After selling a successful brewery in October 2019, Eric Elliott knew he was ready for another business venture, but wasn’t sure what it should be. That is, until his wife came home with her first bottle of kombucha, a fermented effervescent tea beverage.
“I asked her what it was, and she tried to explain it and then I tasted it and said, ‘Wow, this is really good!’… and I started my first batch the next day,” said Elliott, who had the plans for Reputation Beverage Company drawn up only a few months later.
Elliott went to work opening a Reputation Beverage Company coffee shop in Dewitt, Mich. where he would introduce his customers to his canned kombucha and nitro cold brew in addition to serving traditional coffee.
“What really stood out to me with Reputation Beverage was that they are so focused on local sustainability, which is one of the main driving forces of market format [stores],” Capital City Market Store Manager Mitch Cook said. “You can tell [Elliott] has the same passion to drive and support local as we do here at Capital City Market.”
Capital City Market, the new neighborhood grocery store by Meijer and one of the first grocery stores in downtown Lansing, will open Oct. 14, carrying a variety of Reputation Beverage Company’s products from kombucha and nitro cold brew coffee to sparkling tea and whole bean coffee on its shelves amongst 3,000 other local products.