Flip over any jewel-toned bottle of GT’s Living Foods kombucha and you’ll notice it’s apparently made with more than just black tea and fresh pressed juices. A key ingredient, reads the label, is “100% pure love.” But according to a long-running lawsuit, the crunchy cult-favorite company treated workers terribly for years.
The supposedly homespun business was the first to commercialize the bubbly fermented tea in the US, when three-first-names founder George Thomas Dave began delivering bottles to Erewhon stores in Los Angeles himself nearly 30 years ago. GT’s remains the biggest player on the market today, with yearly sales exceeding $300 million as of October 2022. Dave, who grew up in a deeply spiritual and booch-evangelizing family, has long attributed his success to good vibes and a positive outlook. They’re qualities he’s said extend to his production facilities: “The environment we make kombucha in is peaceful, loving, quiet,” Dave told Inc. Magazine back in 2015. “Like a nursery.”
The vibes, in fact, were horrific, according to a new report fromthe Los Angeles Times. A ruling filed on July 27 in the Los Angeles County Superior Court found that GT’s Living Foods subjected employees working at its Vernon, California, factory between 2010 and 2014 to “deplorable and abusive and disturbing” conditions. Allegations against the company made by 11 former staff included unpaid overtime; workdays spanning 12 to 14 hours; little time to rest, eat meals, or use the bathroom; and intimidation. Judge William F. Highberger awarded more than $450,000 in restitution to the 11 plaintiffs.
Key findings from the ruling (available here via The Los Angeles Post) include:
- According to court documents, GT’s deliberately hired undocumented workers so it could exploit them: Between 2010 and the end of 2013, “a significant number of people” who weren’t legally able to work in the US were employed by GT’s, Highberger outlined in the filing, allowing “particularly vulnerable individuals” to be “intimidated and abused.”
- The plaintiffs testified that shifts usually began between 4:00 a.m and 6:00 a.m., and any late employees were fired on the spot; they weren’t provided with adequate rest breaks and were rushed out of bathrooms if they took too long; they worked upwards of 12 hour shifts but were asked to sign illegal waivers and timesheets indicating they only clocked 8 hours.
- One of the former employees, Simon Rojas, told the court that certain areas of the factory “were so hot that workers’ sweat would fall into the tanks of brewing tea.” Another plaintiff, Amancio Palacios, told the Times that extreme temperatures within the facility were used to punish him: He would be “drenched in sweat” after brewing tea in the heat, then be sent to refrigerated areas where his soaked clothes “would turn ice cold.” (In a statement to the Times Dave wrote that cleanliness is “absolutely essential” at GT’s, “no evidence of retaliation of any kind was ever proven,” and there were covers protecting the brewing tea from contaminants.)
In court, Dave deployed the classic “haters are jealous” defense: “Unfortunately, in this current state of the world we live in,” he said, lawsuits “just happen if you have any smell of success around you…That is the cross that I bear.” While on the stand, the Times reported, Dave also regaled the room with a story about how one of his early managers had planned to confront his cheating wife, and died of a heart attack. According to Dave, every batch of kombucha the manager touched during this stressful period turned bad. “That was my first indication that I can never take the nature of my product for granted,” Dave testified. “It’s truly a living, breathing, empathetic, sensitive living food, which is why it keeps me honest with how we behave as a corporation.” (GT’s Living Foods did not respond to Bon Appétit’s requests for comment by press time.)
Judge Highberger said in the court filing that Dave was an unreliable witness; he “lacked any credibility and did not provide truthful testimony on the witness stand.” In a response, Dave told the Times, “I did my best to speak truthfully, accurately, and sincerely. It is important to recognize that this case is over ten years old. Therefore, it can be difficult to specifically remember every detail, date and event.”
But the past isn’t yet history for Dave: The civil court proceeding is the first in a three-part trial accusing GT’s Living Foods of violating California labor laws, according to the Los Angeles Post. “The next phase of the trial will cover workplace accusations affecting the approximately 3,600 workers who have passed through the kombucha factory’s doors since 2012,” Highberger wrote in the court filing. Alleged abuses from 2013 until the present day will be covered in the third and final phase of this case. The 11 plaintiffs awarded restitution last week’s ruling won’t receive the money until all three trials are complete.
The image painted in the lawsuit runs counter to the narrative Dave’s been crafting for himself over decades, one in which he is “a sort of conduit for spreading the love, the missionary of an almost magical elixir,” Tom Foster wrote for Inc in 2015. “We remain a family-owned and operated company, so we are able to stay true to our purpose and not cut corners or compromise for profit,” Dave told the Times in 2020, an effort he says doesn’t go unnoticed by customers. “The most common feedback we receive from our fans is how our kombucha has changed their lives for the better.”
But to the drinkers who’ve long guzzled down Dave’s Kool-Aid—that GT’s Living Foods is “sustainable for people and the planet”—will America’s favorite kombucha still taste as sweet? One thing seems certain: It’s not “100% pure love” in those colorful bottles, though there might be the sweat of exploited workers.