About us
Yabai was founded by Japanese American former professional skateboarder and company owner, Jason Tatsuya Rogers.
While traveling to Japan to promote his brands Arcade Skateboards and the Autobahn Wheel Co, Jason discovered a delicious, soda-like, canned alcoholic beverage. It was half of the refrigerator in every store, in vending machines, and served in restaurants.Â
In late 2017, Jason and a friend were having a pint of beer and lamenting that even though they had just burned off a bunch of calories skating in Venice, they were going to put them right back on with the beer they were going to drink.
"We should go get some chuhai!"
"Yeah, what is even in that?"
"I think it's just shochu and sparkling water...I don't know?"
After going to four Japanese markets, they came up short. "How could this be?" Japanese chuhai as a category does nearly the volume that Red Bull does. Globally! In primarily just Japan. Despite that, it couldn't be readily found in America.
"Let's start a chuhai brand!" So we gathered up some friends, mostly other skaters, artists, surfers, and close friends and got to work. It took a few years to figure out how to make it, where to get authentic shochu, and how to set up an alcoholic brand...but a group of regular people, outsiders to the beverage industry, built something authentic, one of a kind, and most importantly delicious!
We hope you enjoy what we have created. We appreciate each and every person that tries Yabai and will continue to respectfully produce our versions of what we think are the best alcoholic drinks on Earth!
Kanpai!
The full story from our founder via the podcast that breaks down Japanese sprits, Japan Distilled.