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Today we’d like to introduce you to Gabriel Oliver-Kose.

Gabriel, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I started OliKo (aw-lee-co) in 2017 while living in my home town of Boulder, CO. After years of working in the Boulder/Denver dining and bar scene, I decided to put my love for fermentation into creating the OliKo brand. Our companies mission is to provide our customers with a unique beverage experience by creating high-quality, health-conscious ginger vinegar-based drinks that can be enjoyed as a craft cocktail mixer or sipped on its own. Our beverages incorporate fresh ingredients, fermentation techniques and innovative flavors.

Our flagship product takes its inspiration from the “roots” of Ginger Beer. Created during the colonial spice trade, Ginger Beer was brewed using a colony of bacteria and yeast called a SCOBY or Ginger Plant. Though most producers have decided to discard this method, opting for ginger extract, high sugar content and other additives, we’ve kept to tradition to offer the consumer a natural beverage filled with robust spice, bright acid and just a hint of sweetness. Our Ginger Beer is non-alcoholic, hand-made in small batches and cultured with living organisms. Therefore, it should be kept refrigerated when storing to maintain quality and freshness.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Starting a business is rarely a smooth road. Though I have had tremendous support from family, friends and the community, I am having challenges growing beyond my current capacity. I have no experience in the manufacturing industry so each day is a new lesson to be worked on and mastered.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
We manufacture a Cultured Ginger Beer using only fresh ingredients. Our goal is to create tasty beverages and cocktail mixers that are full of flavor and nutrition and low in sugar and other additives and our fermented, non-alcoholic Ginger Beer is unique to the market place. We brew in small, hand made batches, juicing all our organic Peruvian ginger by hand. We are proud to announce that we recently have gone completely organic and we also boast the lowest content of sugar of any Ginger Beer on the market, up to 50% less than some of our competitors.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
The small moments, during demos and social events when people try our product for the first time. To see their positive reaction and their joy.