-Next on "Start Up," we head to Savannah, Georgia, to meet up with Lou Thomann and Lori Judge, the founders of Yaupon Tea Company, a business that's on a mission to share the health benefits of Yaupon with the world.
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♪♪ ♪♪ -My name is Gary Bredow.
I'm a documentary filmmaker and an entrepreneur.
As the country focuses on recovery, small business owners everywhere are still fighting to keep their dream alive.
So, we set out to talk to a wide range of diverse business owners to better understand how they've learned to adapt, innovate, and even completely reinvent themselves in this ever-changing world.
♪♪ This is "Start Up."
♪♪ Yaupon holly is a tree native to the Southeastern United States.
Its leaves were used for thousands of years by native tribes as a stimulating beverage, medicinal plant, and ceremonial drink.
Amongst the most sacred of our native medicinal plants, it is the only indigenous source of caffeine in North America.
Yaupon is also in the same Ilex family as yerba maté and guayusa, both sacred plants of South America.
Today, I'm heading to Savannah, Georgia, to meet up with Lou Thomann and Lori Judge, the founders of the Yaupon Tea Company.
From what I know, Lou and Lori are creating a variety of yaupon products in hopes of making yaupon a household name.
I'm excited to meet them and learn more about this fascinating plant.
♪♪ ♪♪ This is the mighty yaupon tree.
Is it a tree or a plant?
-It's a tree.
It grows probably 25 to 30 feet in the wild.
-Oh, wow.
-But because landscapers have realized it's such a durable native plant, they've created cultivars.
And you can use them as a hedge, and they're very easy to shape.
And again, because they are drought-resistant, pest-resistant, and they grow for so long, it's a great hedge plant, hedgerow plant.
-Is part of the plan with this to be able to sell people in appropriate, you know, climates their own yaupon tree?
-Yeah, yeah.
We want people to start growing it.
So what we're trying to do here is demonstrate its ability to be a row crop.
-Yeah.
I get it.
-You can see all these fine leaves.
That's a fair amount of tea on this one leaf, on this one tree.
-And then what's the process after you just pulled it off right now?
You got to dry it?
-So, if you're at home and want to do this, want to make tea for tonight or cold tea for today, you take these, you put them in the oven.
-Mm-hmm.
-220 to 250 for 15 to 25 minutes.
Nice, golden brown.
It smells beautiful.
And then you have your leaves ready and then you can crunch them up, put them in an infuser, and make your tea.
-And ideally, someday, I guess one of the big goals would be this is a viable crop for a farm or farmer to look at and say, "Okay, we have soy, you know, we have corn, we have yaupon."
-Right, and if you want to farm it and I say I want the yaupon with the highest caffeine, because of this experiment, I can show you how to do that.
-Ah, okay.
-If I say I want you to be the yaupon farmer who produces the highest amount of theobromine, I can tell you how to do that because we've been practicing all these different techniques on the plant.
If you want bigger leaves and other compounds to be accentuated, you can do a shade protocol.
These are different shades, and if you'll follow me onto this, this is -- -It changes the makeup of the compound, whether -- based on the sunlight?
-It does, and also, look at the size of the leaves.
You get bigger leaves here.
-Wow.
It's fascinating, man.
-So, typically in the full sun, the theobromine's higher.
There are other fertilizations you can do to enhance it, but in the shade, the caffeine seems to be higher.
-You're having a blast with this stuff, aren't you?
-Yeah, it's fun.
[ Both laugh ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -What is Yaupon Teahouse and Apothecary?
-Yaupon Teahouse and Apothecary is a store all about yaupon.
So, our purpose is to educate the public about yaupon and also bring yaupon to the modern contemporary life in all of its different forms.
-Talk about working with a spouse.
-Well, you know, Lou's my best friend, and we work really well together.
I think he's a little bit more patient than I am.
[ Both laugh ] -Okay, that's good.
-Yeah, it's just been great.
We just -- we've always worked together in some capacity.
-This isn't a new thing.
