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If you are seeking new ways to increase your ROI on marketing with your commerce platform, or you may be an entrepreneur who wants to grow your team and be more efficient with your online business.
Talk Commerce with Brent W. Peterson draws stories from merchants, marketers, and entrepreneurs who share their experiences in the trenches to help you learn what works and what may not in your business.
Keep up with the current news on commerce platforms, marketing trends, and what is new in the entrepreneurial world. Episodes drop every Tuesday with the occasional bonus episodes.
You can check out our daily blog post and signup for our newsletter here https://talk-commerce.com
Brent Peterson (00:01.684)
Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Matt Hammons. He is the co-founder of the Full Leaf Tea Company. go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and give us one of your passions in life.
Matt Hammonds (00:17.41)
All right. Hey Brent, pleasure being on. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So my wife, Lisa and I, started fully from almost exactly 10 years ago. We're both still heavily active in it. When we started it, we started from scratch. We were actually broke newlyweds at the time and wanted to start a business. So we pulled out a credit card with a $2,500 limit and that was our seed funding. And that's how we got rolling. And today we've been just growing like crazy about
90 % growth year over year since the start and just hired our 29th employee. So it's quite, quite the journey and we're really enjoying every bit of it. My wife and I both work in it day to day, every day we're here. She's more on the operation side of things. I'm more on the marketing side of things and then just kind of, overall strategic goals and things along those lines. But yeah, that's, that's pretty much, yeah, what I do in here a little bit of everything.
basically solve problems. think that's what most business owners job title is, is a problem solver.
Brent Peterson (01:19.924)
Yeah, problem solver, exactly. And how about passions in life? Do you have anything outside of business you're passionate about?
Matt Hammonds (01:27.338)
Yeah, I do. Honestly, one of my biggest passions is business. I'm a student of business. love everything about it. Entrepreneurship. I'm always trying to learn and, you know, just improve and everything, you know, I do. So that's a big passion of mine. You know, personally, I have an 11 year old daughter and she's into volleyball and all that. So that's really those two things pretty much consume my life is, you know, being there with my daughter.
all of our games, all that kind of stuff. And then just really kind of diving into business any chance I get.
Brent Peterson (02:03.404)
Perfect. I'll make one small plug and I know we're supposed to do the plug at the end, but EO has a great chapter. Entrepreneurs Organization has a great Portland chapter and I know you're in Oregon. So look that up. I don't know how far you are from Portland, but it's a great community. And I met all those folks at their global leadership conference in Texas in 2021 from the Portland chapter. So it was really fun to kind of connect with all those people and great group of people.
Matt, before we get started into content, we're going to talk a little bit about leaf tea today. We'll about bagged tea versus loose leaf. again, I've been, super interested in tea. if you ever, if anybody knows me, I bring jugs of tea everywhere I go. So I'm going to tell you a joke though. I have this thing called the free joke project. All I need to do is give me a rating one through five. So here we go.
If I could choose to have one superpower, it would be invisibility. I just want to make myself clear.
Matt Hammonds (03:09.154)
I like that. I like that. I'm gonna have to give that one a four. That was pretty good.
Brent Peterson (03:16.386)
good. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. mean, I was going to I'll do a follow up because I got one more. I will be posting telepathically today. So if you think of something funny, that was me.
Matt Hammonds (03:30.146)
That's a good one too. I love jokes, so I'm going to give that one a four as well.
Brent Peterson (03:34.144)
We'll stop there. I can't lose today. Thank you. That's awesome. All right. So Matt, us, tell us how you got into what you're doing. Tell us how you got into T.
