Matt Lancor was on the rugby field in Seattle — playing in the USA Rugby National Championships in 2014 — when he picked up a bottle of GT's Kombucha from a grocery end-cap and felt something that would quietly change his life. Not immediately. Not even that weekend, exactly. But the morning of competition, after drinking three bottles across the tournament, he woke up and had, as he would later describe it, the perfect pregame poop. For an athlete whose gut had been quietly misbehaving under the stress of elite competition, the normalcy of that morning was a revelation.
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Matt Lancor was on the rugby field in Seattle — playing in the USA Rugby National Championships in 2014 — when he picked up a bottle of GT's Kombucha from a grocery end-cap and felt something that would quietly change his life. Not immediately. Not even that weekend, exactly. But the morning of competition, after drinking three bottles across the tournament, he woke up and had, as he would later describe it, the perfect pregame poop. For an athlete whose gut had been quietly misbehaving under the stress of elite competition, the normalcy of that morning was a revelation.
Matt Lancor studied material science engineering at the University of Illinois, where his analytical training gave him a framework for understanding the structural properties of natural ingredients that most people in the kombucha space simply did not have. Before founding Kombuchade, he worked as a technical sales engineer for a German industrial automation company, visiting manufacturing plants across the automotive, food and beverage, and pharmaceutical industries — designing applications that helped companies save time through automated production. What he saw inside those processed food plants horrified him: the distance between what Americans were eating and what human bodies were designed to process.
The turning point came at a beer brewery, where he was working on an engineering project and felt what he later described as a spiritual conviction — an overwhelming sense that he was supposed to build something for people, not for machines. Something that addressed the gut health crisis he was watching unfold in American food culture. Something that bridged the ancient tradition of fermented foods with the performance demands of athletes. He walked away from his six-figure engineering career, moved back into his mother's house in 2014, and started brewing.
The brand he built is called Kombuchade — a name that signals both its kombucha roots and its athletic orientation, referencing Gatorade's category position as an active-hydration beverage. From the beginning, Matt designed Kombuchade differently from the oversweetened, highly carbonated kombucha products filling store shelves. He pursued a smoother, less carbonated formula with functional herbs and teas — later adding mineral elements including kosher Celtic sea salt for electrolyte support — specifically engineered for the gut-health needs of athletes who drink it on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule leading up to a Saturday match.
His first customers were his rugby teammates. Then athletes in CrossFit and martial arts found it. Then Kombuchade found its way into workplaces and offices in Chicago. Today, Kombuchade self-manufactures in Chicago — in its own licensed wholesale food establishment — using the same SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) Matt started with in 2014. His mission: help 100,000 people take their first step toward balancing their gut health, with a revenue target of $100 million by 2035.
Matt holds certifications as a Nutritional Therapist (The Health Sciences Academy), a Blue Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a Reiki Master Teacher, and a Tier 1 Kombucha Brewer through the Kombucha Brewers International. He appeared on the Center Stage segment of Mornings in the Lab to discuss the connection between gut health, athletic performance, and what most men get wrong when they treat their gut like a side quest.