-It's not a new thing, no.
-Can you give me a CliffsNotes version of the history of this plant?
-I consider it to have been the most sacred plant in North America... -Okay.
-...for thousands of years among the indigenous people.
It was used ubiquitously amongst the tribes in the Southeast.
All the names, accolades given to it, like "big medicine," like  asi,  the purifier, which was the Creek name.
They called it the beloved tree, which in native culture, that's as high an accolade as you can get, so... And its traditional medicinal value was just so important.
It was used for things that -- this is part of our mission, is to understand better what the traditional medicinal uses were.
We know medicine men smoked it.
It was used to calm nerves.
It was also a social drink.
You know, in the Southeast, it was a medicinal plant that was used for everything.
So I think that was why it was important.
-Tell me about your first experience with yaupon.
-We had a family trip to a barrier island off of Savannah called Ossabaw.
And Ossabaw, by the way, means "land where the yaupon grows" in the original tongue of the native tribe.
-Wow.
-The Guale tribe that used to be there.
And so, we're on the island.
It was hosted.
We're eating well and just having a grand old time, and a gentleman by the name of John "Crawfish" Crawford said, "This is the yaupon tree.
This is what the Native Americans called big medicine and  asi  the purifier."
And he started talking about it, and I immediately knew my life had changed.
He was telling us about being the only native source of caffeine in North America, some of the traditional medicinal uses, some of the history, and I was just awestruck.
And I just said, "Let's make some."
First thing, let's just drink it.
-I want to try this stuff.
-Yeah, so we did.
And I must admit, we were imbibing in other drinks, like bourbon, and it was just a fun time.
But I felt the yaupon over the bourbon.
I said, "Wow, there's something to this drink, if I can still feel it."
-Yeah.
-There's something to it.
So, once that weekend was over, when I went back to the mainland, I started going into research mode.
And I'm like a bulldog when it comes to that.
I love research.
-You dive in.
-I started learning more and more about the plant, the story, the Native American use, the early colonial periods use, and I said, "My gosh, this is an American treasure.
This is a treasure that's been forgotten.
So, let me see what I can do with it."
So, gradually I started, you know, going to the woods, picking leaves, roasting them, trying different methods, giving it away, talking about it, educating.
I just found myself very passionate about this plant.
-He's been investigating this plant.
He's Yaupon Lou.
He knows more about it than anybody.
It was a lot of kitchen, you know, testing, roasting.
We have some really funny stories.
One day, I walked into the kitchen and Lou had tea bags and he had my flat iron.
And he was -- [ Laughing ] He was, you know, closing up the tea bags of my flat iron.
I said, "What are you doing?!"
He said, "Oh, I'm closing the tea bags."
-Did it work?
-It worked.
And then, yeah, and then he had our nice sheets on the driveway and he's roasting leaves by the sun.
[ Laughing ] So, there was a lot of trial and error and testing.
And, you know, our friends became guinea pigs and our tenants, our neighbors.
"Here, try this.
What do you think?"
-At what point did it turn from a research or experimental thing into this could be possibly a business?
-Yeah, I think it was just, you know, seeing just like customer feedback that was like, wow, this, this is needed in our -- you know, there isn't anything like this on the market.
So, it was, you know, that posed a challenge because there's a lot of education, you know, because people are like, "What is yaupon?"
You know, teaching the benefits, the healthy benefits and just, you know, that's just been the biggest hurdle.
And it's not super easy to cultivate or pick or harvest.
-Oh, wow.
-So, there's a lot of challenges to it.
Lou loves a challenge.
We love a challenge.
So I think, you know, with this space, we own this building and we said, "Hey, let's just try it and see, you know, what customers and what the public thinks about it."
So, it was really just -- kind of been organic and trial and error.
♪♪ -You knew that your life had changed, right?
That's your aha moment.
And what was the first step in taking this -- this feeling and turning it into action?
-Well, it was a process, and I've been at it 13 years.
For me, it was trying to understand the plant, trying to understand the process.
