title: “Time For Tea” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-10” author: “Judith Aguirre”
And many consumers are buying into that lifestyle. Rubin says business has quadrupled in the past five years to more than $10 million in annual sales. That’s small compared with Celestial Seasonings, which boasted $59.1 million in sales when it went public in 1993. Even smaller brands, like Starbucks subsidiary Tazo Tea, are signing distribution deals: Tazo secured a licensing agreement with Kraft last month.
Don’t look for the Republic of Tea to share supermarket-shelf space with those brands, though–its teas are available only by mail order and in 20,000 specialty stores and upscale eateries. “We’re not going to be mass-produced,” says Rubin. The Illinois plant makes 16,000 canisters of tea and ships more than 600 orders a day. From a dozen tea varieties a decade ago, the California company now boasts more than 170 offerings, from Silver Rain white tea to soothing CDs. It’s more than quality that sells, says Keating. “It’s the unique packaging and the fantasy.”
At $10 or more for a canister of 50 tea bags, the fantasy doesn’t come cheap. But customers aren’t complaining. “I look at it like nice wine,” says San Francisco doctor Andy Newman. And as with wine, sales of specialty teas are up, to a record $900 million, or 20 percent of total tea sales, in the United States last year, according to Sage Group’s latest “Tea Is ‘Hot’ Report.”
Whether Rubin and Gold can capitalize on that remains to be seen. They have no plans to go public and have turned down many bids from bigger companies. They say they prefer to remain an independent “republic,” converting consumers into “citizens”–one sip at a time.
