Fred Bryant in KavaClub’s planned home in the Fan. (Mike Platania photo)
In 2017, Richmond entrepreneur Fred Bryant stumbled upon a story on ESPN about how members of the New England Patriots football team were drinking kava as a pain reliever and social lubricant.
The drink, made from ground-up leaves of a certain pepper plant, is traditionally served like tea and has been consumed in Polynesia, where it originated, for thousands of years, providing users with feelings of relaxation and mild euphoria.
Intrigued, Bryant bought some kava powder and made himself a glass. “Well, it’s good enough for Tom Brady,” he recalls thinking ahead of taking a sip.
His first impression left a bad taste.
“It just was not very good. I definitely felt a little bit of something but it was so hard to choke down,” Bryant said. “It just needed so much work from a product perspective to be edible.”
Kava went out of mind for Bryant for a few years until last spring when he was in Melbourne, Florida, with a business associate who didn’t drink alcohol and took him to a kava bar. Bryant ordered a kava drink and found it was not only better than his first experience, but also planted the idea in him that there might be a market for kava bars in Richmond and beyond.
“When I went down to the kava bar, at first I thought it was just people who were sober and in recovery,” he said. “Then I realized that there’s a lot of people who had just given up on alcohol and now use kava as their alcohol alternative.”
The result of that experience was KavaClub, a kava bar concept Bryant began launching in Richmond earlier this year. He leased part of the former Canon & Draw Brewing Co. space on Main Street in the Fan and set out to outfit the space to serve drinks containing kava and kratom, in lieu of alcoholic beverages.
But he didn’t get far before hitting regulatory roadblocks.
Kava and kratom drinks exist in a sort of legal gray area. Neither is Food and Drug Administration-approved and yet hundreds of bars serve beverages made from the two ingredients. Other than a 2002 FDA-issued advisory that stated “kava-containing products have been associated with liver-related injuries,” there’s been little to no national guidance on the two products.
Pointing to that lack of FDA-approval, the Virginia Department of Health denied KavaClub’s operating permit in the spring.
In the VDH decision, Richmond and Henrico Health Districts’ Health Director Elaine Perry wrote that “little to no scientific peer-reviewed evidence was submitted to support the safety of these items – coupled with warnings from the FDA and the lack of (Generally Recognized As Safe) certification – is such that I find kava and kratom to be unapproved food additives.”
KavaClub’s storefront in the Fan. (BizSense file photo)
That stance has left Bryant and KavaClub unable to open for business while paying a lease on its Main Street storefront. It also pushed Bryant to take legal action.
Bryant and KavaClub are appealing the VDH decision in a process that is ongoing. In the meantime, Bryant sought an avenue through the court system to open while the appeal plays out. In August KavaClub filed for a preliminary injunction that would have stayed the VDH decision and issued the operating permit. The request was denied by a Richmond Circuit Court judge at a hearing earlier this month.
Still stuck in limbo, Bryant continues to defend the product and the safety of the business he’s trying to launch.
He claims subsequent studies prove that kava is safe to drink. For thousands of years kava’s been drunk in Polynesia, which is where Bryant said KavaClub would be sourcing its ingredients.
While kava provides users with feelings of mild euphoria and calmness, Bryant said kratom, which is a cousin of the coffee plant, provides similar feelings but is more of a stimulant. KavaClub would have different age minimums for each product: 18 for kava and 21 for kratom.
Bryant said that he has a high degree of confidence in the safety of the drinks KavaClub would serve and that potential adverse side effects are not a concern.
When asked whether it’d be safe for consumers to drive home after drinking a few kava drinks, Bryant said, “There are 300 kava bars throughout the country. Have you ever heard of a Kava-(under-the-influence)?”
“It doesn’t impair your mental acuity or mental functions in any way,” he said.
Bryant said scientific research into kava has been underfunded for years and that the industry doesn’t purport that the product is medicinal. He said he’s been mostly frustrated by what he sees as VDH’s lack of willingness to deepen its understanding of the product.
“Bureaucrats and regulators have a lot of authority, and something that’s really important is that they do their research, they do their homework and they do that in a good-faith manner,” Bryant said. “That’s been probably the most disappointing thing because that research should start at the local level.”
