Tag: kate zuckerman

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Living

Don’t call it a comeback: UVA alum hopes to recapture Littlejohn’s former glory

Christian Trendel, the new owner of Littlejohn’s, has expanded the Corner eatery’s menu. Photo by Ashley Twiggs

Littlejohn’s New York Delicatessen, an institution on the Corner for 40-plus years, has undergone a renaissance under new owner Christian Trendel, who was brought in by the family of founder John Crafaik, Jr.

“Littlejohn’s used to be a fixture on the Corner,” Trendel says. “And we’re trying to bring it back to that status.”

A UVA graduate, Trendel says it’s kind of like old home day now that he’s back, albeit on the other side of the counter. “I first walked in here in 1980, as a student,” he says. “I never thought I’d be owning Littlejohn’s.”

Trendel, who’s worked with a number of Charlottesville restaurants, says he’s lowered prices, beefed up the quality of the meats and cheeses, hired new staff, and expanded the menu to include deli classics in addition to the specialty sandwiches Littlejohn’s is known for. The restaurant is also back to being open till 3am, which no doubt appeals to its target audience.

“Right now, we’ve never been better,” Trendel says. “We’ve surprised a lot of old-timers who remember it exactly like it used to be, which is great, but also those who have noticed the quality improving a lot.”

Bucha bottom dollar

Waynesboro’s Blue Ridge Bucha is a winner of the national SCORE awards, which recognize the achievements of U.S. entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Owners Kate and Ethan Zuckerman, who started their kombucha business eight years ago, were awarded Outstanding American Manufacturing Small Business for making an environmental impact with their handcrafted organic kombucha, a naturally carbonated, fermented tea.

The Zuckermans have gone from selling their product out of the back of an old Honda Civic to distributing the kombucha to more than 50 chain markets in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. They remain committed to making a large economic and social impact in the community while maintaining as small a footprint as possible: Their refillable bottles and innovative draft systems have kept 750,000 bottles out of landfills.

Here today, gone tomorrow

Kebabish we hardly knew ye. The Water Street restaurant, which featured Nepali, Indian, and Turkish cuisine, hadn’t been open long last year before closing for renovations, which never seemed to materialize. The restaurant is now officially shuttered.

Qdoba Mexican Eats, a fast-casual chain, has closed after a long run on the Corner. No word on why it’s leaving the student-heavy dining corridor, or what will replace it.

Finger-lickin’ in Ruckersville

Greene County resident Keith Simmons adds to the ’cue scene with the opening of his new restaurant, The Wolf’s Fixins Barbecue in Ruckersville.

Simmons, who began smoking meats when he was a teenager, became a caterer but longed to start his own restaurant. A decade later, his dream has finally come true. While he’s new to the business of running a restaurant, that shouldn’t stand in his way—Simmons says he had no experience with construction, either, but that didn’t stop him from building out the restaurant himself.

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News

Ending the bucha battle: Local company settles for new name

After a legal battle with Barefoot wine-maker Gallo, Barefoot Bucha has rebranded to Blue Ridge Bucha. Photo by John Robinson

In April, Gallo—the $4 billion corporation responsible for making Barefoot Wine—sued local mom-and-pop Barefoot Bucha purveyors Kate and Ethan Zuckerman for infringing on its name and logo’s trademark. The kombucha makers settled the suit in August by agreeing to change their name, and now, they are announcing the new moniker customers will see on their labels when reaching for a bottle of Elderflower Sunrise.

And the winner is: Blue Ridge Bucha.

To choose a new name, the Zuckermans created a crowd-sourced contest that received more than 500 entries.

“When we started looking at all the entries coming in, we noticed a distinct pattern: One in five contest entrants suggested Blue Ridge Bucha,” Ethan Zuckerman said in a press release. An Internet search for Blue Ridge Bucha already turns up hits for Barefoot Bucha because there’s a close association with their drink and the mountains where it’s brewed, he adds.

Because so many contestants suggested the winning name, the Zuckermans “literally drew a name out of a hat” to select a grand prize winner. Now Edward Warwick, of Charlottesville, will receive a year’s supply of kombucha.

