Vibrant Roots: Finding balance through mushrooms and honey

Perhaps you’ve seen the colorful beverage in a glass bottle in stores across Whitefish and have wondered what Jun Tea is and how to pronounce it.

Jun tea is technically a kombucha, which is a fermented mushroom tea made with sugar and black tea. However, Jun is made with honey and green tea, so it is full of antioxidants and has less caffeine.

Everything about Brooke Lynn Dodson’s company, Vibrant Roots, focuses on mushrooms and bees, from her logo through the product line, because of their varied health benefits and ecological importance.

Dodson had always had an interest in health and wellness and had been brewing her own kombucha for over 10 years when she was diagnosed with cancer. Because of her family history, Dodson was considered to be at high-risk to have her cancer spread or be terminal.

“I saw four different doctors. They did cut out some of the cancer but they wanted me to have a full hysterectomy when I was 24 years old,” Dodson said.

Stunned by the prospect of never being able to have children, she took a deeper dive into her health-based education with the hope of being able to heal herself naturally.

“I can increase my antioxidants, I can balance my body's pH, I can take functional mushrooms that help fight cancer,” she said. “None of the doctors knew anything I was talking about, at all.”

She researched her condition and found that hers was a very slow-growing cancer. She took the time it afforded as an opportunity to learn about ways she could heal and avoid a serious and life-altering surgery. She studied mycology and nutrition online and at Flathead Valley Community College.

“I stopped consuming sugar. I switched everything to honey,” she began. “I incorporated a ton of functional mushrooms: reishi, cordyceps, lion’s mane, turkey tail, chaga, that I’d never incorporated into my diet previously. And then focused on balancing my body’s pH through the Hot Shot (a product she creates) and getting my gut health healthy with the jun.”

Whether it was the nutritional changes Dodson made or the fact that some of the cancer had been removed, she was cancer-free 15 months after her diagnosis.

“I don’t really know what I did that helped me heal but I made a mushroom tea, I made the Hot Shot and I made the jun,” Dodson said. “One of those things, maybe a combination of all of them, is what helped heal me, so it was something I wanted to offer to everyone.”

DODSON STARTED brewing kombucha even though her introduction to the fermented, bubbly drink was less than stellar.

“The first time I tried it, I… went back up to try to return it because I was like, ‘Something is seriously wrong. This is spoiled; it smells like feet,’” she recalls.

The store clerk assured her that was how it was supposed to be and in time, Dodson found herself craving it and wanting more.

Both kombucha and jun are fermented with a SCOBY, symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, that helps give the drinks some of their health benefits, like probiotics and prebiotics. Studies have found there are significantly higher concentrations of probiotics in jun because of the honey that feeds the probiotics.

Dodson said jun tea has all the benefits of traditional kombucha and more. Some people who don’t like kombucha like jun, she added.

“The Hot Shot is really what I was trying to push,” she said when describing the early days of her business.

Vibrant Roots’ website describes the Hot Shot as a hot, potent, super-concentrated elixir made from organic apple cider vinegar, ginger, turmeric and a type of mushroom that is an incredibly powerful antioxidant to help boost the immune system and balance the body’s pH.

“Jun was a more tasty thing for people to drink but also when everything is balanced in your gut biome, that balances everything else in your body, like your immune system,” she said. “It stems from your gut.”

Vibrant Roots officially launched on New Year's Day, 2020. Within months, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, causing her to introduce “milkman-style delivery” while businesses were closed and people needed to stay home.

Just two years ago, Vibrant Roots was producing 20 gallons of jun tea each month. Now, they produce around 1,300 gallons every month. Dodson’s products are available throughout the state of Montana, including over 25 stores and restaurants in the Flathead Valley, and in Jackson, Wyoming.

Oftentimes, she feels that people see her success and credit a trust fund or a generous father for making it possible, but Vibrant Roots is a woman-owned and operated business that was completely self-funded by Dodson.

“My dad’s out of the picture,” she said. “My mom — I help my mom pay her bills. So there is no secret trust.”

Dodson, along with Maggi Crotty and Jasmine Bloemeke, her core team, has been performing every part of the handcrafted business including production, packaging and until recently, when they secured a distributor, they were also making deliveries to over 80 accounts.

DODSON SAYS growing up on a farm in Joplin, Missouri, instilled a strong work ethic. The second oldest of five children raised by a single mom, Dodson remembers a typical day.

“The only thing I ever really learned to do was just work. Before you get on the school bus, work — like milking the goats, taking care of the chickens,” she said. “Then, getting off the school bus, there was a whole laundry list of chores that had to get done before Mom got home from work.”

After college, Dodson taught fourth grade in Great Falls and fell in love with Montana. Even when she lived in Kauai, Hawaii studying to become a certified birthing doula, she was trying to make her way back to Montana and she did so in 2017 when she moved to Whitefish.

“I worked at Tupelo, Iron Horse, Earthstar Organic Farm. I worked at the Red Room, I babysat, I kept books, I cleaned houses,” Dodson said. “But the bartending at the Northern is really what funded everything. It all came from working my butt off bartending until four in the morning. So, I completely did it on my own.”

Dodson’s diligence and the hard work she put into creating the successful Vibrant Roots means she is able to offer healing mushroom-based products to balance people’s biomes. She and her team enjoy their work, because jun rhymes with fun.