Alumna’s Business Corners Colorado’s Hard Kombucha Market

The COVID-19 pandemic gave birth to Anna Zesbaugh’s Hooch Booch

Anna Zesbaugh

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, furloughed from her job as a creative services manager at an event-planning company, Anna Zesbaugh (BSBA 2018) watched the community’s reaction as then-Denver Mayor Michael Hancock ordered the closure of all the city’s liquor stores, deeming them nonessential businesses.

“People called it the ‘Denver prohibition’ and went a little nuts about it,” said Zesbaugh, a 2018 graduate of the Fritz Knoebel School of Hospitality Management at the Daniels College of Business. “I was bored at home on the couch during my furlough, so I started researching the original Prohibition in the 1920s and ’30s, and I found out that classic cocktails emerged during that time to mask the flavor of bad hooch”—the homemade liquor created when alcohol was prohibited from sale.

In the end, the 2020 “Denver prohibition” lasted just a matter of hours before Hancock reversed course and gave liquor stores the OK to remain open, but Zesbaugh’s interested in the topic endured. Inspired by recent conversations with her sister, a fan of the emerging hard kombucha scene in San Diego, Zesbaugh hit upon a phrase she just couldn’t get out of her head: “Hooch Booch”: “Hooch,” as in the illicit alcohol those classic Prohibition-era cocktails were created to mask, and “booch,” as in slang for kombucha, a type of effervescent fermented tea. The seed of a business was born.

Building a brand

Zesbaugh began doing more research on classic cocktails and methods for brewing hard kombucha at home, “then I just started asking a lot of questions,” she said. “I attended a lot of brewery fireside chats online and began picking a bunch of people’s brains on how to go about starting this endeavor.”

One of those brains belonged to the owner of a brewery near Zesbaugh’s home. She walked in one day to ask for help, and he began working with her to create alcoholic kombucha flavors inspired by classic cocktails. Hooch Booch officially launched in 2021 with three flavors developed over six months of trial and error: the Bee’s Knees, the Old Fashioned and the Clover Club.

“I was coming from the hospitality industry, so I saw what people were ordering and what people were drinking,” Zesbaugh said. “On top of that, I was looking at cocktail trends, looking for ones that were familiar and trying to get three distinct flavor profiles. I knew the Bee’s Knees was honey lemon; I wanted an Old Fashioned for sure; and then I thought we needed something a little fruity. I was researching cocktails that might fit, and that’s where the Clover Club (a cocktail with gin, lemon juice and raspberries) came in.”

The company has only grown since then. Hooch Booch is now available in hundreds of liquor stores, retailers, restaurants and venues throughout Colorado, including the University of Denver’s Magness Arena.

In Zesbaugh’s home state of Minnesota, the company continues to launch seasonal flavors such as Espresso Martini and Rum Runner. The company’s taproom in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood opened in August 2023. And, in early March, Hooch Booch was named the Emerging Brand of the Year by Naturally Boulder, a nonprofit organization that nurtures and enhances the natural and organic products industry in Colorado.

Daniels DNA

Zesbaugh’s experiences at the Daniels of College of Business have aided her career journey. She was the first DU hospitality student to intern at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Denver, a position that inspired her interest in event planning. One of her mentors, Daniels alumnus Alex Lomas (BSBA 2007), recommended her for the job at the event-planning company.

Not only that, but Zesbaugh says she uses what she learned in class on a daily basis.

“I would probably die without a business background,” she said. “Things that I thought would never resurface from college, such as finance and accounting, have resurfaced day in and day out. Being able to read a P&L (profit and loss) statement, being able to look at cash flow, is instrumental to my business. Being able to tap into the Daniels network has been incredible as well.”

Hooch Booch gives back to the network too; so far, the company has employed three DU students as interns. 

Tapping a new market 

As if she didn’t have enough on her plate, this February Zesbaugh launched another beverage brand: a nonalcoholic, tea-based, effervescent hydration drink called Corpse Reviver. Formulated with the help of a nutritionist, the drink is available in three flavors—Guava Rose, Botanical and Prickly Pear—and offers more flexibility than the company’s alcoholic product, including the ability to ship to customers directly, something that isn’t allowed with beer and beer-like products. It’s already creating a buzz in the industry.

“There’s a ton of data on brewery sales declining and the beer industry really slowing down, but the nonalcoholic space is really heating up,” she said. “We figured, ‘Let’s try our hand at a product there and see what might be possible.’

“When people think about electrolytes, they often think Gatorade, which is a sports drink that’s filled with a lot of sugar,” she added. “I wanted to do it in a way that’s better for the consumer. And it’s also in a can, so it’s better for the environment as well.”

Consumer education

Hooch Booch has had its challenges along the way, Zesbaugh said. It’s been tough getting consumers to understand a beverage that sits next to beer on the store shelves, but is themed after hard alcohol drinks. Not to mention that Hooch Booch doesn’t taste like most other kombuchas.

“The most important piece is getting liquid into lips and cans in hands—getting people to actually try the product,” Zesbaugh said. “A lot of people think kombucha is only for hippies, and it’s this crazy fermented drink that tastes terrible. But we add a champagne yeast to the fermentation to soften a lot of that vinegary flavor profile. We’re making a great quality product, and it tastes really good.”