And I saw a pretty big-picture supply chain challenge.
If the masses are gonna do it, there has to be a supply chain, and it's a wild crop.
So at that time, there was no supply chain.
So, other than understanding the plant and diving into the science of the plant, a big part of the mission was to formulate a model so we can create a scalable supply chain.
The first thing we did is we applied for a grant, a USDA grant -- -Okay.
-...called a Small Business Innovation Research grant, which was to help understand the science and to try to create an industry.
What you're looking at here, these are yaupon plants that were propagated from the wild.
It's only about 15 acres, but this is really the science project.
So, with that grant, number one, it gave us some credibility in the science world.
Wow, if you get a grant, there must be something to it.
So, that really helped with the business model of getting people's attention.
So, the farming side of it, we think, is a possible new industry.
It's a native plant.
It's heat-resistant, drought-resistant, pest-resistant.
It's just a beautiful plant to grow.
-They don't typically give those research grants out.
Very rarely, right?
-It took us three years of writing the grant to get it, so I was -- but I stuck with it.
So, we're actually right now on what they call a Phase II SBIR grant, which is just taking the Phase I, which is a feasibility study, and Phase II is sort of taking all that data and science and putting it over a two-year crop cycle so you can have that data to teach other farmers how to grow it.
So, part of the business plan was to grow it, learn how to grow it, what it likes, how to improve the phytochemistry naturally and organically.
So, part of the business model was develop protocols for growing it so we can get other organic farmers to grow and hopefully be a supply chain that can lead to us, too.
-How do you even start?
How do you even begin to, I guess, educate a market on something they've never heard of?
-It's just by, you know, "Try this.
Taste it.
Have you heard about this?"
We're so excited about it, and I think people get excited when they learn about something new.
-Sure.
-And it's local.
It's sustainable.
It's not coming from overseas.
So, you know, people love the story.
It has a great history with the Native Americans, and it's, you know, native to North America.
So, everybody is really, you know, interested in trying something that's local and that's here.
-Social media?
-Social media.
Yeah, we use social media.
Well, during the pandemic, you know, we didn't have the customers coming into the store.
So we started going to our farmers' market, which we always wanted to do, but didn't have the staff or the bandwidth, really, at the time.
So, the pandemic was great for us, in the fact that we were able to start doing the farmers' markets.
And so we were able to tap into another group of people in Savannah that hadn't seen us or been to our shop or heard of us and said, "Oh, I haven't been there yet.
I'm so glad you're here at the farmers' market."
♪♪ ♪♪ -Start by telling us who you are and what you do here at Yaupon.
-So, my name is Hannah, and I manage the tea shop here.
So I'm in charge of all the daily operations and educating customers about what products we sell and the story of yaupon.
-How are customers responding to yaupon so far?
-Oh, they love yaupon.
We've got, like, two different big crowds of people that consume the yaupon.
So, we've got, like, the big farmers' market group that's always visiting us on Saturdays, always picking up their teas.
We've got these ready-to-drink cold cans of our tea that people love because they are caffeinated.
So, a little healthy boost for your morning.
-Sure.
-And then we also have the people that come in that want skincare.
So, a lot of people that are looking for a more clean alternative to what they're putting on their faces.
-Could we try some tea?
-Yeah, of course.
-Alright, so, what is it you're pouring right now?
-So, this is a mix of yaupon and cacao.
Yaupon and cacao were traditionally traded for one another and oftentimes mixed as sort of a friendship beverage.
So, this is our whole-leaf yaupon with cacao.
So, it's sort of like a healthy hot chocolate.
-Like hot chocolate?
Yeah.
-Yeah.
-Okay.
-Yeah.
♪♪ ♪♪ -Where's the profit with this?
Is it in selling the tea to, you know, major chain teahouses, to grocery stores?
Is it tea leaves or is it skin care products?
Is it all of the above?
And have you set a focus on what you want to do?
It's kind of like the Wild West.
