Q&A with Tyler Blythe, Co-Founder of Root of Happiness®
Tyler Blythe is the Co-Founder of Root of Happiness®, KavaLytics™, and Kali Kava™.
What inspired you to become an ethnobotanist and focus on therapeutic plants? Can you share a bit about your journey in search of therapeutic plants around the world?
I was born into a middle-class family in the Bay Area, California. My mother and father owned a construction company and did quite well for themselves as time went on. As a child growing up, I had always wanted to be a doctor and had a strong interest in all aspects of the Medical field from microbiology to nutrition and pathology and especially pharmacology, but more on that later. My mother and father were incredibly supportive of that interest and encouraged me to shoot high rather than going into the family construction business. They could be very persuasive. I vividly remember working the 110F summers for $8 an hour, swinging a hammer for my fathers company, and thinking, “I’m definitely getting the message that I should pursue the medical field rather than the family business.” Where most kids got remote controled trucks and Nerf guns, I got the 1989 American Medical Association’s Encyclopedia of Medicine. I was 7 years old. Throughout my childhood and teenage years I had accumulated many similar reference books, learning medical terminology, diseases, treatments and the names and pharmacological actions of various medicines. I went to catholic school and the basic Latin lessons there came in handy for understanding the medical terminology.
My interest in traditional herbal medicines was sparked from my early exposure to Martial Arts (I am a life long martial artist), and the various herbal preparations that were used for things such as bruises, strains and fractures as well as overall vitality and endurance. An Okinawan Karate master had come to visit our Dojo one day and demonstrated “hard style” Okinawan Karate in which he kicked a Louisville Slugger bat in half with his shin. To be honest, I couldn’t tell if the crack you heard was the bat or his shin, probably both, but afterwards he had put a cloth wrapping over his shin that was soaked in what was quite frankly, a foul smelling brown liquid. In my head swirled various questions about this individual’s bone anatomy, as well as the speed, force, and calculations as to how bone can break oak, but equally intriguing was this curious brown liquid that seemed to sooth the obvious pain from kicking an oak bat in half.
After the demo I approached the Master with these questions and the Master ended up gifting me a bottle of this liquid which was called “Dit Da Jow” and said that it came from soaking various medicinal herbs in a jar for ten years and that it was good for breaks, sprains, and any sort of external pain. This experience lead me to study both western herbalism, Traditional Chinese medicine theory and Ayurvedic herbal medicine. My library of books began to include entire compendiums of the herbal systems of various cultures. I found it fascinating that for every ailment there seemed to be 10 different plants and for every plant there seemed to be endless phytochemicals of pharmacological interest all working in concert with one another.
I continued to study the interaction between cultures and plants throughout my University years and eventually came to the conclusion that although I had spent my entire life preparing to be a western medical doctor and was now studying at UC Davis to be one, that I would rather work in a field that would allow me more freedom to work with traditional herbal medicines. My family and friends thought I was crazy. Perhaps I was. Ethnobotany was the field that I found myself the most interested in since it was at the intersection of medicine, anthropology, linguistics, theology, chemistry, and pharmacology. Fascinating indeed. It also allowed me to travel to far off places and meet some of the most interesting people imaginable. My career in ethnobotany has sent me all over the world, from the Jungles of Peru to nearly every island in the Caribbean, and of course, our very own beloved Pacific Islands of Hawaii. It was there in 2008, that I had what I would call my first real Kava experience by a famous Hawaiian Kava Man named Zach Gibson. This experience would spark my deeper relationship with kava which eventually lead me to a life-long dedication to this plant and become a Kava Man myself.
What motivated you to get involved in the kava industry?
In 2008, Zach Gibson took me to his farm on Big Island Hawaii, and explained to me the culture and growing of Kava in Hawaii and the parts of the Pacific that he had visited. I spent a lot of time documenting this knowledge as it had fully captivated my attention. Very few plants that I had encountered to this point had this type of longstanding human-plant relationship. I made it a point to come back multiple times a year to study this plant in both its natural habitat and its farmed environment, taking samples for lab testing and cuttings for propagation in my greenhouse.
Back at home in California, I found myself dedicating a significant amount of my time and resources to analytically studying kava, attempting to grow it and developing extraction methods from the numerous cultivars. I wanted to create a safe concentrated kava product that would have the same proportions of kavalactones as some of the best drinking cultivars from Vanuatu. In 2012, our Polynesian Gold® Extract was the first of its kind to be made commercially available – A standardized CO2 solventless extract of Noble Kava that was true to type and water soluble. The success of this project would propel many other innovations for the Kava industry in the near future.
