds.
Derek looks at this kombucha company's origins, unrealistic health claims, and the many troubles its endured over the decades, and how GT's response aligns with the conspiritualist playbook.
Show Notes
L.A.’s kombucha empire exploited workers for years
Meet the King of Kombucha
What Science Says About the Potential Health Benefits of Kombucha
The Disinformation Dozen
Toxic Twitter
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hey everyone, welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
I'm Derek Barris, and today I want to share a story about kombucha, and a lot more than kombucha.
Few products scream wellness like this fermented tea blended with bacteria, sugar, yeast, and often fruit.
I'll admit off the top that I used to drink a lot of it.
Not so much because of the health claims, but because I enjoyed drinking it.
My family is entirely Eastern European, so fermented products are in the DNA of my lineage.
And I will briefly address the health claims, though the real focus of this brief is the insatiable hunger for power that drives those who drink the kombucha of their own egos, and the techniques they use to deflect criticism from themselves.
Kombucha possibly dates back to 220 BCE China, where it was apparently used as a digestive aid.
Over time, it gained currency and became known as the Tea of Immortality.
Around the 5th century of the modern era, a Korean physician named Dr. Kambu gave it the name of Kambu's Tea, or Kambucha.
The drink started appearing in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, where it's likely that my ancestors brewed it at home, given that's how most Russians created and consumed it.
In the 60s, a German doctor claimed that kombucha could cure cancer, and though that's never been proven, even today that claim persists, and it's actually part of the lore that led to today's main figure on this episode.
Kombucha popped up in alt-health stores in America in the 70s, and with it, the template for many health claims that would follow.
Intrepid food explorers mixed bacteria and yeast, lovingly known as the SCOBY, with green or black tea, creating a jellyfish-like orb that's usually called the Mother in wellness circles.
I had my own.
Once you grow one, it's like a great stew of ramen, meaning that you keep a little bit of the original brew and then you reintroduce it into new batches and then that lineage continues.
The yeast and bacteria transform the sugars into alcohol.
Yes, every bottle you buy in stores has at least a little bit of it, and the alcohol turns into acetic acid.
By the time you drink it, kombucha is rich in B vitamins, antioxidants, and probiotics, which is the basis of many health claims.
And this is where potential science meets pseudoscience.
A 2019 review of 310 studies on kombucha found that it might help diabetics' blood sugar normalize, though there was no control group in that study, so it's hard to tell.
Beyond that, there hasn't been a ton of research, so not a lot has been proven.
This is similar to the longer track record in the literature of fermented foods.
They're likely healthy and beneficial, but once you enter the curing cancer territory, you gotta start to question what you're actually saying about these products.
So while kombucha devotees will swear by its healing effects, it turns out that the microbes touted as probiotic might not actually survive the strength of our stomach acid.
But that hasn't stopped companies from advertising its probiotic content.
More worrisome, research has shown that kombucha is not low in sugar or alcohol.
I remember years back when kombucha had to be shelved in the liquor section, and many yogis in my circle were not happy, and the producers of kombucha were definitely not happy about that.
But the problem is that companies claim that the alcohol was burned off in the process, but when it was tested, it was right there.
But it's the sugar why I stopped consuming kombucha.
Not that I mind some sugar, but I met someone who was engaged in a lawsuit with a number of kombucha companies about five years ago.
He paid thousands of dollars independently to have a few brands tested for sugar content in a laboratory.
Some bottles that claimed to have, let's say, 5 grams of sugar had actually closer to 30 grams, so it actually wasn't that different from a Coke.
I'm not sure where that particular lawsuit went, but I distinctly remember one of the companies being tested was G.T.
Dave's.
G.T.
Dave's is responsible for the modern surge of kombucha in our culture.
It was the first one that I drank, and I continued to drink it on occasion until I found out about that lawsuit when I pretty much abandoned kombucha altogether.
And I personally have nothing against kombucha, though if companies are lying about the sugar or alcohol content, that's pretty sketch.
I also got tired of paying $5 a bottle.
But I did enjoy it, and I'm not adverse to having one again if someone gives me one.
I'm also open to the idea that it can be healthy in some ways, to the degree that fermented foods have potential gut health benefits.
The bigger claims, like curing baldness and AIDS and cancer, which I've seen, those always give me pause.
Kombucha is a perfect example of my problem with wellness messaging in general.
You have a product that could be healthy and taste great.
Some people do.
I like the vinegar taste.
And plenty of people enjoy it.
Maybe some people feel better after drinking it.
And that's awesome.
