Honest Tea facts for kids
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| Type | Iced tea |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Honest Tea, Inc / The Coca-Cola Company |
| Distributor | The Coca-Cola Company |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Introduced | 1998 |
| Discontinued | 2022 |
Honest Tea was a company in the United States that made bottled organic iced tea. It was started in 1998 by two friends, Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff, in Bethesda, Maryland. Later, the company became a part of The Coca-Cola Company.
Contents
History of Honest Tea
How Honest Tea Started
Seth Goldman, one of the founders, got the idea for Honest Tea while he was in business school. He wanted to create drinks that were both organic and not too sweet. He also believed in doing business fairly, which is called fair trade. This means paying farmers a good price for their ingredients.
Seth Goldman and his professor, Barry Nalebuff, came up with the plan for the company. They raised $500,000 from their friends and family to get started.
Growing the Business
The very first store to sell Honest Tea was Fresh Fields, a natural grocery store chain. This store was later bought by Whole Foods Market. You could even find Honest Tea on some airplane flights! By 2006, Honest Tea was selling about 1.5 million cases of tea each year. They were making $13.5 million in sales.
Joining The Coca-Cola Company
In 2008, The Coca-Cola Company bought 40 percent of Honest Tea for $43 million. Then, in 2011, Coca-Cola bought the rest of the company.
In 2009, Honest Tea got a lot of attention when The New York Times newspaper reported that it was the favorite drink of the U.S. President, Barack Obama.
Honest Tea in Australia
There is a different, smaller company called Springleaf that owns the Honest Tea name in Australia. In 2015, a person named Annabel Young won a court case against Coca-Cola in Australia. This meant she kept the rights to the Honest Tea brand name there.
In 2021, Coca-Cola introduced a new drink called Honest Yerba Mate. Yerba mate is a traditional drink from South America. It is made from the leaves and stems of the yerba mate plant.
End of Honest Tea Drinks
On May 23, 2022, Coca-Cola announced that it would stop selling Honest Tea beverages. This change happened on December 31, 2022. Coca-Cola decided to focus on only two other tea brands: Gold Peak Tea and Peace Tea. They felt these brands were better at meeting what customers wanted.
Coca-Cola explained that stopping Honest Tea would help them make and deliver other drinks more easily. This was especially important because of problems with getting supplies (called "supply-chain issues"). These issues made it hard for Coca-Cola to make enough Gold Peak tea for everyone who wanted it.
Coca-Cola said it would continue to sell its Honest Kids organic fruit juices. Honest Tea was one of about 200 brands that Coca-Cola decided to stop selling between 2020 and 2022.
A New Beginning
After Coca-Cola stopped selling Honest Tea, the original founders, Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff, started a new bottled tea company. They launched their new brand, called Just Ice Tea, in September 2022. They worked with a famous chef named Spike Mendelsohn to create these new drinks.
