Bridget Connelly, Luna Bay CEO and co-founder. Illustration: Rachelle Baker Some people drank more over the last year; some quit drinking entirely. Personally, I found myself putting more thought into how and what I was drinking — “mindful sipping,” as they call it. That led me to Luna Bay, a hard-kombucha business founded in 2019 in Chicago, Illinois.
A hippie-ish alcohol brand in a competitive, male-dominated business, Luna Bay is run by a mostly female team whose members have backgrounds in holistic health, sales, marketing, production, and microbiology. The brewers use whole ingredients and pure yerba mate, which give the product a flavor that makes it stand out from other booch on the market. “We use all non-GMO ingredients, which I think is even better than organic,” says CEO and co-founder Bridget Connelly, 34.
I remember one of my friends started an alcohol company in New York. He was three or four years ahead of me, with a very successful company. The day that we got on the shelves of Whole Foods, I called him just so excited, and he said, “You’re on the first high of the roller coaster, but it’ll come crashing down.” Not that he was trying to bring me down — he was happy for me, but he wanted me to know this is what it’s like. It goes up and down.