My guest today is Steve Smith, the founder of Tazo Tea, which is arguably the most innovative tea brand in the world. After 22 years in the tea industry building Stash Tea into a nationally recognized brand, Steve sold Stash Tea and started Tazo Tea, making a bet he could reinvent the staid tea category. Steve was so successful that Starbucks bought Tazo Tea five years later for over $8 million. Listen in to hear how he did it, where he got his inspiration, and how he is committed to improving the lives of thousands of people in tea growing communities around the world.
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Thanks Betsy for a wonderful interview. Steve Smith seems like a very creative entrepreneur who sold his two tea companies to the “big kids” - particularly Tazo to Starbucks - at just the right time and price. The Tazo packs / designs are beautiful to look at with breakthru creative artwork, and the few that contain actual tea seem to offer a good tasting though far too limited selection of teas. We started with Stash actually and have stayed with them - a quick glance at their online catalog will show that those people are serious tea experts offering a huge selection of actual garden-identified loose leaf teas. I really wish Tazo would expand their line with garden-identified loose leaf teas from the world’s greatest tea producing countries rather than the same old China teas and North India teas everyone has. We took a tea holiday in Sri Lanka and South India, and discovered some of the most amazingly brilliant tasting teas on earth. We keep ordering from those twenty or so gardens and have turned all our family and friends onto them as well. Wouldn’t it be something to see such a wonderful selection from Tazo in the Starbucks stores? While in Sri Lanka and India, we discovered an amazing entrepreneur brand called Dilmah whose not-for-profit foundation is just as active in social development as Tazo’s Mercy. The management of the foundation also happens to be the owner of the largest number of Ceylon’s best tea gardens and his affiliate company in South India is making the most awesome Fairtrade organic green and black teas at their factories as well. Steve should hook Starbucks’ Tazo up with the Dilmah people - it just seems such a perfect pairing on all fronts. And maybe the Dilmah people could help Tazo bring on-board some of Dilmah’s beautiful Ceylon and South India loose leaf teas. It is just a thought. I also wish Tazo offered the world-class teas from Africa, too. The great Kenya and Tanzania tea that we still buy directly since a photo safari over there a decade ago are similar to the Assam teas in the taste but, we think, the African teas are far better. Lord knows Africa needs Tazo’s support far more than even India, and if Steve replaced Tazo’s Assam teas with the East African teas, he’d acheive a triple improvement by avoiding the political threats in Assam which he discusses. Keep up the great interviews! Derrick.