“We love that our community picked the name,” Kate Zuckerman says. “It just feels right given our deep roots here. There were a lot of creative names submitted, but the beverage space is going through a bit of a crisis with trademark litigation right now. That’s definitely not something we want to go through twice, and picking a place name gives us certain protections from that.”

She says her team is thankful for the pro bono support of the University of San Francisco’s law clinic, because they were able to keep legal fees under $10,000, which is a low-end amount for this type of case. It will cost approximately $20,000 to rebrand their company, she says, “not counting the hundreds of hours of time it has taken us and our team to manage the trademark dispute and the rebranding project.”

The team is doing a soft launch of the new brand; once a store runs through its Barefoot Bucha inventory it will receive Blue Ridge Bucha-branded products.

With a company founded on environmental consciousness, the bucha brewers take pride in the fact that they’ve saved half a million bottles through their refillable bottle program, in which customers bring reusable bottles to filling stations rather than purchase a new one each time.

Whole Foods Charlottesville will host an official launch of the new brand from 3-5pm on January 15. Attendees will receive a free 32-ounce mini growler from Blue Ridge Bucha and no RSVP is required.

Categories
News

Barefoot bullied: Kombucha company to change name in settlement with Gallo

Barefoot wine and Barefoot Bucha: Gallo didn't want to risk consumer confusion, so the kombucha is looking for a new name. Photo Tom McGovern

For most of us, wine and kombucha tea are totally different products and only an idiot would confuse them. Not for Gallo, the $4 billion corporation with a history of trademark bullying. In April it sued local mom-and-pop Barefoot Bucha purveyors Kate and Ethan Zuckerman on the grounds that their kombucha name and logo infringed on its Barefoot Wine trademark.

The Zuckermans, like many businesses that have dared to use “barefoot” or “Gallo” in their product name, no matter how unrelated to wine that product might be, will change Barefoot Bucha’s name in a settlement with the wine goliath and will crowdsource a new name for the popular probiotic drink.

“It’s very common in litigation,” says intellectual property expert David Pratt at M-Cam. He estimates 80 percent or more of small companies faced with trademark bullying will change their company’s name because of the cost to litigate against deep pockets.

“Once you get into multi-billion-dollar publicly traded companies, they say, ‘We’d better have our hard-nosed lawyers go to the board and tell them we did everything to protect our trademark,’” he says.

“I don’t think Jefferson envisioned this,” says Pratt. James Madison convinced Thomas Jefferson to include intellectual property protection in the Constitution, he says, and he thinks that today, Jefferson would “be an open-source guy.”

The Zuckermans’ Conscious Cultures LLC settled without admitting any wrongdoing.“We are pleased that Conscious Cultures and E. & J. Gallo Winery have reached a mutually agreeable resolution,” says a Gallo spokesperson.

“We have amicably settled our differences out of court,” says Kate Zuckerman. “We are relieved to put this behind us so that we can continue to focus on bringing kombucha drinkers in our area a delicious and healthful beverage using a low-waste model.”

The winner of the “name that bucha” contest will receive a year’s worth of kombucha. Details are available on the Barefoot Bucha website and the deadline for submissions is September 12.

Crowdsourcing the name is an increasingly common tactic for up-and-coming companies and it appeals to millennials, says Pratt.

In choosing a new name, he advises the Zuckermans to check both the name and the classification code on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website, which means a car and a computer drive can have the same name because they’re different products. Although, in the case of Barefoot Bucha, “They probably didn’t think they’d run the confusion line with Barefoot Wine,” he says, so it’s also a good idea to note if an extremely litigious company owns similar trademarks.

Tom Gallo and Susan Devitt in Asheville, North Carolina, had to change the name of their company, GalloLea Pizza Kits, when E. & J. Gallo Winery came after them in 2012.

“In our case, it basically put us out of business,” says Gallo, citing the cost of changing the brand, its packaging, website and marketing.

Like the Zuckermans, Gallo and his wife had been in business for about five years, and decided to trademark their brand. He checked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database, and the trademark for Gallolea was available. “It didn’t cross my mind it could be confused with Gallo wine,” he says. “In our case, not only was the name different, it was a different class.”

Gallo says he’s “kind of sad” the Zuckermans agreed to change their name. And his advice for anyone in a similar situation? “Tell everybody not to buy Gallo products.”—Lisa Provence