Matt Hammonds (03:50.508)
Okay, yeah. So a couple years before we started Full Leaf, I was really into coffee. I drank tons of coffee all day, every day, know, multiple cups, black coffee, but I never really liked how I felt. so it was one of those things where I was just like kind of looking for alternatives. I'd always grown up drinking, you know, iced tea, Lipton, all that kind of stuff.
really just started to explore tea a little bit more. And I got into loose leaf tea and some more finer teas. And I realized I really loved how I felt after drinking tea. so a couple of years before we started full leaf, I just switched straight to tea, went off coffee and loved how I felt and haven't looked back since. I have nothing against coffee. It just doesn't sit well with me and never feel great after a cup of coffee. So I avoid it and just drink tea. then
Through that journey, really kind of got into different herbs and spices and all these things that you can do and just the versatility of tea. It's almost endless, the combinations you can come up with. so it really just kind of became something that really intrigued me and love just kind of coming up with new combinations, you know, to, you know, whether it's for health benefits, flavor, different things along those lines. So that's really kind of what got me into it.
Brent Peterson (05:14.966)
Yeah, tell us a little bit because for those don't know that you can take just loose leaf black tea and you can infuse it with different flavorings. And I'm a big strawberry tea drinker. So I got introduced to it. I mean, I'm very similar story to you where I grew up drinking Lipton tea, you know, just in the jar. It was glass jar at the time. And and I graduated to tea bags and, you know, then over ice. And then I've graduated to a loose leaf tea. But
Matt Hammonds (05:32.534)
Yep. Yep.
Brent Peterson (05:43.436)
Tell us a little bit about that infusion process and how that works.
Matt Hammonds (05:48.778)
Yeah. So there's a lot of different ways you can infuse tea. Most of what we do in here isn't actually, we don't usually use many flavorings. We have a few, whether it's for bergamot, you know, for Earl Grey, things along those lines. But what I really enjoy doing is taking just the flavors of different herbs and spices and creating those awesome tea flavors that way. You know, people will always kind of, some people will question flavorings and
you know, things along those lines. So we try to avoid that as much as possible. And, you know, except for the few, you know, classics like the Earl gray, Jasmine things along those lines. but yeah, really our, our process is combining the whole herbs and getting the right ratios together to where you get great flavorings through that.
Brent Peterson (06:38.08)
And do you get a chance to go and source tea or tell us about how deep you get into the sourcing tree of the tea itself?
Matt Hammonds (06:46.474)
Yeah, quite a bit. really depends on because we have hundreds of different herbs and teas that we bring in. So, you know, some are pretty easy. Some require a lot of, you know, testing, finding different sources. We also try to find multiple sources for each herb and tea, just because I mean, as a farm to product, there are issues that come up and sometimes there's a bad harvest and things along those lines. So we try to find multiple sources for each, but it really comes down to.
Checking the quality of the herbs and teas, making sure they are high quality, making sure the flavor is good, the consistency is good. And then for us, all of our products are organic. So that's an added layer of challenge of making sure we find USDA certified organic suppliers for us.
Brent Peterson (07:33.93)
And do you get some of your tea, like I think Northern India is a big tea supplier. Would you go to India and look at those fields of tea or how do you kind of work through that?
Matt Hammonds (07:43.957)
Yeah, we haven't yet, but that is something that we're looking at doing. But we have really good, basically third party sources that have done all the research from that standpoint for us. So we already know, okay, here's the background on these fields and things along those lines. So we do want to go there eventually and go actually to all the locations. We think that'd be really fun, but we haven't done a lot of that up until this.
Brent Peterson (08:12.468)
Tell us about the business process you do or the process you do in determining what types of tea you should be selling and what types of tea you might double down on for the holidays. I know you mentioned that there's some flavors where people are not particularly fond of. But I mean, I've gotten chocolate tea and all kind of reindeer tea or whatever. You know, there's all kinds of different flavors that they try out. Tell us about that bit, that process that you use to kind of try some of those things out.
Matt Hammonds (08:35.114)
Yes.