After a successful 10 year career studying, collecting, and distributing herbs from indigenous cultures throughout the world, I realized that I had a catalog of 6,500 plants and extracts to keep track of. I had mentioned to my business partner, Travis, that although it’s been an incredibly rewarding career and a successful run, that we should focus on something perhaps a little less stressful. I could not have a family and travel back and forth to Peru and other places, not to mention the health and safety concerns of continuing to do so. The work that we were putting into sourcing, analyzing, extracting and distributing kava was already becoming a substantial part of what our operation was doing and in 2012, Travis and I co-founded the first Kava Bar in Northern California, the Root of Happiness®.
Tell us about Root of Happiness®. What sets it apart in terms of its kava bars, kava products, and distribution?
When we opened Northern California’s first Kava Bar in 2012, our goal was to provide our 18+ community with an alternative, alcohol-free social experience that would be safe and enjoyable, while also serving to educate consumers about the fascinating 3,000 year South Pacific tradition of Kava. We determined that the best way to accomplish this was to build meticulously designed spaces which fused modern elements with the timeless traditions of the South Pacific to provide a relaxed, warm ambiance that fostered the discussion of all facets of Kava culture. Since that time, we’ve served millions shells of kava through our own 4 locations, partnered with numerous other bars, and have educated tens of millions of consumers about kava both in our communities and online.
What sets Root of Happiness apart is that we are founded upon providing the highest quality kava products through quality analytics driven sourcing and the continuous innovation of unique, safe and effective kava products to meet consumers demand. We were lab testing Kava in 2006 to find the highest quality sources and brought the concept of lab testing to the modern direct-to-consumer Kava industry where we were met with stiff resistance at the time. 17 years later, we’re happy that the industry has begun to follow our example and market their kava products with lab tests to show quality and purity. Whether you purchase a shell of our traditional fresh green kava at one of our kava bars, or one of our innovative Polynesian Gold® CO2 Water Soluble Kava Extract products from our website, you’re purchasing a product that has come as a result of 17 years of relentless quality improvement through lab testing, strict FDA cGMP quality controls and forward thinking innovation. Ourselves and our families drink the very same kava that we serve at our bars and sell online, every day. We would never sell anything that we would not drink in our own bars with our own families. Many Pacific government diplomats have come to enjoy kava with us at our bars and have come to understand why we are leaders in the American Kava industry.
What is the KavaLytics™ analytical method and what motivated you to create it? How has it contributed to the kava industry?
KavaLytics™ came about as the result of listening to the quality control and traceability needs of kava industry stakeholders at all levels of the value chain in 7 kava producing regions. We determined that there was a quality control gap that existed between the colorimetric acetone test used at biosecurity departments and the gold standard HPLC test that priced out many stakeholders. Based upon industry feedback, KavaLytics™ built a machine-learning platform that was trained on over 5,000 analyses of kava performed by a highly credentialed ISO-17025 analytical lab with vast experience in kava analysis. The result is the most technologically advanced, comprehensive and robust kava analysis system ever built. Thanks to machine learning, the method continues to learn from each new kava sample it is given and will always be at the forefront of fast, affordable, and accurate kava analysis. As you read this article, the KavaLytics™ method has already learned from new data acquired by a user scan somewhere in the Pacific. Its quite amazing really.
As we previously highlighted, we had been lab testing kava since 2006 and over the course of thousands of HPLC tests, we realized that the cost of our unrelenting quest for the highest quality kava was costing us a significant sum of money. Each year, we would analyze over 100 samples via HPLC on our products and on potential new sources for our products. It simply wasn’t feasible to purchase a $150,000 HPLC and pay a specialized staff member to perform routine testing and so we began to look at alternative testing methods such as NIR. The benefits of the NIR testing method were high accuracy and repeatability with instant results, minimal sample preparation and no wet chemistry involved. The cost was less than 10% of the cost of HPLC and was within 95% accuracy. We developed the system using our expansive library of over 5,000 reference samples, specifically trained the system on 500 of those, and every month we add more unique samples into the database.
The system is now deployed in every Kava growing region in the Pacific from farmers to processors and exporters, as well as domestic distributors who want to verify the quality of the kava that that are importing. KavaLytics™ provides stakeholders with a fast, affordable and accurate analytical testing method that costs $3,000 in equipment and $20 per test as opposed $100,000 and thousands in maintenance and chemical costs to set up their own laboratory to accurately report results. It has been incredibly beneficial to the industry as a whole to have instant analytics on kava samples so that processors know what they are processing, exporters know what they’re exporting, and distributors know what they’re distributing without having to either guess or put up thousands of dollars to test multiple samples in a large lot of Kava.
You have been involved with several organizations pertaining to kava. How do you see the role of these organizations in shaping the future of the kava industry? What are some of the most important initiatives and priorities right now?