It's an interesting subject 'cause I don't know if we've ever featured something brand-new like this that's being brought to market.
Not brand-new -- with thousands of years of history, but new to us.
-It was the next best thing in 800 A.D. [ Laughs ] -Right.
-The teahouse was really a way to showcase.
Yaupon is such an amazing plant.
It has such a complex phytochemistry that it lends itself to all kinds of products and traditional medicinal uses.
So, the grant and the research on the chemistry of the plant that we're doing has validated all of the traditional medicinal uses that the Native Americans use it for.
So, I might appear to be a little scattered with the different product, but we want to showcase the variability, the benefits of this plant in its many forms.
So, yaupon, the compounds in yaupon are known to be anticarcinogenic, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, a neuroprotective.
We have all these great benefits in the phytochemistry of the plant.
And it's also rich in saponins, or saponins, and Native Americans used it for wound care.
It's also antibacterial.
-Ah.
-So, saponins, the root word, Latin  sapon  -- "soap."
So, it was used as a soap and as a wound care.
So, we're building on that, and that's a new sort of focus of study among some of the most innovative skincare product companies.
They're looking at saponins.
It does amazing things for the skin.
And the caffeine is also good for the skin, which I never realized.
-Making statements or scientific claims usually has to be supported by data.
How much data do you have on the -- I guess, the efficacy, the antioxidants and anti-aging properties, things like that?
Where are you with that stuff?
-Through the SBIR Phase I and Phase II grants, we have very good documentation on the compounds, the chemistry of the plant, particularly in this setting.
-Based on those compounds, they can sort of deduce.
-Right, so we're not making any claims.
-Got it.
-But I think typically what people say is based on the compounds present in the plant, they are known to do this.
♪♪ ♪♪ -I wake up in the morning and I'm ready to get my yaupon.
-Yes.
-Get it?
That was terrible.
-[ Laughs ] -My yaupon on, right?
What's my process?
I start by cleaning my skin with this?
-Yes, you would start with the cleanser, our yaupon cleanser.
It cleanses the skin -- or the cell, and it keeps the cell hydrated.
All yaupon's full of antioxidants.
-Awesome.
And then I move on to what?
-Then you move on to your -- well, I would start with the yaupon toner.
-Okay.
-And this is to, you know, help shrink your pores, balance, hydrate.
-Okay.
-And then I would finish off with our daily facial oil.
-What is your top seller here?
What do people love?
-People love our daily facial oil.
-Have you heard any positive feedback about any properties, anti-aging things?
-Yes.
-And I know you can't really say anything definitive or scientifically about, you know, without like deep testing and stuff, right?
-Right.
-But what have people just said?
-Well, one of our customers, the husband said, "Honey, have you been using Botox, getting Botox?"
And she said, "No, I've been using yaupon daily facial oil."
So, that's a pretty good customer testimonial.
-Yeah.
Not bad.
♪♪ ♪♪ How's it going so far?
Like, how long has this retail spot been open?
-We opened in April of 2019.
-So you had a good 11 -- 10, 11 months -- -Yeah.
-...prior to the pandemic to kind of see how things were going.
-Yeah, and it just kept going up and up and up.
So it was great, yeah.
-That's fantastic.
That's what I was going to ask you, is how are things actually going from a sales standpoint?
Like, month over month, you've grown?
-Yes.
Well, I guess in '19.
-2020 is -- -We don't count '20, because it's an anomaly.
-I know, you can't.
It is.
-Yeah.
-So, once... Well, this year, it started a little slow with the -- you know, everybody was still trying to -- -Kind of put their toe in the water a little.
-Yeah, yeah.
And Savannah is a tourist destination.
So, you know, we do get a lot of tourists that walk in.
And so we're seeing that tourism is back.
And yeah, the sales have definitely increased.
And we're doing farmers' market on the weekends, as well as the tea shop is open.
And now we have a great online platform that we didn't really have before.
-Have online sales begun to surpass sort of in-person retail?
-Not, not yet.
-Okay.