Matt Hammonds (08:41.44)
Yeah, so most of our teas have come from our customers asking for them. That's a big thing for us is just listening to our customers and being able to connect and find the areas where maybe they can't find a certain tea and they want one of a certain quality. And so for us, we're really big into just natural wellness, all the health benefits of teas and herbs. And so that's kind of a big...
area for us, it's like, what are people looking for? Whether it's, you know, a sleeping tea or, we have a tea that helps with heartburn that a of people don't really think about, but it's, you know, so many herbs have so many benefits that we don't even realize. And just really being able to test those out and, find what works, find what helps people. then.
That's what we basically use to make our blends. And then I create all of our blend ratios in-house here. So I'm the little, yeah, the mixer. get into the blending room and kind of, you know, balance all the herbs, spices, figure out what tastes great, what I think will work. And then ultimately we release them to our customers and they're the ultimate judge. Do they like them or not? You know.
Brent Peterson (09:52.268)
Do you have something that's coming out that you're excited about? I say that because I recently interviewed a lady who hand makes candles, or not hand makes, but she gets a sense into candles and it's sort of bringing back some nostalgia. And she thinks about what is that nostalgia gonna be for her next candle scent? So do you have like some of those things that you're...
Matt Hammonds (10:08.95)
Mm-hmm.
Brent Peterson (10:16.842)
Not nostalgic, but more like what are you going to do next? hey, I'm really excited about this flavor.
Matt Hammonds (10:23.222)
Yeah, so we do have some new teas coming out. I think we've got seven, seven or eight new blends. They're actually done and ready, but we have for all of our teams, we have to go through an approval process through USDA Organics. So they're in the hands of our organic certifier right now. It usually takes a few weeks. yeah, so those, those were waiting on, I'm trying to think of a.
that would be an interesting one. So I actually, one of the ones we're doing that people have been asking for the most. our most popular tea is an anti-inflammatory tea has turmeric, know, black pepper, green tea, all those things in there. one of our biggest requests has been a decaf version. So we got one of those coming out. So I think that's probably going to be the most popular one with our customers coming out.
So, but we have a few other ones as well. and also just, some single herbs. A lot of people are just looking for single herbs. So, wormwood is a herb that people have been asking for for a very long time. So we're going to be releasing that with this as well.
Brent Peterson (11:25.822)
Awesome. You know, the caffeine part of it, think black tea is caffeine naturally in it and there's other teas that are not caffeine, they never had caffeinated or caffeine in it. But then there's people who decaffeinate black tea, right? So how does all that fit into the matrix of teas and flavorings and things?
Matt Hammonds (11:40.418)
Thank you.
Matt Hammonds (11:46.016)
Yeah, so most of our herbal teas are caffeine free. So there's not actually a tea base. So it's not a black tea, green tea, white tea base in there. So one of our main bases we use is Roibos, which is an herb from South Africa that's naturally caffeine free. got it's it's an amazing herb, tastes great, has a lot of benefits. So that's one of our main kind of bases. But you can decaffeinate tea. And the process we use, it's called the
Swiss water method. but the thing that people don't realize that they're really sensitive, even decaf tea, decaf coffee still has a little bit of caffeine in it. So the people that are really sensitive to caffeine, we just tell them to go to herbal only. And then the decaffeinated, the decaffeinated process kind of hurts the flavor of the tea a little bit. So it's just a little bit more of a dull flavor. So I'm not a big fan of it, but
That's what people want. So we definitely offer decaf tea. It's just, it, it hurts me because you're not getting the full flavor of what that tea is.
Brent Peterson (12:50.442)
Yeah, it's kind of like any beer. Not a lot of beers can do it well, Cold brew is a big deal in the coffee industry, and I know I've done cold brew now for tea as well. How have you seen that work into the tea business?
Matt Hammonds (12:52.523)
Yeah.
Yep, yep, exactly.