Bryant’s frustration is deepened by the fact that kava and kratom are being sold in Richmond and throughout the state, often in powder or pill form at head shops and other retailers that carry such things as vape pens and vaping accessories.
“If the commonwealth feels so strongly, they should be slamming shut every vape shop and every gas station (that’s selling kava and kratom),” Bryant said. “If it’s really a public health issue, that’s the response that should be happening.”
A spokesperson for the VDH said the agency is unable to discuss pending litigation or to speculate about what actions VDH may take in the future.
Bryant, a University of Richmond alum and Army veteran, co-founded financial tech firm WealthForge in 2009 when he was still in college. As WealthForge was taking off with nearly 500 percent annual growth in 2016, Bryant left the company.
Bryant said he’s worked the years since trying to get experience in “as many industries as possible,” a pursuit that led to a stint at another fast-growing, local firm in dog treat manufacturer TDBBS. But for the most part Bryant’s worked as a consultant and sometimes-investor with young, growing companies.
He launched KavaClub as the business’s sole investor and said he’s spent over $250,000 in trying to get it open.
He says he thought Richmond would be a viable market for the new venture, in part because of Virginia being a good state for business generally and what he viewed as Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s pro-business stance.
But Bryant now blames Youngkin’s administration for his troubles in securing an operating permit.
“I came back to Richmond and Virginia for a reason and Youngkin’s economic policy coming into his term, that was a huge draw,” Bryant said. “(I thought) I’m not going to have issues on stupid things. I’m not going to have to deal with bureaucracy.”
Despite the struggles in opening KavaClub, Bryant’s ambitious plans for the business remain intact. His vision is a brand with multiple locations.
“My goal is to get to north of 1,000 units open in five to seven years,” he said. “That may sound crazy aggressive, but I broke it down into bits, and to replicate KavaClub is $175,000 (per location).”
Should KavaClub lose its VDH appeal, Bryant said he’ll look outside Virginia and become a “Youngkin refugee.”
“I’m not sure where I’ll end up yet, but there’s a lot of places that would love for me to bring the platform there,” he said. “If the state government’s going to be this unresponsive, I’ll pop down to North Carolina.”
Fred Bryant in KavaClub’s planned home in the Fan. (Mike Platania photo)
In 2017, Richmond entrepreneur Fred Bryant stumbled upon a story on ESPN about how members of the New England Patriots football team were drinking kava as a pain reliever and social lubricant.
The drink, made from ground-up leaves of a certain pepper plant, is traditionally served like tea and has been consumed in Polynesia, where it originated, for thousands of years, providing users with feelings of relaxation and mild euphoria.
Intrigued, Bryant bought some kava powder and made himself a glass. “Well, it’s good enough for Tom Brady,” he recalls thinking ahead of taking a sip.
His first impression left a bad taste.
“It just was not very good. I definitely felt a little bit of something but it was so hard to choke down,” Bryant said. “It just needed so much work from a product perspective to be edible.”
Kava went out of mind for Bryant for a few years until last spring when he was in Melbourne, Florida, with a business associate who didn’t drink alcohol and took him to a kava bar. Bryant ordered a kava drink and found it was not only better than his first experience, but also planted the idea in him that there might be a market for kava bars in Richmond and beyond.
“When I went down to the kava bar, at first I thought it was just people who were sober and in recovery,” he said. “Then I realized that there’s a lot of people who had just given up on alcohol and now use kava as their alcohol alternative.”
The result of that experience was KavaClub, a kava bar concept Bryant began launching in Richmond earlier this year. He leased part of the former Canon & Draw Brewing Co. space on Main Street in the Fan and set out to outfit the space to serve drinks containing kava and kratom, in lieu of alcoholic beverages.
But he didn’t get far before hitting regulatory roadblocks.
Kava and kratom drinks exist in a sort of legal gray area. Neither is Food and Drug Administration-approved and yet hundreds of bars serve beverages made from the two ingredients. Other than a 2002 FDA-issued advisory that stated “kava-containing products have been associated with liver-related injuries,” there’s been little to no national guidance on the two products.
Pointing to that lack of FDA-approval, the Virginia Department of Health denied KavaClub’s operating permit in the spring.