But in our culture, saying, here's a $5 bottle of fermented tea, it has some sugar and alcohol, and since it's fermented, it could have some health benefits, it's just not going to cut it, and that really sucks.
Every product that's launched in the wellness space has to be new and improve some magical elixir that's better than all the other magical elixirs.
And that road dependably leads to making unrealistic claims.
I've watched this process up close for decades and it's not going to stop, and I think that's really a shame.
I mean, people are drinking borax right now.
They're drinking their own urine.
I'll take kombucha any day over that nonsense.
But I also just wish people would be more honest with the evidence and market it as such, and I wish other people, the consumers, would support companies who do that.
Okay.
So let's get to G.T.
Dave's.
I was always a bit skeptical of the Dr. Bronner-style messaging on the bottles, and I love Dr. Bronner's, to be clear.
That said, I generally ignored all the love and light messaging on the bottle to get to my favorite flavor, which was gingerade.
And then in 2021, I read an Inc.
profile, I-N-C if you don't know the publication, on G.T.' 's founder, who's George Thomas Dave.
And it opened like this.
Within five minutes of meeting me, G.T.
Dave, creator of the wildly popular fermented probiotic beverage G.T.' 's Kombucha, tells me the story of his conception.
Late one night, his father rolled over and made love to his mother in the lotus position of all positions, he says.
GT's meticulously coiffed 69-year-old mom, Lorraine Dave, is sitting across from us in the living room of her hilltop home, a white modernist affair perched atop a steep canyon in LA's exclusive Bel Air enclave.
She grins and leans into the conversation, no sign of embarrassment.
So I was conceived, GT says, and it was just something that was meant to be.
Okay, forgive my allergy to puff pieces, but that's a rough one, even by founder profile standards.
GT goes on to say that his brother, Justin, was suffering from a life-threatening heart condition at the time, and when GT was born, his brother's health stabilized.
Then, GT actually says this out of his mouthhole to a reporter, quote,
I'm not saying I was the messiah, but there was something that happened that was pretty unique
and special. So you can already see how going from this to claiming that kombucha cures cancer is not
a very long step.
By GT's own telling, he followed his parents' lead by studying Eastern philosophy and started brewing kombucha in his parents' kitchen at age 17.
His father apparently got a hold of a SCOBY via a Beverly Hills juice bar in 1993, and that SCOBY had found its way from a Buddhist nun to the Tate household.
A year later, Lorraine found a fast-growing cancerous lump in her breast and she was given a year to live.
And that's obviously tragic.
Now, she started downing kombucha and she claims after having a lumpectomy and going through chemotherapy and radiation and the cancer subsided, she claimed that it was because of the kombucha which turbocharged her immune system.
And look, This is all anecdote on their part.
I find these stories very difficult to listen to.
I'm pretty sure that having my testicle removed and then going through chemotherapy is the reason my cancer subsided, not what I was eating or drinking at the time.
I'm also going to guess living atop a canyon in Bel Air gives you access to pretty good medical care?
In fact, there's a chance we were treated at the same hospital, UCLA in Westwood, which resides at the base of the entrance of Bel Air and it has an exceptional oncology department.
I don't know that for sure, but I do know that area well from my days of cycling when I lived there and having to have been in the UCLA system.
So regardless of all that, this folklore lives at the foundation of G.T.
Dave's ascent.
In fact, Lorraine's cancer story was printed on every bottle for years.
And in 2009, G.T.
told Forbes that kombucha is the reason that his mother is still alive today.
Now, the story goes on with the Inc.
reporter being amazed that a man built a $600 million company out of his parents' kitchen, never mind the financial head start that he likely had.
And I can't blame GT for the reporter's writing, but this is a lot to take in.
Goes on.
Now 36 and buffed to a high shine, GT—it's short for George Thomas—carries himself with a bouncy, contagious energy.
Sculpted biceps emerge from the short and cuffed sleeves of his Alexander McQueen button-down.
Impossibly snug khaki pants reveal smooth and sockless ankles.
On Saturdays, he drives his Lamborghini.
Overall, he has a sort of ageless and photoshopped look that suggests someone who takes very expensive care of himself.
Or maybe just drinks a ton of kombucha.
Which he does.
I'll go through eight to twelve bottles a day, GT says.
Okay, to his credit, GT hit the ground selling his product with his Bel Air lawyer father at his side, and they started by pitching Erewhon because of course they did.
Okay, sorry if I'm being inside baseball and if you're not from Los Angeles, but just imagine a place where every Angeleno wellness hippie yoga stereotype lives as a store, and you probably have the image in your head.
So GT drew a logo based on Chanel's logo and Erewhon ordered two cases which sold out in a day and they didn't know that he was brewing in his kitchen so there's those brewing standards but hey that's another story.