Matt Hammonds (13:09.994)
Yeah, that's, that's been a big, definitely topic. We've heard a lot from our customers, something we have a lot of information on, on our site, trying to be a good resource for them. But cold brewing tea is just, it's so versatile what you can do. What's nice about the cold brew process versus the hot brew process when it comes to like black tea, green tea, white tea is if you hot brew tea for too long, it can get bitter.
you know, kind of astringent and not the most pleasant flavor. But when you cold brew it, that bitterness is not there. It's very similar to coffee in that way. How, know, cold brew is always a less bitter taste to it. And what's nice is you're not like watching the clock on it. You can throw it in, throw it in your fridge and, you know, come back to it in a couple of days if you want, or, you know, a couple hours either way. and so it's just really versatile, allows people to kind of prep larger batches ahead of time without having to worry about specific times to make the flavor just right.
Brent Peterson (14:07.084)
Do you cross with kombucha as well? think the kombucha, the kind of the base is a tea, right? And then you mix it with your scoby and do you cross over to that, those realms and supply people who are making their own kombucha?
Matt Hammonds (14:14.871)
Yep.
Matt Hammonds (14:20.534)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we do have a wholesale division and we have several kombucha companies that order our tea for their bases. And I personally love kombucha. I love the flavor of it, everything about it. My wife drinks it every day. And so it's something that we're really familiar with now. I don't think we're going to go into the kombucha business because that's kind of a whole different business. We'll stick to tea, but we do supply a lot of kombucha makers with our tea.
Brent Peterson (14:48.776)
We weren't going to talk a lot about platforms, but I'm always interested. know you're on Shopify. mentioned a B2B business and then I'm going to ask about Amazon. Are you on Amazon for some of your channels?
Matt Hammonds (15:00.186)
Yes, we are. do sell on Amazon. It's not my favorite platform for a lot of reasons. I don't think it's always the best place for small businesses to go to because you can get killed on Amazon really outside of your control. So I always, it's a, it's about 5 % of our sales. So it's a real small portion, but we do have customers that just only shop on Amazon. And so they, that's where they want to order it from, but
It for us, our Amazon orders and our Shopify orders all shipped from our same facility in white cities, same price, everything like that. So it's, it's basically the same process. you can get more of our teas and more variants on our website versus Amazon, but yeah, we do sell on Amazon, but not a ton.
Brent Peterson (15:47.902)
in, in our, we were talking a little bit about a past guest of mine and he had a really good channel on TikTok. And I know TikTok now has TikTok shop. Have you looked at other channels outside of just Shopify for your, for your sales?
Matt Hammonds (16:04.266)
Yeah, we do. like Facebook, Facebook Marketplace is another one where people can order directly through Facebook RT. It's not a big portion of our sales by any means. TikTok shop. I know we were looking at adding that as a sales channel. I don't know if it's added up until this point, but
So those are, some of the other other channels, but those always are very minimal sales. So not a big part of our business either way. We're social media isn't like our main avenue for acquiring customers.
Brent Peterson (16:43.276)
So you mentioned earlier that your business partner is your wife and I had a business with my wife for 12 years and we managed to still be married. Do you have challenges in working that?
Matt Hammonds (16:57.312)
You know what? That's always something that people are really surprised by, but we get along really well. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we are opposites in really everything we do. have very opposite.
ideas, how we do things, and it really balances really well. She has her lane, which I defer to her on, and I have my lane, which she defers to me on. then we really just kind of work well together. It's interesting, obviously, something we were a little worried about when we started, but we just work really well together. And I think we're probably more the exception than the rule, but it definitely works well for us.
Brent Peterson (17:38.505)
Yeah, I think any partnership is if you can split up responsibilities, that's a really big benefit, especially if your husband and wife, and I know that my wife did HR and accounting and I did the sales and marketing and it was a good partnership. And I knew that, you know, she had my back in terms of whenever there was those needs in that different arena that I didn't want to go into. it was a good way to do it.
how about product development and does, does your wife have interested in the product development side and getting new products out?