-We're still working on our digital strategy.
We had a  Vogue  mention with our skincare in December and we saw the sales just shoot up drastically.
We basically did in a day what we would do in three months.
-Oh, that's awesome.
-Yeah, so it was really great.
-Are you profitable yet?
-No.
-How far off do you think that is?
-We're close.
Break-even is within -- on the horizon.
-You can see it.
-Yeah.
-What's it like working with a spouse?
-Well, she's always supported it.
Now, Lori is an herbalist, and she's growing in her herbalist knowledge every day, and she's very serious about it.
So, she's really supported this because she understands it innately.
Sure, we've had our challenges, our arguments.
Being self-funded, the money is always kind of like, when's this gonna start becoming profitable?
-Yeah.
-So, we have the typical, you know, anxiety any, you know, young ma-and-pa shop would kind of trying to break into the big world, the big leagues.
But for the most part, it's been great.
It's been -- It's been good.
-What's your goal, long term?
Where do you want to see this in five years?
-Hey, it's still a journey, so I don't really know where I want it.
I want more and more customers to understand the plant, appreciate it, and enjoy our products.
-Household name?
-Yeah, and I think it can be there.
I think it can get there.
-For another person out there that may be thinking about introducing something new to the market, any advice to them, mistakes that they can learn from?
-Wow.
We made every mistake in the book.
Mistakes are good.
[ Chuckles ] -Mistakes are fantastic -As long as they're not too costly, but you do learn a lot.
Focusing more on the task at hand sometimes, not getting spread too thin.
-Mm-hmm.
-Focusing.
-One thing at a time?
-Yeah, one thing at a time.
Just build and build and build.
But stay with it.
I mean, if it's your passion and you love it and you can make a good product and there's a need for it and you can present a value proposition to your customer base, there's no reason you can't succeed, even if it's just little by little.
-Lou and Lori are truly fascinating people that seem to put 100% of themselves into everything they do, and their dedication to educating people on the history and benefits of yaupon is incredibly inspiring.
And if this story were only about yaupon, I think it would be enough.
But to me, this is about so much more.
It's about building your best life, focusing first on the things that are personally rewarding and not just profitable.
Now, don't get me wrong, not everyone has the financial independence to go all in on a dream -- not without substantial financial backing.
But that's certainly no reason to put it off.
This is a long game that you can start at any time.
So, like Lou did, look within yourself, find that thing that you love, and reverse engineer it.
Instead of mindlessly scrolling through social media, dive into the research and learn everything you can about that thing that you love.
Connect with like-minded people, and you might be surprised at what submerging yourself in a subject can do.
Lou and Lori may have been established prior to starting the Yaupon Tea Company, but they have a lot of skin in the game, and sometimes that drive and determination can be more valuable than all the financing in the world.
So, you have to ask yourself if you love what you do, and more importantly, why you're doing it.
The answers to those questions just might unlock a life of true fulfillment, the kind that money can't buy.
For more information, visit our website and search Episodes for the Yaupon Tea Company.
♪♪ Next time on "Start Up," we head to Wilmington, North Carolina, to meet up with Amy and Ben Wright, the founder of Bitty & Beau's Coffee, a business that employs people with disabilities, providing the community not only with great coffee, but also a meaningful experience.
Be sure to join us next time on "Start Up."
Would you like to learn more about the show or maybe nominate a business?
Visit our website at StartUp-USA.com and connect with us on social media.
♪♪ -♪ We got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us  ♪ Got a long road ahead of us  ♪ Before we pay our dues  ♪ We got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us  ♪ A long road ahead of us  ♪ Before we pay our dues  ♪♪ ♪♪ -Spectrum Business partners with small businesses across the country to help them achieve their goals.
With high-speed Internet, phone, TV, and mobile services, Spectrum Business provides the tools to keep you connected with your customers.
Spectrum Business -- No nonsense.
Just business.
♪♪ ♪♪ -Vistaprint -- a proud sponsor of "Start Up" and small businesses everywhere.