Our Story

Built to stay close, made to be better

We built Chuala because two old friends needed an excuse to stay close - and we tonic water could be so much better

Our Story

Kenneth and I grew up together in Dallas. We've been friends since the age of 6, but life does what it does — jobs, moves, different cities, different decades. Somewhere along the way we started to feel the distance more than we used to. So one night, over cocktails, we said the thing out loud: we should just build something together. Not because we had a grand business plan. Because we wanted a real reason to talk every week.

The tonic water part came from a different kind of distance. I'd spent years living in London, and what I found there — in pubs, in bars, at dinner tables — was tonic water that actually tasted like something. Tonic made with care, with botanicals that meant something, with a balance that made whatever you poured with it taste noticeably better. The experience was completely different from what I'd previously experienced — and once you'd had tonic water done right, there was no going back. When we started talking about what to build, it wasn't a hard sell.

Getting it right took time. We tasted, adjusted, argued over ingredients, and tasted again — until we had something we'd genuinely be proud to put our names on. Kenneth took Chuala to Nashville the way most good things start — small, in person, one conversation at a time. Samplings. Tastings. Walking into stores and making the case that tonic water could be something worth seeking out, not just a mixer people grabbed without thinking. He built belief slowly, the way you have to when you're asking people to reconsider something they thought they already understood. By 2025, that groundwork had earned us a distribution agreement with a Tennessee beverage distributor, and Chuala had found its way into over 30 locations across the state.

But the thing that drives all of it — the thing we wouldn't compromise on from the beginning — is what goes into the bottle. No artificial ingredients. Ever. Sweetened with organic sugar. Made in the USA. Not because those are good marketing lines, but because we'd tasted what tonic water could be when someone actually cared about those things, and we couldn't imagine building something that didn't. Chuala is what happens when two lifelong friends decide that if they're going to make something, they might as well make it right.