Matt Hammonds (18:15.146)
Yeah. So I always, involved her in that most all the product development is, done by me. I obviously always have her taste tests and everything along those lines. It's kind of funny. Most of my blends that I come out with, she doesn't like them at first. And so she, she's always definitely my biggest critic with that, but we're, you know, we'll, we'll taste test them. She won't like it for whatever reason.
and we'll release a product and it ends up being one of our most popular and our customers love the flavor of it and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, she's definitely involved in it, but I would say my biggest credit when it comes to that kind of stuff.
Brent Peterson (18:52.029)
Yeah, I know my grandpa when we got married, he had said, you know, the biggest, the best advice I can give you is just say yes, dear. How about your, your customers? Do you feel as though you have a certain type of customer and do you, are you always trying to expand your reach or do you, are you pretty happy with the segment of customer you have for the types of tea you sell?
Matt Hammonds (18:59.042)
Yep, exactly.
Matt Hammonds (19:19.234)
Yeah, it's really interesting when when we started I wasn't really sure what our customer base was going to look like. We are about 70 75 percent female. What's really interesting to me is we almost have an equal amount of each age bracket. So we're very widespread in the age bracket which can definitely.
bring up some challenges marketing wise, of course, but I also kind of like it because it's a little more stable as a business, you know, when you're just very focused in one age bracket, you know, and if something happens economically or anything like that, but being spread out, think really helps us and just gives us kind of a better foundation of customers. so, you know, for us, it's just been
you know, we're going to offer what we're going to offer. And then the customers that want it are the ones that basically kind of find it. And so we're not necessarily trying to get to different customers as much as just trying to access more of our customer demographic that we already have.
Brent Peterson (20:23.135)
Do you do a lot of paid ads to help get traffic to your site? And is that starting to change on what type of platforms you should have your paid ads on?
Matt Hammonds (20:36.106)
Yeah. So digital advertising is absolutely integral to any e-commerce business and especially the way Google, Microsoft, everywhere it's going. It's hard to get organic traffic like you used to be able to, you know, 10 years ago, everything almost everywhere seems to be an ad of some sort. So that's, that's obviously a big part of our acquisition is Google ads, you know, Facebook, Instagram,
being Yahoo, those areas for digital advertising. But one of our changes we actually just recently made, cause digital advertising has become more and more of a challenge. think a lot of that has to do with the privacy stuff coming out. And I think it's just getting harder and harder to accurately target people. So one of the changes we just started actually about a week ago is we went a little old school. We're starting national TV advertising and we're also doing postcards. So kind of almost
went back a little bit in history to test out some new mediums, just so we have a better kind of foundation of acquisition channels. So if all of a Google shuts down tomorrow, we can keep, keep new customers coming in.
Brent Peterson (21:48.253)
Yeah, that's such a big part of it where, especially if you're in the influencer sector, that email list is your most important thing because that's the thing you can control. if your whole business is built on YouTube, you are stuck if YouTube goes away or they lock you out for whatever reason. I think the same thing happens in terms of digital. Your provider for that channel could
could shut you down for whatever reason for an ad, right? Then that's such a big risk that a lot of business owners don't always take into account.
Matt Hammonds (22:22.908)
Absolutely.
Brent Peterson (22:23.711)
How about just getting new products outside of tea? you look at getting teaware and maybe exploring a little bit of coffee or some other products that are maybe related to tea?
Matt Hammonds (22:38.562)
So yeah, we do add accessories. They're not a huge part of our sales, but it's more like the accessories that we really like and that our customers really like just make it convenient for them to get everything all in one. So that's one of the things we do. We have a lot of different tea accessories and things that we sell on there. Coffee, I don't know that we're gonna go down that road, but it was kind of funny on April Fool's of this year.
We played a joke on all of our customers and our marketing gal made a change to our logo and change just a full bean coffee company and send it out to our customers and we had customers that were like, I was crying. Like I didn't know this. It was pretty funny. So we've made a joke about it, but I don't think we're actually going to go that route.
Brent Peterson (23:26.175)
That's awesome. How about though I'll ask a technical question. What do you recommend for fully brewing your tea?
