KR8OM Review

Wait, you met at a festival?

Yes. At sunrise, after the music stopped.

Electric Kool-Aid was a festival for jam bands. Spoonfed Tribe was kind of a jam band, but not really. Payam is an Arlington native and a graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington. Arlington is our hometown too. We got to talking that morning, and it stuck. Payam and I have never been close friends, but we have touched base often ever since.

Here’s the twist. When we met, Spoonfed Tribe was based in a warehouse complex in Fort Worth. Years after the band moved out, Payam moved into that very same complex. That’s where his Fort Worth warehouse is. Texas is a big state. Somehow it keeps feeling small.

How do you say KR8OM?

Out loud, and fast.

Read it one piece at a time and the 8 does all the work. Kr, eight, om. Say it quickly and you have said kratom. It is the kind of name you only need to see once.

KR8OM belongs to NUEVOtanicals, LLC, a Texas company. Nuevo is Spanish for new. Put it in front of botanicals, and you have the parent company’s name.

What was KR8OM like in the early days?

Small, tidy and very sure of itself.

In 2013, a reporter from the Fort Worth Weekly toured the operation. He found two warehouses near Loop 820 and East Lancaster Avenue, four full-time workers and four part-time workers, and a shop he called clean and well organized. Back then, about three quarters of what the company made went out under other companies’ brand names. KR8OM was the other quarter.

Payam told the paper he was making a concentrated tea. In his words, “Everything is from the plant; nothing extra is added.” Every bottle already listed its ingredients and a serial number. The company had also filed a trademark on its own ingredient list in 2012. It named purified water, vegetable glycerin, the leaf’s alkaloids, ascorbic acid and citric acid, and it called the formula vegan, kosher, halal and ital friendly. Ital is the Rastafarian way of eating. We’ve never seen it on another kratom label.

Our favorite line in that story, though, is about Payam himself. The reporter wrote that he looks like “a cross between Frank Zappa and Serpico.” We met him at a jam band festival. That tracks.

How did KR8OM become an extract brand?

By putting its own name up front.

Over the years, KR8OM grew from a quarter of the business into the name the company is known by. Its liquid extracts came first, and they remain its flagship. Tablets and capsules came along later. In our view, it has become one of the premier extract companies in the trade.

In 2021, the brand got a new face. The logo above shows a woman with her eyes closed, blowing two leaves off her open hand, with a crescent moon tucked behind her ear. The company’s motto for the brand is “Part art. Part science. All kratom.” We think the logo is gorgeous.

One note, because we would be letting you down without it. Extracts are concentrated, and we never recommend them to anyone new to kratom. Kratom Extract explains how a concentrated product differs from the leaf.

What did KR8OM do when kratom’s future was on the line?

It stood up, more than once.

In August 2016, the DEA announced plans to put kratom’s two main alkaloids in Schedule I, the strictest federal category there is. By then, KR8OM had about 30 people on its payroll. Payam threw himself behind a national petition drive to stop it. He told the Fort Worth Weekly that kratom was “a botanical cousin of coffee.” Six weeks later, the DEA reversed course. Is kratom legal federally tells that whole story.

In 2025, a bill filed in the Texas Senate would have put kratom in Penalty Group 1, the state’s most serious drug category. When the Senate State Affairs Committee heard it, Payam was on the witness list against it. So was the American Kratom Association. So was Jeremy Steding of 1836 Kratom. That’s two Texas kratom makers on the same list, on the same side. We love that.

KR8OM is also a silver sponsor of the American Kratom Association, and it says it gives to the group every month. Who the American Kratom Association is, and who pays for it, is on its own page.

How careful is KR8OM with its customers?

Careful enough to tell you when not to use it.

KR8OM posts a warnings page for its whole line. It says not to combine its products with alcohol, nicotine, cannabis or any other substance, and not with other kratom products either. It says not to use them before driving or running machinery. It tells anyone who’s pregnant or breastfeeding, has a health condition, or takes any medication not to use them except under a physician’s care. And it says, in plain words, that kratom may be habit forming.

KR8OM sends its products to outside labs for testing, and our lab tests page posts its reports. Kratom Lab Testing explains how to read one.

What’s it like to work with KR8OM?

Easy. It’s a little like having family across town.

KR8OM is our neighbor. It has a facility in Arlington, the same city we are in, and a location in Fort Worth too. Both are nice places, and the people in them are great. Marco and Chris, the two we work with most, are a big reason we like doing business there. Communication is quick and clear. Deliveries are local, so a restock crosses town, not the country. We’ve only hit a couple of small snags, and each time, the KR8OM team jumped in and made it right fast.

Their customers are loyal, and that says a lot. People don’t keep coming back to a brand that lets them down. Every KR8OM product we carry is on our KR8OM page.

Thank you, KR8OM

It started with a sunrise conversation outside a tour bus in Lubbock. It runs through a Fort Worth warehouse complex with a funny sense of timing. And it lands here, with a Texas company that printed every ingredient on the bottle back in 2013, stood up for kratom when it counted, and works with the stores that carry it like a good neighbor.

So thank you, KR8OM. Thank you, Marco and Chris. And thank you, Payam, for walking up that morning.