A Pure Cup Of Tea, Important Cause And Cool Factor: Direct-To-Consumer Brand Bon Temps Launches With Starbucks In Its Sights

Starbucks tried to develop a major tea brand with Teavana and failed. Now, new tea company Bon Temps wants to pick up where Teavana left off and right its wrongs.

“I’m looking at us as a future competitor for Starbucks,” says Ali Ogston, who founded Toronto-based Bon Temps with William Yin. “A model like Starbucks and some of these other retail café brands, they’re not doing enough to speak to the changing needs of the consumers, especially female consumers. We are looking at how can we create a space where women can work, play and celebrate, and wind down in retail doors in a way that’s just not possible at a café like Starbucks today.”

Bon Temps, which means “good time” in French, isn’t starting with 379 locations, the amount Teavana reached before collapsing last year, but is instead launching online with eight organic teas, plans to establish a café within 15 months and a budding digital community. Interwoven into its business apparatus is a heavy focus on female empowerment that manifests in $1,000 investments it doles out to at least three inspiring women quarterly.

Bon Temps
Bon Temps is launching with eight organic tea blends: Its tea blends are black, white, mint green, green, ginger, chai, chamomile and pu’erh.

“The essence of the brand is all about encouraging people to spend time well. To us, spending time well means doing things you love to do, and pursuing your passions, connections and experiences,” says Yin. “We really wanted to create a brand that encourages and supports women because a lot of the women we talk to don’t feel they have the support to really dive into their ambitions to the extent they could.”

“I’m looking at us as a future competitor for Starbucks. A model like Starbucks and some of these other retail café brands, they’re not doing enough to speak to the changing needs of the consumers, especially female consumers.”

Bon Temps enters a tea category Ogston and Yin view as divided into three segments: sugar- and artificial ingredient-laden offerings, crunchy options and tired mass-market goods from the likes of Lipton and Tetley. They argue millennial preferences aren’t being catered to by brands in each of the segments, but, in the mass market in particular, they find the teas dull for consumers accustomed to buying Warby Parker glasses, Glossier skincare and Casper mattresses.

“We are trying to focus on the mass-market female consumer. We’re not trying to target the person always looking to discover wacky new tea flavors or the person who is extremely health-oriented and only buys at Whole Foods,” says Ogston. “Because of the cultural shift that’s happening, a lot of millennials aren’t grabbing Tetley and Lipton at the grocery store. Those brands aren’t really resonating.”

Bon Temps
Bon Temps is aimed at millennial consumers. Its founders William Yin and Ali Ogston believe that established tea offerings don’t cater to millennial preferences.

She continues that one reason for the lack of resonance is legacy brands don’t have a pedigree with pure ingredients. Bon Temps depends on 100% organic ingredients in corn fiber sachets rather than bleached paper sachets. It’s kicking off with hot teas, but Ogston and Yin foresee it becoming a wide-ranging tea property. Bon Temps could branch into champagne teas, sparkling teas, cannabis teas and more. The idea is to invite women to incorporate Bon Temps into their routines from morning to night.

“The essence of the brand is all about encouraging people to spend time well. To us, spending time well means doing things you love to do, and pursuing your passions, connections and experiences.”

At the outset, Bon Temps is consciously not bombarding consumers with too many choices. Its tea blends are black, white, mint green, green, ginger, chai, chamomile and pu’erh. A box of 20 sachets is $16, and a three pack with 60 sachets, anticipated to be the leading e-commerce purchase, is $48. “I certainly don’t want to be standing and sniffing different blends before I can figure out which tea to buy. I want to easily find something amazing,” says Ogston. “You don’t need to overcomplicate something like tea. It just needs to be fantastic and taste great.”

Ogston and Yin met in 2015 at the accelerator NEXT Canada, where she was perfecting the design studio AVO Solutions and he was tweaking Scent Trunk, a fragrance company that was acquired by Perfumer’s Apprentice. In April, they began collaborating on Bon Temps. They’ve poured $150,000 to bring the concept to life, and their goal for Bon Temps’ first-year sales is $1.5 million.

Bon Temps
A box of 20 Bon Temps tea sachets is $16, and a three pack with 60 sachets, anticipated to the leading e-commerce purchase, is $48.

To forge relationships with customers, Ogston and Yin are highly aware Bon Temps has to deliver superior products and social impact they relate to. Ogston says, “Consumers are super smart these days, and they have a BS meter like no other. They are really prepared to snub any brand that isn’t doing something built off an honest foundation. We are really trying to keep in mind that we don’t want it to sound like we are over the top and not authentic. This is rooted in our values and beliefs.” Yin adds, “We laying a foundation that we can build a generational brand on top of, not just something that we are going to explode out of the gates.”