Matt Hammonds (23:38.656)
Yeah, so it really depends on the type of tea, you know, whether it's an actual tea base, black, white, oolong, and those have different steeping times as well as long as as well as temperatures, like if it's a green tea or a white tea, I recommend short of boiling about 170 degrees. If it's a black tea oolong or pu'erh, you can get closer to that boiling point and steep it hotter.
Usually I'm around three to five minutes in most all of my teas and up where you can go a little bit longer. But what we always tell everyone is to experiment. Everyone's different. Everyone has different flavor profiles they like and tea changes flavors throughout the, you know, five minutes of steeping time. And so someone may like it a little bit lighter steeped, or they might like it a little oversteeped. And so for us, we always just tell people, don't be afraid to experiment, you know, try out.
different temperatures, different times, and just see what really works for you. The biggest thing I always tell people is if you don't have really good water, filtered water. That's key, because water really affects the taste of tea if it's not good filtered water.
Brent Peterson (24:49.235)
Yeah, that is so true, especially if you travel a lot. And I think I mentioned in a green room, we go to Hawaii every year and the Hawaii, I mean, in Kona anyways, it's very heavy. You can taste a lot of chlorine in it and it just really kills the taste of both tea and your ice and your coffee. yeah, filtering is such an important part. All right, I have a super personal question to ask. When you go into a restaurant, do you say...
Matt Hammonds (24:52.086)
Yes.
Matt Hammonds (25:01.879)
Mm-hmm.
Brent Peterson (25:17.681)
Is it fresh iced tea or is it out of the gun?
Matt Hammonds (25:24.322)
don't. and I rarely or to a restaurant truthfully, they have good tea becaus been ruined by good tea. last time I ordered ice normally it's just ice w
Brent Peterson (25:42.553)
That's perfect. I always ask in advance. And then the other thing that you definitely notice at restaurants, I'd say McDonald's is a great place to get just generic iced tea because they clean it every day. A lot of places leave their tea in the fridge overnight. And you can definitely tell that it's starting to get a little stale in the morning, right?
Matt Hammonds (26:04.564)
Yep, absolutely. can definitely taste the difference there, that's for sure.
Brent Peterson (26:08.064)
And is there a shelf life? know you mentioned that cold brew leave in the fridge for a day or two. Is there a, there's a definite shelf life on just regular tea and it starts degrading over time?
Matt Hammonds (26:18.496)
Yeah. So tea doesn't, we have best by dates on our tea. So we usually say our loose leaf tea, drink it within two years, as long as you keep it in an airtight, you know, container, it's best to keep it out of sunlight, but he doesn't necessarily really go bad. Just, start to kind of lose the flavor of it after time. Now there are some teas like where that actually can get better with age. So
there's certain teas were, and I would even say Oolong as well. It doesn't necessarily, you you might almost get a little bit more depth of flavor on the older ones. but yeah, in general, you know, green tea, white tea, even black tea, I would recommend drinking it with, or making it and then drinking it within a couple of years. but it, is a natural antiseptic, which is nice. So it doesn't grow mold or have any.
Pests don't like it. So it's really kind of a nice product to have that you can carry for a long time, because it's not going to get eaten up by mice or anything like that.
Brent Peterson (27:20.691)
Right. Yeah. Okay. So I was in Japan last year and the Starbucks and I shouldn't even use the company name, but they had Yuzu iced tea and it was so awesome. And I've actually gone now on Amazon and ordered some Yuzu concentrate to kind of mix in to try to, you know, flavor my own tea a little bit. Have you had anybody ask for Yuzu infused tea yet?
Matt Hammonds (27:32.532)
man.
Matt Hammonds (27:44.002)
Not that I have heard, no, but I'm have to look into that. I'm looking forward to that.
Brent Peterson (27:47.709)
Yeah.
There's your first, that's your, they're your first request. There you go. Going into the holiday season now, what are you most excited about?