So soon after GT got his kombucha into the Holy Grail Whole Foods and that's when things started to really take off.
Now here's where the story gets interesting for where we're going with this story today.
Again, back to ink.
If the early days of GT's Kombucha are a triumph of precocious instincts and timing, the company's jump to adulthood owes much to Whole Foods.
In 1999, the grocer wasn't the Leviathan it is today, but it already held extraordinary power to pluck an obscure brand out of the wild and give it previously unimagined exposure.
Suddenly, GT's was in stores across the Southwest.
He rented another 2,000 square feet in Gardena.
And then again, and again, as his kombucha kept rolling out to more regions.
By 2004, GT constantly struggled to meet demand.
He'd increased capacity, and by the time he was up and running, he'd need more.
Another constraint was his production process.
GT was still brewing the traditional way in tiny batches requiring tremendous personal attention.
One potential solution, common among food and beverage companies, was to hire contract manufacturers.
But GT was unwilling to give up his close oversight.
He was also unwilling to increase yields by diluting the product for fear that consumers would detect the difference.
He gambled to hold fast to his standards and raced to find a much larger facility, one that he can grow into.
He did, and by early 2010, kombucha was everywhere.
Okay, that was a lot as well, but it is pertinent to where this story ends up this week in the LA Times.
Notice how steadfast GT presents himself as holding to the highest brewing standards.
Before we jump to the Times, however, the Inc.
story covers the moment when a case of kombucha bottles were bubbling over in a Portland Whole Foods, and the store tested the drinks for its alcoholic content.
And it turned out that GT's alcohol levels were 2.5%, which is five times the legal limit for non-alcoholic beverages.
So this is when kombucha started getting shelved in the alcohol section because stores, especially Whole Foods, did not want to get cited by the authorities and fined for putting an alcoholic beverage with the rest of the juices.
So some lawsuits ended up following this, and because his bottle claimed that there were trace amounts of alcohol, but there was actually more, the reporter goes on and talks about how GT took all of that in.
More plainly, he felt persecuted.
Imagine, he says, spending 15 years of your life doing something that you started because it helped people, because it touched your mom's health, and then someone says it's all a lie, it's booze, it's unhealthy.
He pauses to let his sense of unfairness sink in.
That's really, really hard.
So there are two points to remember here.
And remember, this story is just two and a half years old.
So we talked about the high standards of production and unfair persecution.
So we'll start with the first.
Earlier this week, the LA Times dropped this headline.
LA's Kombucha Empire Exploited Workers for Years.
And if you think it's about GT Dave, you are right.
Near the top of the story, Sam Dean, a reporter there, writes, As the owner of GT's, which sells about $275 million of the fermented tea drink and other beverages each year, Dave has become a billionaire, according to Forbes estimates.
This year, he bought a $14 million hilltop estate just a few streets away from the two-home compound he already owned in Beverly Hills.
All along, he's insisted that good vibes and a positive attitude have been the secret to his success.
Right.
So that is not what a group of workers who brought the suit felt.
Dean goes on.
The judge in the case, William Heiberger, found that the company hired workers without legal status knowing that they could be, quote, intimidated and abused, that it required workers to clock 12 to 14 hour shifts without adequate breaks or overtime pay, and that Dave himself, who testified in his own defense, demonstrated a total absence of credibility by contradicting himself in court.
There you have it.
GT gets to wax poetic about high production standards by illegally hiring workers that he could abuse and he knew that they couldn't complain because of their citizenship status.
Tell me if this is a story in American capitalism that you've ever heard before.
Also interesting to note that this suit dates back a decade.
It took a long time for it to finally be resolved.
So that means when that Ink profile was going on, this suit and many others that involved Kombucha largely, and GT specifically, were going on.
Good job, Ink Reporter, on following up on that.
So in this case, the judge awarded over $450,000 to 11 workers.
Good job.
Some of them received up to $59,000 in back pay and one worker received $180,000 because, get this, the company garnished his wages.
I mean, that two-home compound in Beverly Hills isn't going to pay for itself or the new hilltop estate.
So, the workers often put in, as the judge said, 12 to 14 hours, but they were required to sign a sheet saying they worked eight, and some of these workers were illiterate.
That signature also waived their right to any future claims on pay for that period.
Thankfully, it didn't hold up, but it took a lot of work and courage by these workers to get what they were owed.
So, how did GT Dave reply to this decision?
In a written statement that he sent to the Times, he said the case was frivolous, and he continued, I shit you not.
