Tazo Tea Company is a tea and

herbal tea Herbal teas, also known as herbal infusions and less commonly called tisanes (UK and US , US also ), are beverages made from the infusion or decoction of herbs, spices, or other plant material in hot water. Oftentimes herb tea, or the plain term ...

blender and distributor founded in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populou ...

. It is now a division of Ekaterra and is based in Kent, Washington.

History

Tazo () Tea was founded in 1994 by Steven Smith. The manufacturing and distribution was maintained by North American Tea & Coffee, a Canadian-based food manufacturing company. Tazo approached then

Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain. As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 ...

CEO Howard Schultz in 1998, seeking further investment partners. The company was purchased by Starbucks in 1999 for $8.1 million. Starbucks opened the first Tazo-branded tea shop in November 2012. It closed a year later and was converted into a Teavana store. In November 2017, Starbucks sold Tazo to

Unilever Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy ...

for $384 million.

Marketing

The company uses "

New Age New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consi ...

"-style marketing and product labeling. For example, every box of tea was once labeled as "blessed by a certified tea

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a Spirit world (Spiritualism), spirit world through Altered state of consciousness, altered states of consciousness, such as tranc ...

" and an original tag line was "The Reincarnation of Tea." Until 2013, the logo used the

Exocet The Exocet () is a French-built anti-ship missile whose various versions can be launched from surface vessels, submarines, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Etymology The missile's name was given by M. Guillot, then the technical directo ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands ...

, slightly modified. For example, the T in Tazo was changed for readability purposes in 2006 by sliding the cross-piece toward the top of the letter.

References

External links

Official Website
{{Starbucks Tea companies of the United States Tea brands in the United States Ekaterra Former Unilever brands Starbucks Food and drink companies established in 1994 American companies established in 1994 Food and drink companies based in Washington (state) Companies based in Kent, Washington 1994 establishments in Oregon 1999 mergers and acquisitions 2017 mergers and acquisitions American subsidiaries of foreign companies

History

Marketing

See also

References

External links