Tea Chest

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The Tea Chest opened in 1995 as a distributor and catalog retailer of fine teas and accessories. Only a few hard core "Leaf Lovers" were interested in procuring finer tea. To spread the gospel of the leaf, Byron and Satomi Goo took their business to craft fairs, trade shows and any venue that would allow them to set up a booth and preach about good tea. "This gave us the opportunity to get to know our customers and what they were looking for, " said Byron. "It also gave us the chance to teach anyone interested what to look and taste for in fine teas. More people were interested in iced tea rather than hot tea. At that time there was very little differentiation in the market. Fresh brewed tea was dark, brisk and hard to drink with-out sugar. We saw an opportunity to make a better iced tea. It has always been our aim to create flavors that are distinctively Hawaii ; tastes people grow up with in the islands. It took eight months to perfect our Passionfruit iced tea. After seven years, this tea is still one of our top sellers. We soon expanded our flavored offering to include other local favorites like Mango, Strawberry Guava and 'Ohelo Berry. This grew into our Island Essence Tea Collection.