Aberdeen's Raw Culture Kombucha owner, Chris Geary, shares a page in his daily diary

He heads up this city’s first commercial kombucha brewery

7.45am

I wake up, check emails and go through social media while replying, liking, and sharing - whatever keeps Raw Culture in the spotlight. I’ll check what the competition is doing, get a shower and go for breakfast. I live most days by the seat of my pants. John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans”. That applies in business too.

8.15am

Chris Geary

Breakfast! Well, coffee at least. Unless it’s Friday when I have a bacon roll with a ton of hot sauce. It’s great being my own boss, and having the flexibility to do the school run every day is one of those little wins. I appreciate the silly chats with Bree on the walk to school. I spend as much time as I can seeing the world through her eyes, sharing her excitement in the little things that would otherwise go unnoticed.

9.15am

I head to Raw Culture HQ. it’s like a wonderland with all the toys I need to stay productive. We have an office for “businessing”, a workshop for building and a studio for photography as well as the production areas where we make kombucha. I’ll log into my computer to check my emails again. This is where my day often takes an unexpected turn, and my plans go out the window. If not, I’ll work on production planning, scheduling brew days and trying to make everything fit. I should mention my business partner, Ash. He’s an old friend and a great guy. He works full time elsewhere but supports the business as much as he can with sales and marketing. We have ups and downs but ultimately, we’re a good team with a shared vision. Having had my fill of real work, I’ll head through to the warehouse and process the orders, making sure everything is shipped promptly. Then my time is split between packaging design, website updates, product photography, and social media. It’s working well considering we’ve done everything ourselves.

12pm

I’ll have a Huel shake while I’m working, since I’ve no time to stop and these are surprisingly good. Some days I work on new product development – that’s always fun, we have a lot of great things in the pipeline including a collaboration with Singularity Sauce.

5pm

Having lost all sense of time, my wife Nikki will call to see if she should send a search party. She is an incredible support. Raw Culture would not exist without her. Heading home, I do local deliveries. It’s great to meet customers and get feedback, and they appreciate the personal service. Once home, it’s family fun time.

6pm

I’m a massive foodie, so dinner is cooked from scratch - on an average night I’ll do lasagne or fish tacos but on a treat night it has to be chicken wings.

7.30pm

Once Bree is in bed, Nikki and I chill out. I’ll usually get the laptop out while we’re watching TV to finish things. Having lost track of time I’ll get to bed around 3am. No sooner than my head hits the pillow the alarm goes off and its time to do it all over again.

www.rawculture.co.uk

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