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About Lionberry Regenerative

From Farm to Sports Drink

Lionberry was born from the vision of Bevin Brooks, a Kansas City entrepreneur who started with a small elderberry farm and a bold idea: create a refreshing, restorative drink powered by natural farm-grown ingredients. What began as a single-farm venture quickly grew into a thriving business fueled by collaboration, innovation, and a commitment to local food systems.

Growing Through Connection

Bevin credits much of Lionberry’s growth to the Heartland Regional Food Business Center and her business coach, Jenny Doty at K-State Research and Extension. With their guidance, Lionberry gained access to vital resources like the KSU Food Innovation Accelerator, the Kansas Value Added Foods Lab, and statewide directories such as From the Land of Kansas.

These resources provided the foundation for recipe development, food safety, commercial kitchen space, and the all-important network of connections that help small farm and food businesses thrive.

Powered by Local Farmers

Lionberry is more than just a drink—it’s a hub of collaboration among small farms across the Heartland:

  • Elderberries sourced from two dozen growers in Missouri through Buehler Organics

  • Lion’s Mane mushrooms from Myers Mushrooms in Wichita, KS

  • Honey from SHoney Farm in Wamego, KS

Together, these partnerships not only fuel  Lionberry’s signature Regenerative Hydration, but also strengthen local farm economies. Today, Lionberry is one of the largest customers for these small businesses—helping them grow as Lionberry grows.

The Road Ahead

Lionberry is preparing for the next big leap—moving into wholesale distribution with the help of co-packers and continued support from the Heartland Center network. While the journey has had challenges, including the competitive grant process that first sparked the idea, each step has strengthened the business and Bevin’s resolve.

As Bevin puts it:

“Through Heartland Center technical assistance for a grant, a business was born, and a thriving one.”

“Lionberry is more than a drink—it’s a movement, rooted in local farms, built through community partnerships, and crafted to fuel healthy, active lives.”

Meet the Team

What are we, exactly?

Lionberry 's Weekly Delusion and Re-illusion Update.

BS Weekly #13

That's the question I keep circling after Mount Vernon. Are we a specialty crop, or are we bait for big ag? Because those are two very different futures, and American elderberry is standing right at the fork.

This June the national elderberry community gathered in Mount Vernon, Missouri. The Heartland American Elderberry Collaborative brought our poster. LIONBERRY REGENERATIVE™ stood alongside Elder Farms and River Hills Harvest. Dr. Andrew Thomas hosted, Buehler Organics and Elder Farms put on a dinner, and researchers, growers, and processors all ended up at the same tables. Good food, good people, real momentum.

But here's the edge I can't put down. The moment a crop gets valuable, the commodity machine notices. It comes in offering scale and efficiency, and it leaves behind growers who no longer own anything, working someone else's market for someone else's margin. We've watched it happen to crop after crop. The question isn't whether American elderberry is worth that much attention. It's whether we'll be the ones holding it when it is.

So why does this crop matter enough to fight over? The science is finally catching up to what growers always sensed. American elderberry is anti-inflammatory in a way that speaks straight to how most of us actually live now, carrying oxidative stress from overprocessed food. And it's stepping into the GLP-1 and metabolic-recovery moment, where early results on blood sugar and fat oxidation are turning heads. Our native berry isn't the understudy to European Sambucus nigra either. The American acylated anthocyanin is more protected, more likely to survive processing and reach where it's meant to work. We are not the lesser version. We are the better one, and we're only now saying it out loud.

That's exactly why the fork matters. A crop this promising will get built into a market by somebody. The only question is whose hands stay on it.

Here's where I land, and where Mount Vernon left me hopeful. We are small, and small is not the weakness everyone assumes. Small means we can actually know each other. It means a grower, a researcher, and a brand can sit at one dinner table and leave understanding each other's language. That's how an AgriCluster works. We stick together, we grow the grower base on our own terms, and we build the shared story before anyone builds it for us. We're standing on fertile ground here, in the dark, underground, where the real trading happens before anything shows on the surface.

More growers, yes. But growers who own it. That's the whole game.