The European soft drinks market today is a battleground for the attention of consumers who are tired of sugar and artificial colourings but still do not know what to choose instead of the familiar bottle from the supermarket. More than 90% of families in Europe have never bought kombucha in their lives. And this is not because people do not care about their health. The reason is both simpler and more complicated: the mass market is built around long-life products that can sit on shelves at room temperature for months. A live beverage, under such conditions, simply loses its carbonation or its flavour.
Nykyta Izmaylov, founder of the SPRAGA brand, is convinced that as long as kombucha remains a product for hipsters shopping at craft stores, there will be no mass-market breakthrough. The product needs to be in every refrigerator alongside milk and ordinary bread — only then does it become a real business.
Traditional distributors love pasteurisation: it provides a long shelf life, removes the headache of distribution and eliminates concerns about storage conditions. However, high temperatures ruthlessly kill the entire microflora, turning live kombucha into ordinary sweetened flavoured tea.
“If you make a product only for healthy lifestyle enthusiasts, you will never build a large business. People should buy SPRAGA not because they have to or because it is healthy, but because it genuinely tastes good,” emphasises Nykyta Izmaylov.
The company deliberately rejected the easier route of outsourcing and contract manufacturing, where quality inevitably fluctuates from batch to batch. Instead, it had to build a rigorous system based on a single temperature standard — from 2°C to 8°C — maintained at every stage of the journey from fermentation tank to retail shelf, and confirmed by stringent European audits such as IFS Food and ISO.
To understand the scale of the challenge, it is worth looking at a real case from the retail industry. Imagine launching a new product in a country where the category does not yet exist.
When the brand first entered the Ukrainian market — and later began preparing its European expansion with hubs in Prague and Lisbon — managers at major retail chains were at a loss. They simply did not understand which shelf should hold a beverage that is alive and requires refrigeration. Some seriously suggested placing it alongside kefir and sour cream.
Instead of waiting for distributors to accommodate them, the team began delivering and installing its own branded refrigerators directly in retail stores. This changed the rules of the game: consumers saw the beverage cold and ready to drink, rather than as a warm product sitting on a shelf.
Capturing 71% of the domestic market became the ideal stress test ahead of the company’s expansion into Europe, where the functional drinks segment is growing rapidly amid the trend towards reducing alcohol consumption.
“The question is not what you drink at a party. What matters is what sits in your refrigerator every day instead of sugary fizzy drinks. What if a naturally fermented beverage were available on every supermarket shelf and became as routine a purchase as bread or milk?” summarises Nykyta Izmaylov.
To better understand the context of the company’s European expansion, it is worth looking at how other players are solving similar logistical challenges in the functional drinks industry.
In the United Kingdom, the kombucha market has developed more strongly than anywhere else in Europe because brands have managed to secure stable shelf space in major retail chains such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s. However, many local producers have faced a dilemma: in order to scale into thousands of supermarkets, some have compromised by using pasteurisation or filtration. As a result, they have gained access to ambient-temperature shelves but lost some of the authentic flavour of the live product, which may disappoint true enthusiasts of microbiome-friendly beverages.
In Sweden and Denmark, probiotic brands have taken a different approach. They enter the market through eco-store chains such as Paradiset, using specialised mobile “roll-in” refrigerators. Suppliers load them directly at the warehouse, while merchandisers simply roll the fully stocked units onto the shop floor. There is no intermediate overheating — a clear demonstration that a live beverage can work in large-scale retail as long as the cold chain remains intact.