There are entrepreneurs who get a great idea and then painstakingly set out to take the steps that lead them to their dream of owning and operating the business they think the market needs, and then, on the other hand, there are those who randomly meet someone at a new job and their whole life changes.
The stories of Uffda Kombucha and Mazi Table + Bar are simultaneously two separate stories and one big story.
One is more the result of diligent planning and work, and the other is the one where a whole lot of luck (alongside a lot of skill) is involved.
Under the roof of the former Shorty’s/Bucktales building on Tower Avenue, the twin kombucha brewery and restaurants are operated by two brothers, Colin and Jeffrey Zervas, along with kombucha mastermind McKenna Dagger.
The Zervas brothers were traveling different paths, but the lessons they learned in their younger days under the same roof prepared them for when they both ended up right next door to each other. Now, they’re joined at the hip and showing Superior new ways to eat and drink.
“You know, I think entrepreneurship in my family’s been kind of a thing,” Colin Zervas, one of the founders of Uffda Kombucha, said. “My uncle owned Zervas Industrials. My grandpa owned that previous to him. And my mom’s grandpa had a candy shop. There’s just a lot of entrepreneurs in our family, and I guess it’s not something that I thought I would be doing, but I never liked the idea of working for someone other than myself.”
Originally, Zervas’ life plans were different. He went to St. Scholastica to get a biology degree.
“I had full intentions of going into the medical field,” he said.
But early experiences in that field after getting his diploma made him realize his path was leading somewhere he didn’t want to go. “That’s what really led to starting Uffda Komucha with McKenna, because I think she felt the same way. It’s like she wanted to build something that she could be proud of, and to help out our community.”
A chance meeting with Dagger after Zervas started working with her at TBI Residential and Community Services in Superior while he was applying to medical schools changed things completely.
“That’s where I kind of realized, like, oh – this isn’t really what I want to do,” Zervas recalled. “I had a physical with a GP, and he was like ‘If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t go into medicine. I don’t get to do what I want. Whatever insurance tells me I can do, I do.’ So, McKenna and I, we worked at the same place, and after I had that warning, I was like, OK – what do we do?”
The two friends and coworkers started brainstorming business ideas. “We knew we wanted to do something,” Zervas said. “We just didn’t know exactly what. Kombucha was literally the last thing on the list.”
Dagger had gotten into brewing the fermented tea at home, and once she explained what it was and how it was made to Zervas, he realized he might be able to bring something to the table.
“After learning about the whole fermentation process,” he said, “it really fit with my background in biology. It piqued my interest. And the more I got into it, the more I started to explore and learn and turned it more into a science than an art – but it’s definitely both.”
Zervas and Dagger also realized that, apart from their shared interest in kombucha, they had learned how to work together quite well at TBI, and their friendship had been forged in fire to some degree. So the two started slowly dipping their toes into the waters of small business.
But there were many questions: how to scale up from making small batches to larger ones? How to manage things like bacteria, yeast, temperatures and atmospheric pressures? How could the product be consistent?
But Zervas had seen examples in his family of entrepreneurship. He had seen that job modeled for him even when he didn’t realize he was learning about how a business is run. “My mom had a lot to do with it, being around that,” he said. “She owns her own bookkeeping business.”
When he said he wanted to be his own boss, she backed him wholeheartedly. “She was like, ‘This is totally doable.’”
The duo got going in a real way making their products in the shared kitchen of the Superior Business Center about eight years ago. Slowly but surely, they learned their craft and they figured out their business model.
“We went seven and a half years by putting every single dollar we made back into the business,” Zervas said.
Even now that Uffda has its own building to make and sell kombucha in, the operation is small and heavily dependent on the kindness and assistance of community members, investors, family and friends.
“People think [we’re] this big company making tons of kombucha and they’re no longer like a local, family business. And that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Zervas said. “It’s just McKenna and I and our family. My mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my kids, McKenna’s in-laws, my mom – they come and help, like when it’s a canning day. They’re here for eight hours labeling cans. They’re here packaging it into boxes. You know, whenever there were deliveries, my father-in-law would come help build pallets so that the distributor could take it out. It is very much still a family business.”
“And then, you know, we got really lucky with our investors,” Zervas noted. “The Bear Creek Development crew. They really gave us the financial backing to do what we’re doing.”
Clearly, Zervas feels that he’s fortunate to be where he is, and he’s very cognizant of the fact that, even though he’s one of two people that established the business, it’s been built with the help of his whole community, essentially.
For her part, McKenna Dagger recalls the last decade or so of her life as being a time filled with hard work, surprises and opportunities. “We were just looking for something that would be fulfilling,” she recalled. “Something that could provide a legacy for our families. Something bigger than us. Something that could give back to the community.”
Dagger said that she too had seen family members who had successfully run their own businesses in the past, and so, like Zervas, the idea wasn’t something completely out of reach to her.
