For The Love of Earl Grey

Hi, I'm Amy. I'm the founder of Metolius Tea.  It's important to me that you know I began my tea journey not in British parlors or at the tea tables of Chinese tea masters, but in the forests, rivers, and deserts of Oregon’s rich and diverse landscapes.

In college and graduate school I drank tea at home with my sister while studying social and environmental justice and poetry.  I spent hours upon hours with journals and books in beautifully designed, "third wave" coffee houses with direct-sourced coffee, fresh baked pastries, and... stale, monocrop-grown tea.  I saved my tea drinking for home.

After finishing a Master's degree in Women's History at Sarah Lawrence College, I returned home to the Pacific Northwest and indulged in a long-time curiosity: local, wild plants.  Wild plants became my whole world, and before long I started wildcrafting plants and making teas.

As I busied myself making wildcrafted and medicinal teas, I began to notice gaps in the coffee and tea industry that I longed to fill.  In the coffee industry - the conspicuous absence of quality tea; and in the tea industry - the conspicuous absence of a well crafted, quality earl grey.

Since I couldn’t find the earl grey I wanted, I made it: hand-picked leaf and bud black tea, bergamot essential oil from select Italian orchards, sustainably harvested Madagascar vanilla bean, and bright, beautiful organic bachelor’s buttons - all farm direct from small production farmers.

And since I wanted a beautiful tea option in my favorite beautiful coffee shops, I continued to design a whole line of teas for coffee shops, friends, and family.  But to this day, our best selling teas are the teas I made just for myself.

This is how I stumbled upon my path as a tea maker and a maker of an impact-focused, ethics-forward business.

Our Name

A note from Amy on how we got our name...

Metolius Tea got its name later.  Our first company name was Lovely Goat Plant Medicine. When I approached a local resort about serving our tea in their restaurant, the owner, (who later became a great friend) communicated to me in a series of Dutch swear words that we had better change the name if I wanted our tea at his restaurant. So we came up with a new name. Water is essential to tea. I used to drive to Sisters, Oregon once a week to bring tea to local cafes. I would keep on driving out to the Metolius River, where I'd jog along the river, making wishes, being with the grand old Ponderosas, cataloging the medicinal plants along the river's edge -- rose, Oregon grape, elder....  While I did just change the name so somebody would buy my tea, Metolius has come, like a river, to represent both where we came from and where we are going. While we have stayed “plant-forward,” true to our organic roots, we have grown into a company with viable goals to enrich our world with our work and through our products."

A Chai Is Born

In 2018, we reached another pivotal milestone: our chai was born. Similar to Earl Grey, I could not find a chai I truly loved, despite how much I love cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, and black pepper.  Most chai in the American market was too sweet, watery, barely flavorful, and far too clove-forward.

I spent one crazed year designing the chai. I filled a pink notebook with hundreds of drafts, research on solubility chemistry and aromatics, and drawings of processes.  Finally, in October of 2018, in my final months of refining the recipe, we took a leap of faith and partnered with our first wholesale chai customer, Palate Coffee in Bend.

Metolius Chai was an instant success, completely transforming the company.  We sent samples to quality-focused coffee shops all over the country and before we knew it the UPS van was daily loading up cases of chai stacked higher than me.

Many people believe that chai is an ancient Indian tradition. I find its true history much more compelling.  Chai is a product of colonialism, resistance and resilience, and creative adaptation. Chai has always been a product of globalization, and I feel compelled to join that conversation by creating a business for good, a business conscious of impact and cultural history, and partnering with farmers who making restorative impacts in their regions.

Original Metolius Chai design notes

Wholesale Tea for Coffee Shops

In late 2019, pre-pandemic, Metolius Tea made a commitment. We felt there were no tea companies with product offerings designed for wholesale customers, especially quality-focused coffee shops. Sure, lots of tea companies sell wholesale, but not with holistic support for their needs.  Plus, we just love baristas and coffee culture!

Seeing this unserved need in the market, Metolius Tea moved to strategically develop a more holistic wholesale tea offering for coffee shops. In quick succession we launched Metolius Chai, improved our Metolius Matcha, and rolled out two stunning specialty syrups. All our new products are bundled in our Wholesale Membership, which provides nationwide free shipping as well as all the necessary tea tools, menus, storage jars, and employee trainings.

The wholesale tea membership was a hit.

In March 2020, one thing was very clear: coffee shops were going to be closed and we didn't know for how long. Metolius tea fans had no idea how to get their favorite teas!  We were jolted into the realization that we needed to work on connecting with retail customers directly.  But yikes! We have been shy and hiding behind a nationwide team of charismatic baristas for our whole career!!

Up until COVID, we packaged our tea in environmentally friendly glass. But it was expensive to ship and deterred website customers.  When COVID hit we knew we needed to get tea-comfort-into people's homes.  We immediately redesigned our packaging to be BOTH ecofriendly and cheap to ship.  We also, finally, started talking with customers directly, launching our monthly newsletter with exclusive discounts for our subscribers, and then we launched our Amazon store with free shipping.

While wholesale tea remains our focus, retail sales literally saved us in 2020. Thank you Metolius Tea fans, we love you!

Developing a Model For Ethical Employment

As we've grown, we've changed our organization model more times than I can count.  We've had great people come and go, and we've grown with every evolution.  

It's been our goal for a long time to be the most respected wholesale tea supplier and online retailer of organic teas.  One way that's evolved for me is that I also want to be the most respectable employer, with systems, models, ethos, and culture that support the whole human beings who work with us.

Work for our team includes:

Partnered with our neighborhood gym, Foundation Fitness, to provide our team members unlimited memberships

Purchased an automatic capping machine to prevent overuse pain

Launched Health Insurance for our Full Time employees

Worked with Oregon's Department of Economics to identify 50th to 90th percentile wage ranges for each position to identify our progress toward more-than-fair wages

Cross-training and overstaffing to create redundancy and flexibility on the team

Building an "ecosystem" leadership model with soft hierarchy and dispersed leadership

Strong value of diversity and psychological safety.

As we look forward, we're excited to keep growing to meet our career goals for the team, to take more team members traveling to visit our tea farmers, and to have an increasingly positive impact locally and globally.

Thank you dearly for being part of the Metolius Tea story. Our journey is only just beginning and we're filled with gratitude for all the help we've had along the way. Here is to our mutual success and future endeavors!