{"id":40712,"date":"2024-04-26T14:07:11","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T18:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=40712"},"modified":"2024-07-07T20:57:37","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T00:57:37","slug":"from-honest-to-just-how-coca-colas-fumble-with-honest-tea-turned-into-an-unexpected-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/from-honest-to-just-how-coca-colas-fumble-with-honest-tea-turned-into-an-unexpected-gift\/","title":{"rendered":"From Honest to Just: How Coca-Cola\u2019s Fumble with Honest Tea Turned into an Unexpected Gift"},"content":{"rendered":"
>> Back to May 2024 Issue<\/a><\/div>\n
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\"Seth<\/a>Two years ago this month I was informed by senior leaders from The Coca-Cola Company (KO) that Honest Tea, the brand I launched out of my house in 1998, would be discontinued. <\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
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Despite the brand\u2019s success as the world\u2019s first organic and Fair Trade certified bottled tea brand, supply chain disruptions during the pandemic made Honest Tea a victim of Coke\u2019s \u201cFewer, Bigger Bets\u201d strategy.<\/p>\n

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But what felt like a huge setback turned out to be a gift, and an interesting lesson in the challenges big corporations have in scaling mission-driven brands.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Within ten days of hearing the news about Honest Tea\u2019s demise, our sense of loss morphed into a determination that Honest Tea\u2019s organic and Fair Trade values were too important \u2013 to our farmers (most of whom found out about Honest Tea\u2019s termination from my LinkedIn post) and our customers, to be allowed to disappear. But the biggest piece of inspiration came via an email I received from one of our longtime tea suppliers:<\/span><\/p>\n

I am just hearing the news and reading your note on LinkedIn. The story of Honest Tea is very connected to our own, our company, and the gardens and people with whom we work at origin, so the news is definitely a “gut punch,” for us as well. For my father and myself, while the financial consequences are material, the loss of confidence in Organic and Fair Trade agriculture that this decision is likely to engender in the wider community is very saddening and probably more consequential over the long term \u2013 especially in terms of lost motivation at origins. We have been so inspired to be part of the journey that you led, and want to try to continue the effort (and fight the suggestion that this was all a failed experiment).<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

After receiving that email, <\/span>I didn\u2019t need any more convincing!<\/b> Of course, we also looked at the market and were convinced that there was an immediate opportunity to capture much of Honest Tea\u2019s volume (which had grown to $75 million before I left) as well as expand beyond that size because the receptivity to Organic and Fair Trade had grown since 2019.\u00a0 It was also clear that since the pandemic there had been no innovation in bottled iced tea \u2013 the shelves were filled with the usual suspects \u2013 Arizona, Snapple, Pure Leaf and Gold Peak, and no one was bringing anything fresh or exciting to the category.<\/span><\/p>\n

We couldn\u2019t buy back the Honest name because Coke was still building Honest Kids. So my HT-co-founder Barry Nalebuff and I brainstormed over a weekend and came up with a new name that would help communicate what our new brand would stand for. We came up with\u00a0<\/span>Just Ice Tea<\/b>. My Eat The Change co-founder Chef Spike Mendelsohn started brewing recipes that were enhancements of Honest Tea\u2019s greatest hits.<\/span><\/p>\n

By September 6, 2022, less than 100 days after we heard the news about Honest Tea, we had sold our first bottle at a PLNT Burger restaurant in NYC. Today Just Ice Tea is the top-selling bottle tea brand in the natural channel (as tracked by SPINS). Our <\/span>sales hit $16 million<\/b> in the past 12 months, and we are just starting to sell into national foodservice, drug, mass and convenience chains.<\/span><\/p>\n

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