Our Online Store Closure, Explained

Dear Acid League Community,

Since the announcement of our store closure, we’ve been deeply moved by the outpouring of support and enthusiasm for our Experimental, Living Tonic, and Living Pantry products. Many of you also had questions, so we wanted to take the time to address this big decision in more depth and share our plans moving forward.

Acid League was born out of an immense love for food and genuine enthusiasm for culinary experimentation. We have since the beginning been bursting at the seams to create unprecedented products with the highest quality ingredients…and our Living Pantry and Tonics are just that: barrel-fermented Trebbiano grape must from Italy to make Roasted Vegetable Balsamic, Okinawan black sugar straight from Japan to hand-mix Caramelized Fish Sauce, sustainably-grown hot peppers from the outskirts of Ecuador to cook up Saffron Gold…etc. etc. However, the scale of these product lines soon outgrew our original intentions. Regularly producing and maintaining an inventory of these 17 different products—each with their own rare & specific ingredients—while simultaneously expanding an international retail line of 28 other products, became totally unsustainable for our small company. It is for this reason that we decided to close our online store.

We hear your disappointment. We’re disappointed too. But we want to assure you all that this obsession with adventurous ingredients & culinary creation isn’t going anywhere, it’s just getting better focused. These past 4 years have presented a maze of challenges that have pushed us, as well as many of our fellow food startups, to our limits. They have also pushed us to focus on what we care about most: Endless experimentation and making sure our labors of love are consistently accessible at a reasonable price across the US and Canada. 

While many in our community have expressed concern that the closure of our e-commerce store means our products will become less accessible—especially retail items not yet available in Canada or more rural parts of the US—we promise that this decision was made to address this very concern. Not only will the removal of our online store allow us to focus on more sustainable experimental product development, but it will also free up the resources to ensure that all our products are regularly available in retail stores across North America.

We are currently cooking up brand new experimental drops for 2024 that we believe are even better than our current offerings (stay tuned!). We’re as committed as ever to bringing new flavors into the world and into your kitchens.  This month, however, we are focusing on making this transition as smooth as possible and making sure final orders from our online store get to you swiftly. As a valued member of the League, we continue to welcome any feedback, questions, or comments you might have. Just remember that we are still a small business and therefore a small team, so please be patient with us. We promise to respond to all of you as quickly as we can as we begin this new chapter.

Stay Sour, 

Scott, Cole, Allan, and Rae