In the VDH decision, Richmond and Henrico Health Districts’ Health Director Elaine Perry wrote that “little to no scientific peer-reviewed evidence was submitted to support the safety of these items – coupled with warnings from the FDA and the lack of (Generally Recognized As Safe) certification – is such that I find kava and kratom to be unapproved food additives.”
KavaClub’s storefront in the Fan. (BizSense file photo)
That stance has left Bryant and KavaClub unable to open for business while paying a lease on its Main Street storefront. It also pushed Bryant to take legal action.
Bryant and KavaClub are appealing the VDH decision in a process that is ongoing. In the meantime, Bryant sought an avenue through the court system to open while the appeal plays out. In August KavaClub filed for a preliminary injunction that would have stayed the VDH decision and issued the operating permit. The request was denied by a Richmond Circuit Court judge at a hearing earlier this month.
Still stuck in limbo, Bryant continues to defend the product and the safety of the business he’s trying to launch.
He claims subsequent studies prove that kava is safe to drink. For thousands of years kava’s been drunk in Polynesia, which is where Bryant said KavaClub would be sourcing its ingredients.
While kava provides users with feelings of mild euphoria and calmness, Bryant said kratom, which is a cousin of the coffee plant, provides similar feelings but is more of a stimulant. KavaClub would have different age minimums for each product: 18 for kava and 21 for kratom.
Bryant said that he has a high degree of confidence in the safety of the drinks KavaClub would serve and that potential adverse side effects are not a concern.
When asked whether it’d be safe for consumers to drive home after drinking a few kava drinks, Bryant said, “There are 300 kava bars throughout the country. Have you ever heard of a Kava-(under-the-influence)?”
“It doesn’t impair your mental acuity or mental functions in any way,” he said.
Bryant said scientific research into kava has been underfunded for years and that the industry doesn’t purport that the product is medicinal. He said he’s been mostly frustrated by what he sees as VDH’s lack of willingness to deepen its understanding of the product.
“Bureaucrats and regulators have a lot of authority, and something that’s really important is that they do their research, they do their homework and they do that in a good-faith manner,” Bryant said. “That’s been probably the most disappointing thing because that research should start at the local level.”
Bryant’s frustration is deepened by the fact that kava and kratom are being sold in Richmond and throughout the state, often in powder or pill form at head shops and other retailers that carry such things as vape pens and vaping accessories.
“If the commonwealth feels so strongly, they should be slamming shut every vape shop and every gas station (that’s selling kava and kratom),” Bryant said. “If it’s really a public health issue, that’s the response that should be happening.”
A spokesperson for the VDH said the agency is unable to discuss pending litigation or to speculate about what actions VDH may take in the future.
Bryant, a University of Richmond alum and Army veteran, co-founded financial tech firm WealthForge in 2009 when he was still in college. As WealthForge was taking off with nearly 500 percent annual growth in 2016, Bryant left the company.
Bryant said he’s worked the years since trying to get experience in “as many industries as possible,” a pursuit that led to a stint at another fast-growing, local firm in dog treat manufacturer TDBBS. But for the most part Bryant’s worked as a consultant and sometimes-investor with young, growing companies.
He launched KavaClub as the business’s sole investor and said he’s spent over $250,000 in trying to get it open.
He says he thought Richmond would be a viable market for the new venture, in part because of Virginia being a good state for business generally and what he viewed as Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s pro-business stance.
But Bryant now blames Youngkin’s administration for his troubles in securing an operating permit.
“I came back to Richmond and Virginia for a reason and Youngkin’s economic policy coming into his term, that was a huge draw,” Bryant said. “(I thought) I’m not going to have issues on stupid things. I’m not going to have to deal with bureaucracy.”
Despite the struggles in opening KavaClub, Bryant’s ambitious plans for the business remain intact. His vision is a brand with multiple locations.
“My goal is to get to north of 1,000 units open in five to seven years,” he said. “That may sound crazy aggressive, but I broke it down into bits, and to replicate KavaClub is $175,000 (per location).”
Should KavaClub lose its VDH appeal, Bryant said he’ll look outside Virginia and become a “Youngkin refugee.”
“I’m not sure where I’ll end up yet, but there’s a lot of places that would love for me to bring the platform there,” he said. “If the state government’s going to be this unresponsive, I’ll pop down to North Carolina.”