Unfortunately, in this current state of the world we live in, lawsuits just happen if you have any smell of success around you.
That is the cross that I bear.
This dude really can't get off the Jesus analogy.
Okay, so that's one layer of the story, and an important one, and one in which so many workers and unions are fighting for right now, and I hope that trend continues.
But Jesus Christ, there's a lot to contend with here.
Now, let's go to another one.
On this podcast, we've often been accused of favoring big pharma by following the overwhelming evidence that vaccines work and that we shouldn't be focusing our attention on wellness companies just trying to keep people healthy.
And honestly, I'm not.
In this case, if you drink kombucha, great.
If you run a kombucha company, that's awesome.
I just hope you're being honest about the ingredients and the content levels and you're not overstating claims, but if you enjoy and you think it's good for you, that's wonderful.
But if you're a billionaire from Bel Air with multiple homes in Beverly Hills that paid for them by exploiting migrant labor, you're fucking right I'm going to criticize your company and your work ethic even if you're not owned by a multinational conglomerate.
We should be able to call out shitty behavior regardless if it's a billion-dollar C-suite screwing its employees or if it's a sole influencer spreading disinformation on their Instagram feed.
Sure, they might be weighted differently, but in an industry geared toward making people healthy, let's start with how we treat each other.
I think that's way more relevant and important and moral than how quickly your product scales.
But there's something bigger at play here.
And I'm seeing it and I'm sure you're seeing it all over the place.
GT Dave told the Times that he considered the decision legal bullying.
Sound like anyone else who was indicted for the third time this week?
This distraction technique is pervasive right now, and it's really, really dangerous.
I noticed it also this week when Sayerji, who apparently listens to some of our briefs, hey Douglas, tweeted out something that Imran Ahmed, founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said on our podcast in June about his non-profit never taking money from the government.
Sayre was making a bigger point that one of the center's donors does take in government money, trying to swirl up a dark money accusation.
I mean, first of all, you found out that info because all of the funder's appointments and tax statuses are posted on the gov.uk website.
So I don't know how dark it is.
If you read Jane Mayer's work that originated or really put that term dark money into the mainstream, this is a much different situation.
But you know what?
If you have issues with funding donations, that's fine.
And all companies and organizations are fair game for such reporting.
So go for that.
But context matters.
Sayre was involved in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.' 's Health Policy Roundtable a few weeks ago, which I covered on another brief.
And both men were on the Center for Countering Digital Hate's 2021 report, The Disinformation Dozen.
Now that extensive research, I've linked to it in the show notes if you never checked it out, but we covered it at the time and had Imran on back then, that found that 12 anti-vaxxers are responsible for roughly two-thirds of all anti-vax misinformation online, and the people on that list have been complaining about it ever since.
Some of them even gave themselves some dumb counter nickname that I can't remember right now.
So from Sayre, you have Bobby Kennedy sharing Sayre's blog post about the center, and Bobby in another tweet called it a, quote, foreign-funded dark money hate group that works with U.S.
government agencies to defame and censor critics of the corrupt collusion between Big Pharma and its captive regulators.
Then Bobby continued in the next tweet, As a target of CCDH's fraudulent smear campaign, I'm happy to join Elon Musk in a libel lawsuit against this sketchy outfit.
It's time for us to push back against hate speech.
So this is all riding on the coattails of Musk, who is upset that Imran and his team published a research paper about Twitter.
Noting that the platform has taken no action against 99% of the 100 Twitter Blue accounts that the center found dabbling and sharing and spreading hate speech.
The report, which was published in March, and which you can read for yourself as I've linked to that in the show notes as well, found that Twitter makes millions of dollars from anti-LGBTQ plus rhetoric.
And bonus, you can see many of the tweets and read over their analytics and research right in that report because they're sharing it with you right there.
So you know what?
GT Dave is right about one thing.
America is a litigious culture.
But that works in many directions.
And a troublesome direction are these multi-millionaires and billionaires complaining when they're called out for bad behavior, and then suing journalists trying to do their job and hold people accountable for their actions.
This playbook sadly reminds me of middle school.
You say I'm hate speech?
No, you're hate speech.
And then through the network effects, you have the base of people like Musk and RFK calling the CCDH hate speech without ever stopping to think through what they're even talking about or why the billionaires were being called out in the first place.
Yet it works.
When I read the LA Times story and saw GT Dave's response, my first thought was, of course.
Because that's the only playbook these reactionary figures have anymore.
Don't look at my faults.
Don't look at where I made all my money.
Because I'm rubber and you little nosy reporters are glue.
And if you think it goes any deeper than that, well, I have a Scobie to sell ya.
