Sobeys honours Millennia TEA with Innovation Award

Sobeys honours Millennia TEA with Innovation Award

Sometimes saying “thank you” doesn’t feel like enough.

Sometimes you’re given a gift. A purpose. A knowing that you’ve been given the chance to do something that both lights you up inside – and something that has the potential to do some real good in the world.

I am feeling that deep level of love and appreciation right now. I’ll tell you why in a sec. First though, some context.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” … The version I resonate with more goes like this: “What would you do even if you knew you might fail?”

When Rory and I had the idea for Millennia TEA five years ago after a health scare in the family, we took a beverage the world has been drinking for a millennia – the most consumed beverage in the world after water – and we flipped the model for sharing tea on its head.

No drying and cooking tea leaves like conventional sit-on-the-shelf dry teas. Instead we work with farmer partners in the mountains in Sri Lanka to wash and flash freeze gorgeous organic Camellia sinensis tea leaves on the same day they’re harvested.

 That’s right, Un-dried Tea. Fresh Frozen Tea. Edible Tea.

Our vision is to share the mighty tea leaf in its most real, raw format, so people can experience tea the way it was enjoyed a millennia ago, in its pure and most naturally-powerful format.

There is nothing easy about creating a new global category of tea. Sure, it sounds cool, maybe. Doing something new and innovative in a stodgy old category is a fun idea.

But asking consumers to imagine tea as a food-as-medicine, whole-plant product when they don’t have an image of “fresh tea” in their mind’s eye is a big job. Asking them to add it to their smoothies, soups and sauces  – to consider it as a superfood wellness staple – takes a minute for folks to digest. And asking them to find it in the freezer at the store, beside the frozen berries, that might be the trickiest piece of all.

 As we build out our presence in grocery and health stores across the country this year, helping people understand the benefits of raw, whole plant, superfood tea … and showing them where to find it in the freezer is our work.

But that’s the part that lights me up. Telling the incredible story of tea, and sharing with people the ways in which it can positively impact our health in so many ways is the best.

And we have the best partners, which brings me to this moment where I am feeling a great sense of gratitude.

Sobeys has just awarded us a really special honour. We’ve just received their “Innovation Award” – presented to a company the Canadian grocery giant works with that’s doing something exciting and unique in the grocery space.

Sobeys, you likely know, is the second largest grocer in Canada, with hundreds of locations across the country. A few weeks ago, we rolled out Millennia TEA in to those hundreds of Sobeys and Safeway stores in Canada. We feel as though we’ve got a great partner in Sobeys, excited to help us fuel wellness right across the country with the freshest and most antioxidant-rich tea products anywhere.

You don’t do frozen tea for fun. You only do it because it’s good for you. Really, really good for you. And helping people really feel better is the good I want to do in the world.

Thank you for being on this journey with us. Appreciate you!!

Xoxo Tracy