Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting with a friend (Nikki) who had started an online tea business and getting a little bit of look into a day in the life of an online tea business. Being an Anglophile with a myriad of teacups– this topic is absolutely my “cup of tea”. I immediately ordered the Sunshine Fruit Medley Tisane and love it.
Growing up, there was always a cup of forgotten tea that had been warmed up at some point in the day and left sitting on the counter or sitting alone in the microwave. We learned as young children that you can have a spot of milk in your tea and dip your buttered toast in it. Absolutely delicious! Needless to say, I have fond thoughts around the subject of tea.
I asked Nikki from Tieton Teas to let our readers know more about what she is doing in her online tea company and do a guest interview. It’s my pleasure to post her insights to you.
Note: This is not a sponsored or affiliate post. This is a small business highlight post to encourage online and small business commerce success.
Would you introduce yourself and what your online tea business is all about?
Hello, my name is Nikki Tucker. My husband and I are the owners and founders of an online tea business called Tieton Teas. Tieton Teas sells premium loose-leaf tea to promote self-care and healthy living. We also sell tea accessories and tea tumblers to enhance your tea experience. Most of the tea we sell is loose leaf, but we do have a select variety of loose leaf available in single steep pyramid bags.
What are the benefits of incorporating tea into our routine?
Tea’s Immune Boosting Ability
Tea is a great way to boost your immune system and aid us in staying healthy in so many ways. I do have a blog portion on my web page called, “Tea Talk” and recently I posted an article called “Boost Your Immune System to Avoid Getting Sick”. Not only is a cup of tea a tasty, leisurely thing to drink, but it is one of the easiest and most natural ways we can boost our immune system.
There have been many studies conducted to show this, but in one particular study (for those scientific readers) they isolated a substance from black tea called L-theanine. The L-theanine breaks down in the liver to a molecule called ethylamine and boosts the immune system part of the body called the gamma-delta T cell.
Hydration for Immune Strength
We need to stay hydrated and as healthy as we possibly can. Drinking tea hydrates your body, will fight bacteria and strengthen your immune system.
Stress and Sleep
A cup of tea also helps with anxiety and stress relief, improves sleep quality, and increase our focus. The benefits of tea are literally endless!
We are excited to finally launch our Positivitea Glass Brew Tumbler’s. We decided to call them Positivi-tea because we all need a little positivity in our life, especially with all this Covid-19 invading our lives. The 3 tumblers we are launching are:
- Strength (Phil 4:19)
- Follow Your Passion (no scripture)
- Believe (Acts 16:31)
With these bottles you can conveniently brew your tea at home, work, or on the go. I am so excited about this that I can hardly contain myself.
I absolutely love the Sunshine Medley Tisane, can you tell readers what tisanes are?
Yes, tisanes are mixed blends of fresh or dried- fruits, berries, herbs, flowers, leaves, seeds or roots. These are also known as an “herbal blends” or “herbal tea” and also have wellness benefits. Since they are not actually made with the tea plant Camellia, they are called “herbal” tea and don’t contain any caffeine. Tisanes (Herbal Tea) are full of flavor and can be enjoyed hot or iced.
For someone who is new to the world of tea, what would you recommend?
I feel like I can honestly relate tea to wine in the sense that it takes a while to learn what you like and don’t like. You have to taste different tea blends and options to figure that out. When I started talking to people about tea, I quickly realized some people really love black tea or really love green tea. It reminds me of red wine versus white wine.
Preference and Technique
When it comes to tisanes, most people enjoy them. When I meet people that say they don’t like tea or they are not a tea drinker, I can pretty much chop it up to the fact that they have not tried the right one or they don’t know how to enhance the flavor of tea, or they don’t know how to properly prepare it.
In order to help people with this we have a Tea Venture page that shows brew guidance instructions on our website. Just like black coffee, there are people that drink tea without adding anything, but most people add something to it like sugar or honey to enhance the flavor.
Specific Teas
We decided to offer samples for people to try tea before they buy in larger quantities.
- When I meet a new tea drinker, I will usually recommend one of our tisanes as a place to start. They are light and full of flavor.
- To try black tea, I will give them a sample of Earl Grey or Blackcurrant because those seem to be the most popular black teas.
- For green tea, I will recommend the Organic Chun Mee green tea.
- If you are new to drinking tea, I would definitely recommend our glass brew bottle that I talked about earlier. It is a must have for sure! It is so easy and convenient.
- We also have the convenient tea-spoon infuser. The Tea Infuser Spoon brews one cup of tea (8 ounces). This clever spoon design holds loose leaf or bagged teas and no messy leaves are left in your cup. Swirl, stir, or press plunger to release more flavor.
- I also enjoy supporting local business so I partnered with a local honey company in Yakima called Holben Honey and offer their no-mess honey pouch. Not only does honey taste good, but it has so many health benefits as well. These no-mess 5 oz. pouches are inexpensive and they are great for on the go needs. (work, camping, backpacking, hiking, picnics, etc,).
I will be putting together a tea taster starter pack that will be available in April. It will have 8 of our most popular tea samples and will include information about each tea, how to prepare it and enhance its flavor.
Knowing a little bit more about you, can you describe some of your other life pursuits, I know that minimalism/ less material stuff is part of it?
Yes, I like to say, “Living a healthy, stress-free life is our cup of tea!” I am someone that loves simplicity and strive to minimize everything in order to maintain a stress-free life. Stress is very hard on us as people. We seem to constantly be cluttering our lives with things that cause us more stress and most of the time we don’t even realize that is what we are doing.
My husband and I have started a journey of downshifting and downsizing several years ago. These things take time but we are enjoying the progress we are making. We have put together savings goals & debt free goals in order to accomplish this and have started getting rid of stuff we don’t need. It is amazing how much stuff accumulates! When there is clutter in my space, I feel like my life is cluttered.
We are not hoarders by any means, but I really realized the amount of stuff we had when we took in 3 teenage girls and had to move stuff out of the house to make room for them. We piled it all in our garage and it hit me in the face, “Why do we have all this stuff and where did it come from?” Getting rid of stuff, we don’t need or use is very freeing.
Our Personal Long-Term Goal
Our long-term goal is to live a very simple, non-traditional life in the near future. We don’t want to work our butts off until we are 67 in hopes to enjoy life at 67. There is nothing wrong with this way of doing things, but we want to enjoy life while we are physically able to and while we have each other. You never know what tomorrow will bring. I would hate to spend the next 30 years working, missing out on building memories and having adventure with my husband all for what…Stuff?
Simplify
We are very excited for this journey. Simplify, simplify, simplify! We also have another website with our adventures on it called ‘Our Second Hand Life’. There are additional videos on our YouTube channel: our tiny house project, tree house project, hiking, or de-cluttering videos.