Part of being a good business man or woman is knowing when to choose your battles. Spending $250K and putting all your eggs in the “Well, they do it in Polynesia” basket is a poor business decision. Then blaming a governor (regardless of stripes) because that rationale doesn’t fly is another poor decision. The organizations putting a stop to this are responsible for guaranteeing the products citizens consume are safe. If they just grant the right do consume this and someone dies or causes a car accident under the influence, the liability falls on them. Not the Kava store owner.… Read more »
You are correct, He may have been in a kava bar and after 10 cups of “tea” decided to drop $250K into a store and hope it goes, now blames the Govenor.
Agree with all of this. But one thing this article has completely ignored that was in some other articles that I have read is that part of the reason the VDH is denying this venture is because he is planning on making food stuff with it (drinks) and the moment that it shifts from being a supplement into an ingredient the rules and regulations change. Supplements have long been in the gray area of regulations by the FDA, which is why there are so many shady supplements out there on the market (and you can buy this in pill form… Read more »
You may be correct in your judgement to a degree but it is often the people who try to do something new that get blindsided by things like regulations. Meanwhile, the far more common business failure is the guy who decides that Richmond needs another Restaurant like Peter Thiel famously spoke about on the topic of Happy Businesses and Miserable Businesses — he used the example of the businessman trying to get funding for his “unique Restaurant because “there’s no Ethiopian/Thai fusion restaurant in Chicago!” Well, even so, you are don’t have a monopoly — you are basically a place… Read more »
Seems to me that if our nanny-state wishes to ban something, the onus should be on it to prove harm. As an adult, I should be free to choose to partake of a kava product. Next thing you know the nanny-state will be mandating useless cloth masks to impede an airborne virus . . . . Oh, wait . . . never mind.
Except this is something that you ingest and the consequences are not adequately documented. Should I be able to brew up concoctions in my basement and sell them in Kroger as my secret potion? Or why don’t we just take the warning label off cigarettes? Agreed that some laws are arbitrary. This isn’t one of them though.
Well — he DID say “prove harm” — he didn’t say that Kroger should be allowed to sell Meth or Oxy or Angel Dust.
Except you can buy Kava in a grocery store? It comes in tea form. I don’t really have a dog in this fight… but it is interesting given that you can buy this in tea form (I have) at a grocery store, meanwhile Delta 8 is not regulated by the FDA and sold everywhere.
I’m a small business owner and I hate bureaucracy and red tape. That said, when you’ve shirked your responsibility to do any due diligence upfront whatsoever you can’t blame those things. As Led Zeppelin said”It’s nobody’s fault but mine”.
This legal fight seems silly given alcohol is bad for us, and yet it’s constantly pushed on us. Kava and kratom are no different than alcohol and what you are seeing here is the alcohol industry trying to keep away competition, just like with marijuana legalization.
The General Assembly took out a lot of the gray area associated with Kratom in SB1108 that was effective as of 7/1/23. Now it cannot be bought by anyone under 21 and it comes with a warning label like alcohol and cigarettes.
I certainly hope he is treated fairly, no matter what that looks like, and that the govt follow what is known about this particular drug, no matter what it that looks like. Driving should certainly not be a problem, as things like nicotine and caffine make one more alert and focused — esp nicotine. The argument that “indigineous people [X] used plant [X] for thousands of years” is just annoying. These people were not “wise” or whatever the implications usually are — we don’t let kids smoke just because certain aboriginees did, use opium or its derived products because some… Read more »
2 questions. If there are so many other places that would love for him to set up shop, why is he not there already?
And, why does this Kava story have so many articles? This almost reads like a paid PR piece as much press as this issue has gotten. Let him fight the state, continue to try and put square peg in round hole in Richmond and report on when a decision is made and let’s move on.
The same reason we have a new Hild/Live Well Financial column once a month: it’s local news and involves local topics.
And schadenfreude.
I think we all hope that logic and reason will win the day (optimism, I know). This is a legal product that you can buy, yes at vape shows and gas station… but at Whole Foods, Amazon, and Elwood Thompsons. We are able to buy it and consume it. No question. But because of different regulatory bodies and “grey areas” we are not able to buy this in drink form from an establishment? This truly defies logic. As for health issues, drink enough water and you will die. Drink about booze and you will die. Eat enough sugar, carbohydrates, etc…… Read more »