Kava and Legality to make a drink

[CoHerbal]

Hello!
we have an herbal and apothecary shop in Colorado, USA and we'd like to expand it by making pre bottled Kava drinks and my question is if there is any legality that we should consider regarding licenses and restrictions to our sales.

Hope you guys can guide us in the right way to be able to make and sell Kava Drinks.

Good vibes!
Pablo from Colorado Herbal Imports.

 

[The Kap'n]

Are you looking at making an extract beverage or a root based beverage?
I'm not sure, but you may want to contact Brooklyn Kava, or the guys who were running it. They tried this scenario, and ended up not going after the idea. They may have some pointers for you in this regard. I personally hope you're able to get it off to a good start.

 

[TheKavaSociety]

This might be helpful:

I will do a whole thread on it at some point, but I will give a brief answer here for now. Kava is legal, but it isn't what is known as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the FDA. This means you can make dietary supplements with it, but you can't use it as an ingredient in a food or beverage unless you get specific permission to from the FDA. You CAN make a liquid dietary supplement with it, but a liquid dietary supplement is NOT the same thing as a beverage. What's the difference? it's honestly very confusing, but the FDA put out a guidance on the difference in 2014 one difference is the serving size of the beverage(dietary supplements cannot have a lot of liquid/serving so ready to drink kava in a 14 oz bottle is not permitted) how it is packaged etc etc etc. Most consumer products made with kava are not compliant with this guidance. I think Taki Mai probably is, but I would have to look very closely at it.

I am not a lawyer so I do not have 100% understanding of everything, but Wholefoods decided we were not in compliance with this FDA guidance on the difference between liquid dietary supplements and beverages so we got kicked out.

We could have relabeled the products and gotten back into wholefoods, but we would have been sold in the "wholebody" section (I believe this is where taki mai is sold) and we didn't think it was worth it right now. We may make the bottles again someday, but not for a while.

 

[verticity]

Hello!
we have an herbal and apothecary shop in Colorado, USA and we'd like to expand it by making pre bottled Kava drinks and my question is if there is any legality that we should consider regarding licenses and restrictions to our sales.

Hope you guys can guide us in the right way to be able to make and sell Kava Drinks.

Good vibes!
Pablo from Colorado Herbal Imports.

I'm in Colorado. I know there are kava bars operating in Denver. But probably licensing a pre-bottled drink is more difficult. Have you considered just selling kava powder? It would be nice to have a local source of high quality powder.

If you want to sell a beverage in your store you might consider contacting Mike at @Kalm with Kava rather than bottling your own, which is tricky to do in practice. I believe he sells his bottled extract drink wholesale, and he has already worked out the legal stuff.

 

[verticity]

I see that you do sell kava powder, but I'm not clear what the price is from your web site. There is a price, but it doesn't say how many grams or pounds you get for that price...
http://coloradoherbalimports.com/shop/kava/