Matt Hammonds (27:54.23)
Perfect.
Matt Hammonds (28:02.582)
honestly for us, holidays are big, but winter overall is bigger. So for us, it's just, once we get into fall, we know, all right, it's, it's go time. Cause for some reason people don't think about icing loose leaf tea in the summer. winter is definitely our busy time. So for us, we usually start prepping in June, July. And so we're, getting ready to, you know, for all the influx and
Got a few new hires that we're going to train up and all that kind of stuff. So really, just, love winter all together because it's a fun time. know, customers are more interested in it and just really get to connect with more and more customers.
Brent Peterson (28:44.221)
And do you see anything from not a technology standpoint, but anything over the Black Friday, Cyber Monday that's gonna swing the needle in terms of more e-commerce now and less retail? And I think too, your business is perfectly situated for e-commerce, right? It's hard to find good tea. It's hard to find a tea store, and then it's hard to find good tea going into any store.
Matt Hammonds (29:12.224)
Yeah, no, exactly. I love our business, our industry and technology wise, as you know, the changes right now are insane with AI, all the things going on, everything's changing. Even in digital advertising landscape, there's a lot of changes. just, I love that what we sell can't be created by technology. You know, it's it's a product that everyone wants, everyone wants to drink and it's not going out of style anytime soon. So we feel really good about that.
And then I honestly think a lot of the technology changes just from a business standpoint coming out can be beneficial. You know, there's a lot of benefits you can use AI for things along those lines, but it's also something that I think every business owner needs to be careful with. Cause with all these changes, inevitably, it's going to shake up some industries and,
So I'm just a little nervous overall for business going into these holidays. You know, there's a lot of economic things going on, but for us personally, we're real stable, have a really good stable customer base. I feel pretty solid about us, but there's definitely a lot of wild cards coming down the pipe for sure.
Brent Peterson (30:23.275)
Last question. We mentioned Lipton and you know, there's Lipton tea bags, but there was is Lipton powdered tea, which I unfortunately as a very small kid got my introduction to iced tea. Is there a premium powdered or premium instant tea coming or on the market? Like there's all kinds of now premium coffee and I think I bought some just to travel with and I
I probably paid like four bucks a cup when you break it down, right? It's like super expensive and jeez, I could actually just leave my hotel room and go down to a coffee shop and order a real... Is there ultra premium powdered tea out there yet or is it coming?
Matt Hammonds (31:03.649)
Yeah.
Matt Hammonds (31:09.098)
so the, the most premium powder tea that I actually drink every day is matcha, which is a powdered green tea. And that to me, it's my, my favorite. drink it all day, every day. and it's just amazing flavor. And yeah, I love it. Cause when we go, even if I don't have a, one of my, you know, bottles or something to mix it, I can throw it in a water bottle, shake it up and, and drink it. And it's a.
Good to take on the go. But as far as other just powdered teas, I've seen some, nothing that to me looks fantastic. So I would stick to matcha for now.
Brent Peterson (31:47.103)
And there you go. Yeah, perfect. I got my introduction to macho like 25 years ago just from some people from Columbia that brought it up and it was great. So, you know, as we close out, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like. Matt, what would you like to plug today?
Matt Hammonds (32:05.302)
I would just basically like, like to plug our website, full of tea company.com. It's a great resource, even if you've never drank tea before. One of the things we really pride ourselves on is having all the information you could possibly need about learning about tea, loose leaf tea herbs. have detailed breakdowns on every herb, every spice, just to get all the history, all the background on everything. so I always just recommend people just, yeah, just check it out, research it.
And if you want to try some out, have samples on everything and see if you might become a tea drinker.
Brent Peterson (32:39.933)
That's awesome. I'll make sure I get those into the show notes as well. Matt Hammons, the Fully Tea Company, thank you so much for being here today.
Matt Hammonds (32:48.002)
Thank you, Brad. I appreciate you having me.