Indeed, I’ve been involved with and participated in many organizations, committees, and focus groups that pertain to the kava industry. The roles of these organizations have been primarily focused on growing the Kava industry through education, quality measures, and the standardization of kava as a global commodity. I commend the work that has been done by PHAMA, the CODEX committee, as well as the Pacific Secretariat in this regard. I’m also very happy to work with the Kava Coalition to educate, lobby, and advocate for Kava from our side of the industry as manufacturers, distributors, retailers and Kava Bars. I believe that we’ll be able to accomplish our mutual goals for kava to be recognized as a safe and worldwide food commodity faster and more efficiently using this two pronged approach, lobbying from organizations in both the kava producing regions, as well as our domestic coalition of key stakeholders.
The highest priority is, and always has been, the safety of kava as a food product and to restore its reputation as a safe and enjoyable beverage. Getting governments to acknowledge Kava’s safety after it went through knee-jerk reaction bans in the early 2000’s, puts the burden of proof for kava’s safety, squarely on the stakeholders of our industry. This requires skilled veteran lobbyists, FDA regulatory attorneys, private industry groups, NGOs, Kava experts, toxicologists, clinical trials, petitions, and a group highly motivated and highly organized, competent professionals who are willing to work towards this common goal. It also requires passionate community support and a significant amount of funding. The Kava Coalition has all of that.
Kava is set to become a billion-dollar industry, with over 400 Kava bars currently and soon to be thousands more, thousands of traditional Kalapus, a burgeoning domestic kava growing industry, and countless manufacturers of innovative kava products. It cannot be overstated how vital it is to the future of the sustainable kava industry that an organization such as the Kava Collation exists to guide, educate and advocate for the responsible distribution of high quality compliant Kava products in America and worldwide. There has never been a more well-organized coalition of experts, stakeholders, researchers, and professional organizations with a unified mission to propel the modern kava industry FORWARD, and we’re honored to be a part of it.
How do you envision the future of the kava industry? What challenges do you foresee and what developments are you excited about?
The future of the Kava industry will revolve around the normalization of kava consumption by western cultures (and beyond) through the innovation and modernization of kava consumption. American Kava Culture has reached a point where it has evolved into its own unique kava culture, bringing with it innovations such as American style kava bars, kava making machines, Kava shots and flavored sparkling kava beverages. Stopping by the nearest corner store, Whole Foods, or your local Kava Bar to grab a can of ice cold sparkling kava seltzer that tastes like mangos and watermelon on your way home from work or to your kids ball game, makes Kava much more accessible to the general public than trying to find a traditional Kalapu to join on Wednesday nights. The future of the kava industry is rooted in the widespread accessibility of kava and the modernization of kava consumption in familiar formats such as sparkling beverages. We have to be willing to accept that the newly forged kava cultures will inevitably be different from traditional Pacific Kava culture the same way that Fijian Kava Culture is different from Tongan Kava culture.
With that said, I strongly believe that the cultures and traditions of kava should continue to be upheld by Pacific islanders living outside of the Pacific and would encourage them to grow kava in America, drink kava in America, attend Kalapu, and continue to educate themselves as well as new kava drinkers as to the history of kava. I sincerely hope that the modernization of kava and the forging of new kava drinking cultures progresses side by side with a strong renaissance in the traditional aspects of kava culture which would include Kava circles and the growing of kava in America to preserve this traditional knowledge. The modernization of the Kava industry presents exciting opportunities for Pacific stakeholders and new kava cultures to work hand in hand towards making kava a world-wide commodity that mutually benefits all parties.
The only challenges that I can foresee is 1. The sustainability of the kava industry as the world wide demand for kava will skyrocket, 2. The regulatory hurdles that we’re currently working through, quite successfully I might add, and 3. Educating the consumer on the traditional aspects of kava so that the knowledge of kava is not lost in its commodification, modernization and adoption by the new cultures that consume it. These are challenges that I believe our industry is well equipped to handle through mutual efforts in the Pacific and the Kava Coalition here in America.
How can consumers contribute to the advocacy efforts for kava in the United States?
Consumers can contribute to the advocacy for kava in the US by showing support for the companies and organizations that are dedicated to moving the kava industry forward. Sign up for Kava Collation’s newsletter and join our efforts. When regulators receive thousands of letters and see your testimonials, they take issues regarding the regulation of kava seriously. If you are a college student doing a research paper or presentation, do it on kava. Your fellow classmates will be exposed to kava and often professors become interested in their next research project based upon their students initial works. If you see irresponsible or misinformed news articles on kava, spread the word and correct the misinformation. Call and write to the organization asking them to correct and amend their errors. You have a voice!
Perhaps one of the best ways that you can advocate for kava is simply by being a responsible kava drinker that represents the plant and its historical consumption in a positive light. Become educated on kava so that you can competently speak on the topic and dispel the safety myths and encourage others to drink high quality kava in a responsible and safe way.