As Health-Ade’s chief marketing officer, Charlotte Mostaed has catapulted the 11-year-old kombucha brand to No. 2 in market share, outpacing the category’s growth by 22 times over the past year.

Mostaed, 38, joined Health-Ade in late 2020 and became its chief marketing officer in 2022. The kombucha category’s sales were receding from triple-digit growth rates and settling into patterns more similar to maturing CPG brands. That meant reworking Health-Ade’s marketing plans to favor digital and reach marketing, launching national campaigns in lieu of grassroots event marketing and optimizing owned channels for e-commerce revenue.

“As I came in, they looked to me to say, how do we leverage the traditional or modern landscape of digital marketing and paid media to grow the business in a new way that’s scalable?” Mostaed said. “Simply put, what was being done before wasn’t scalable for now, the next phase of healthy growth.”

Mostaed has led Health-Ade to many firsts, including launching the product in a can and can multipacks, embarking on a partnership to sell Health-Ade at Los Angeles Dodgers games and a national advertising campaign using whimsical animation to deliver an uplifting and informative message about gut health. “It's based on the insight that a lot of consumers simply don’t know why or when or how to use kombucha,” she said. “And there’s a lot of just basic introduction that is still needed in order to truly take kombucha to the mainstream.”

If you could have dinner with one person, alive or dead, who would it be and why?

It’d be my Grandpa, Levar Taylor, and he passed almost two years ago. I loved every conversation I had with him. What I like to say about him is that he lived by his own rules before it was cool to do that. He was a mechanic and yet decided to start his own Volkswagen repair shop business and several businesses thereafter. He truly wanted to create a life that he loved. He was a collector and adventurer and yet devoted himself to his family. So I find myself following a lot in his footsteps.

What are the top two social media sites you use on a regular basis?

I’m on Instagram for friends, family, marketing updates, things like that. TikTok is my No. 2. It’s a hotbed of authenticity, and it’s the Wild West. I love it for its unpolished nature. I love the creativity that I’m seeing, the self-expression. And obviously, there’s a ton of amazing new marketing avenues that come with TikTok that get us all really excited.

What’s currently on your bedside reading list?

Byron Sharp’s “How Brands Grow.” And a good combination of that with Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow.”

“How Brands Grow” informs a lot of the way that I strategize for our marketing budget, and how I inform the organization around how we’re going to spend our money. “Thinking Fast and Slow” helps me truly decipher and understand the consumer’s mindset. The balance of those two philosophies really underpins how I approach marketing. Personally, though, I’m a Taylor Jenkins Reid junkie. I've read five [of her] books. And they just continue to totally entertain when you begin to unwind.

What was the last show you binge-watched?

“The Bear.” I think so much of our society and our culture values leisure and luxury as the hallmarks of a happy and fulfilled life. What I love about “The Bear” is that it places the focus on purpose and relationships as the key to fulfillment and happiness. And it does it in such a super creative, energetic way that keeps you enthralled and along for the ride the entire time.

At what age do you hope to retire?

I don’t know if it’s retirement, but in terms of walking away from the day-to-day, my goal would be to do that at 50. So I've got 12-plus years to go. I love this job. I love being in the leadership spot at a wonderful business with great people. I love the team I work with here at Health-Ade. And I love businesses like this where we’re trying to make a difference in the world. But in another 12 years or so I can imagine myself stepping back and doing more board positions or consulting so that I can free up my time for other pursuits.