“My dad and his brothers and my brother own a barrel mill out of Avon, Minnesota,” she said.
Eventually, she learned that a different kombucha business used those very barrels in their own brewing process.
“All these things started coming together that made it feel like this was sort of meant to be,” she said. “We just kind of went for it, at that point. It was just really cool how all these things sort of worked out and all these really unique networking opportunities came up and these people [helped] us to make it happen.”
After the duo’s time at the Superior Business Center, they landed their second location in the basement of the old post office, but it was “inefficient,” Dagger said. “It was everything that we needed when we were at that point, but to really take the next step, it wasn’t going to work to be down there anymore.”
For instance, every order had to be hand-carried up a flight of stairs, and that was deemed unsustainable. “It was like, this is crazy.”
The story of Mazi Table + Bar runs on a parallel track to the story of Uffda, but the details are quite different. Jeffrey Zervas is a Le Cordon Bleu graduate who has worked in a number of restaurants. “I learned to use my culinary skills, but also got into the management side, learning how to run businesses,” he said. “It’s in my blood already, which is pretty sweet.”
After coming back to the Northland, he started working as a chef at Clyde Iron Works and Lake Avenue Cafe and then went to Cantilever Distillery in International Falls and later established the Bridge Cocktail Room in Canal Park. It was while looking for an investor that he developed a relationship with Bear Creek Development, who were interested in helping him find a place to continue his career.
“And then, with Colin needing to find a new space, we got lucky enough to buy the old Shorty’s building, which was a former restaurant,” Jeffrey said. Suddenly, the brothers’ divergent paths converged, and they both realized that starting their businesses under a shared roof could be beneficial to both.
“It was kind of just perfect timing. It was just kind of crazy how it all happened. This was the first building we looked at. We didn’t really have a new idea for a restaurant, at that point. But when we came across this building, with the opportunity and the potential it had and the vision we had, we went for this building and decided to restore the whole thing.”
Suddenly, Jeffrey’s ideas about a cocktail room became ideas about an upscale restaurant. And then those ideas all got run through the family-and-friends filter. Bear Creek, girlfriends, family – everyone weighed in, for better or worse.
“Sometimes, it gets to be a little bit too-many-cooks,” he said. “We painted the dining room walls about seven different [colors] before we chose what we chose. There was a lot of testing and errors and going back to the drawing board. It was an ever-evolving idea that just came together perfectly.”
That could be said about both businesses together – their intertwined destinies may seem to make perfect sense when one sees the finished building with next-door brothers both chasing their dreams under the same roof.
In fact, the word “Mazi” is Greek for “together,” so it’s not a concept that is lost on the siblings. One might imagine two people with clear, defined goals and paths that inevitably led to today, but all of the three principals in the two businesses credit the community around them with leading them to where they are. Nothing was ever set in stone.
“We’re really lucky to have that support group,” Jeffrey said. “It does take a village to build something so wonderful like this. So many friends came, picked up sledgehammers and just started beating holes in the wall and hauling stuff out. And many family members – from sanding the floors to painting to a little bit of everything, we’re grateful for all the help that we got from everybody.”
Kelly Peterson is the Executive Director of the Superior Business Improvement District. All involved with Uffda and Mazi say that she was a huge help for both businesses early on and remains so.
“I began working with Colin and McKenna at their previous home at 1401 Tower,” Peterson said. “I visited often and truly enjoyed learning about the process of making kombucha and getting to know the fun side of both of them. I knew they had excellent products, and one of the ways the Superior BID helps businesses is promotion. I encouraged Colin and McKenna to do samplings at events, expand the number of restaurants having Uffda Kombucha on tap, and helped them connect with interviews for news stories, participate in SBID events and be promoted on social media. I met Jeffrey through Colin and had a similar positive experience.”
“They are all industrious people who don’t shy away from work or an opportunity to improve either their product or learning something new,” Peterson said of the principals she assisted. “There’s something really special about hearing someone’s dreams and then watching as those dreams come to fruition. The late nights and stress have certainly made Uffda Kombucha and Mazi Table + Bar businesses that are now known for their high quality and standards. So very happy to be a small part of their story.”
While there’s a lot that’s complicated about making kombucha drinks and keeping customers interested in different, new flavors and presentations and also in running a restaurant with more than 30 employees that is committed to regular menu updates, the folks at Uffda and Mazi are eager to take on all of those challenges.
“I think we just keep moving forward,” Dagger said of the future. “We’re always hitting the pavement for what’s next. When they opened the restaurant, the whole space was complete, and the whole vision had come to life. That was a moment of, like, oh my gosh.”
“When I sit down and think about it,” Dagger said, “I’m incredibly proud of us and all the things we’ve learned along the way.”
Tony Bennett is a Duluth-based freelance writer.
