Born in Mississippi and raised in England, Messi Gerami had dreams of working on Wall Street. But when he moved to New York in 2010, he couldn’t find a job in finance. Time was running out, and he needed to find work or leave the country.
After taking a hard look at himself in the mirror, Gerami realized he wasn’t meant to be a cog in a machine. He was born to be an entrepreneur.
Coming from four generations of tea makers, Gerami had always been curious about how to make a naturally sweetened iced tea that was also low in calories.
“My great grandfather, grandfather, and father have been in the tea business,” says Gerami, a WeWork Brooklyn Heights member. “It was a conversation we constantly had at dinner parties.”
Gerami began to explore how to source teas from around the world, finding that places like India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, China, and Chile offered excellent blends. In 2011 he launched Heart of Tea, a line that used real cane sugar and avoided artificial colors and flavors.
Gerami says that he had trouble gaining traction in the beginning. He assumed his teas would mostly appeal to women, but later realized that men made up the majority of his customers.
Another hurdle was that in New York, stores were small and shelf space was limited. Many retailers didn’t have room for a niche brand like Heart of Tea.
That’s when Gerami decided to take his artisanal tea door to door.
“Distributors weren’t touching us because they thought we were another iced tea store,” Gerami says. “So I got a van and went around selling tea in SoHo.”
After hitting 120 stores, his brand started getting noticed.
“People could taste the difference,” Gerami says.
The startup’s teas began popping up in stores across the tri-state area, then spread out to almost 20 states. High-end specialty grocers, including Whole Foods and Fairway Market, carried his company’s four distinctive brews: classic, lemon, peach, and pomegranate orange.
“We’re not competing with Snapple and Honest Tea,” Gerami says. “We have a higher-end market, so Argo Tea and Harney & Sons are our competitors.”
He admits making mistakes over the first several years, including trying to increase his distribution too quickly.
“Over the five years, I made a lot of decisions because I was hungry to grow and build a business,” Gerami says. “In 2014, we grew to the West Coast. We got too ambitious and that backfired. In 2015, we cut back and focused on main markets and a few key cities.”
Through one devoted customer, Gerami was introduced to a beverage distributor that supplied to the Facebook offices in New York. Before he knew it, he was also shipping tea to the company’s corporate headquarters in California.
“You’ve got to stay loyal to the people who believe in you,” Gerami says.
Photos: Lauren Kallen