Gary Russell stood behind his counter in the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles. Surrounded by those old-fashioned, bold-colored vendor signs, Russell in a casual red shirt and his clean-designed counter felt like an invader to the atmosphere of nostalgia.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n Photo credit: Peiwen Jing<\/em><\/p>\n Nevertheless, the crowd walking inside of the market in their sportswear \u00a0brought the sense of modern to this over-100-year-old marketplace, just like what Russell did with his kombucha tea bar in the past eight months.<\/p>\n <\/a>It was Saturday noon, one of the market\u2019s busiest hours throughout the week. Two customers grabbed several traditional pork carnitas tacos, stopped by Russell\u2019s counter, tasted different flavors of the kombucha teas they produced, and got two bottles of \u201cmidnight rose\u201d as their drinks.<\/p>\n \u201cThe market has been there since 1917 and I don\u2019t know some other place in LA quite like this,\u201d said Russell. \u201cThe dynamic, the atmosphere, and also for the new organic and healthy choices coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo Credit: Peiwen Jing<\/em><\/p>\n Russell works for the Better Booch, a small business manufacturing kombucha tea in downtown Los Angeles. They get the organic tea leaf supply from the Art of Tea in Beverly Hills, brew the teas, and then add bacteria and yeast to let the mixture to ferment for a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Better Booch has been in the business for more than two years. The small crafted kombucha tea brewery now has five employees, including their husband and wife duo co-founders Trey and Ashleigh Lockerbie. All of the five people working with Better Booch began their career in the show biz as touring musicians, mainly backing up popular international artists. \u201cAfter years of exhausting travel and inconsistent schedules, we decided to make a change,\u201d said the founder Trey Lockerbie.<\/p>\n The tiredness of inconsistent traveling around the world was one of the personal stimulators for the Lockerbie couple to switch their gears into the small business of cottage product. Meanwhile, the policy makers also sent their encouragement, by passing the bill to support the movement.<\/p>\n
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