In an effort to live a healthier lifestyle, Junita Lapp started making her own kombucha tea. Four and a half years later she has a business that distributes her kombucha to about 15 locations and is a fan-favorite at nearby farmers markets.

After trying kombucha while she was working at a health foods store, Lapp was not sold on the strong, bitter tasting product. Being a self-proclaimed “do-it-yourselfer,” Lapp said, “I can make this better myself.”

In 2014, she founded her company known as Lapp It Up! Kombucha Tea.

A project that started as more of a self-sufficient experiment grew into a full-time business for Lapp.

“Eventually I kind of just took over the basement at my parents’ house with all of these kombucha brewing vessels and it smelled like liquor,” Lapp said. “It was really strong.”

In December 2015, she moved her operation into the Foodworks Alliance kitchen, which has been founded in January that year.

The kitchen gave her more equipment to use and space to grow, an opportunity that Lapp has taken advantage of.

“I first started out just doing like farmers markets for the first two years or so, it was 2015, December, when I started working here, to start manufacturing and spreading into distributing it more widely,” Lapp said.

From start to finish, each batch of kombucha tea takes about three weeks to make. The drink starts out as a brewed tea that is fermented using a culture called a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) to make the drink different than a simple tea. After the liquids ferment, Lapp adds flavoring to make one of her five regular flavors or her specialty seasonal flavors.

While kombucha has been prominent in Lapp’s life for years, the beneficial health drink was not widely known of in the local area when she started her business.

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“It was a very strange kind of business to start in Zanesville just because people are now starting to get more healthy minded and stuff but back then, three or four years ago, kombucha was pretty unknown except for like a select few people,” Lapp said.

During her earlier years, Lapp said she worked diligently to educate people and provide samples as much as possible to introduce people to the product. Although it’s more widely known now, Lapp still educates people about her products during events and farmers markets.

“I love just sharing healthy stuff with other people and helping other people get healthy,” Lapp said. “One of my favorite things is … when I meet new people at farmers markets and pop up events like that, introducing it to them for the first time and winning them over to it.”

Growing up as a Mennonite on a farm about 30 minutes south of Zanesville, Lapp said she grew into a lifestyle of being self-sufficient, which she learned from her parents’ example.

From a young age, she was making goat cheese and baking pies, along with other homemade items that she would sell at auctions.

While she had a self-starter background, Lapp admitted that she knew nothing about starting a business. With a lot of work into her business now, she said that if she had the knowledge about owning a business that she does now, she may have continued her operation.

“It was a very fly by the seat of my pants kind of thing. I had no idea what I was doing,” Lapp said. “Looking back, if I would’ve known what I was getting into, I might kind of given up. It’s not really been easy, but I don’t regret it at all.”

Lapp sells her product at farmers markets in the area, including the Athens Farmers Market which is a year-round operation. She also sells her product at Weasel Boy, Wine Rack and a couple other places around town and places in Columbus, although the Athens area is the largest distributor of her products.

In the last year or two, Lapp has added hair care products including a hair rinse and shampoo bars to her kombucha business.

Anyone looking to buy Lapp It Up products, or learn more about the business can visit Lapp It Up Kombucha Tea online. Additionally, anyone interested in carrying Lapp It Up products should contact Junita Lapp through her website.

Lapp It Up! Kombucha Tea is Y-City New’s business spotlight for the month of December.