Regenerative agriculture is a holistic farming practice that starts with the soil. Rooted in restoring soil health, regenerative agriculture uses do-no-harm farming techniques to improve the land, return carbon to the earth, and improve biodiversity. At Teatulia we have used regenerative agriculture practices for over twenty years to restore acres of land that were barren and stripped from rock lifting and grow delicious tea.

But how exactly does regenerative agriculture work? Regenerative agriculture transforms a landscape by transforming the soil. Soil is the root cause (no pun intended!) of a delicious, nutritious harvest or lack thereof, we’re looking at you tasteless grocery store tomatoes.

Through do-no-harm farming techniques, intentional plant diversity, and a closed carbon cycle the soil comes back to life, and regenerative agriculture cycles on.

1. Do-No-Harm Farming

You heard that right. Reduced or no tilling, crop rotation, compost, and grazing methods are all do-no-harm farming techniques. Because we choose not to till, the soil stays put. Tilling disrupts the structure of the soil, increasing the chances of erosion and soil runoff. Instead, we practice the Masanobu Fukuoka method which uses no unnatural irrigation, pesticides, or machinery and strives to be in harmony with nature. We also use local cow dung and compost as a natural and organic fertilizer.

1. Intentional Plant Diversity

The goal of intentional plant diversity in agriculture is to simulate an ecosystem. In our garden, we plant neem trees, lemongrass, and other herbs to mimic the canopy of a forest. This variety of plants attracts a variety of insects and animals, just like the ecosystem. This intentional biodiversity enriches the condition of the soil by allowing living roots to grow in the soil all year. This aerates the soil and helps lock more carbon into the soil, where it belongs.

1. Closed carbon cycle

As we mentioned above, common factory farming methods disrupt and degrade the soil. An unintended consequence of this is the release of carbon into the air. Through photosynthesis, plants take CO2 from the air and convert it into carbohydrates or simple sugars. These carbohydrates are consumed by microorganisms and stored in the soil, thus transporting carbon from the air into the ground. Every spring, instead of plowing the ground and stirring the carbon pot, we leave the soil and groundcover plants be to close the carbon loop. Reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is a crucial step in fighting climate change.

Each of these elements ultimately leads to healthier soil. Healthy soil leads to an improved landscape and a better-tasting harvest. Regenerative agriculture highlights the key elements of finding strength in diversity: of plants, of microorganisms and of farming techniques. This cyclical practice has the power to transform the planet. Our garden is a living example that we can reverse the damages of climate change with the implementation of regenerative agriculture.

The Contenders:

Vanilla Rooibos Latte

You know at Teatulia, we’re all about transparency. So let’s walk through what we put in our Hibiscus Berry and why each ingredient is so special.

Hibiscus is a widely known large showy tropical flower loved for its bold color and ornate petals. Hibiscus is commonly used in food and beverage, most commonly as a tea, and has a distinctive tart taste. We love using hibiscus because it's loaded with vitamin C, which is known to boost your immune system and help fight off infection.

Rosehips are the accessory fruit grown on the rose plant. Like hibiscus, Rosehips are tart and tangy with a slightly floral taste. Another similarity to hibiscus, rosehips are chock full of vitamin C, making it an excellent choice to support a healthy immune system. Rosehips are also used to treat stomach ailments and lower inflammation.

Stevia is a natural sweetener made from the stevia plant. Stevia is about 200 times sweeter than standard cane sugar, so very little is needed. While most of our teas are unsweetened, we use organic stevia in our Hibiscus Berry tea to balance out the naturally tart hibiscus and rosehips to create a perfectly smooth herbal tea.

Molly: Hey, everyone. We're back with another Founder's Friday. My name is Molly Waller, and I'm the Senior Marketing Manager at Teatulia, joined by my partner in crime, Elsa Meyners, our Associate Marketing Manager. And today, we are sitting down with our last founder, Dr. Kazi Anis Ahmed, or better known to us as Anis. Welcome, Anis! We really appreciate you taking the time out of your evening to come chat with us.

Anis: Absolutely. My pleasure

Molly: Awesome. So we would love to kick things off by having you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you went to school. How did you get involved in the Teatulia project?

Anis: Ah, okay. I grew up in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I finished high school from here, and my brother and I always wanted to study in America for college. So when college time came, we scanned all these colleges, and super nerds that we were, we actually got really smitten with the idea of a liberal arts education, which doesn't really exist in this part of the world, or in England, where a lot of people go from here. The education is so much more narrow and specialized. But this idea that you could study across so many different fields and subjects was enthralling to us. Then as we kept researching these universities, it turned out Brown University had the most liberal of liberal arts programs, so that became our first choice, and we were lucky enough to, both of us, get into that. (This is my older brother Nabil, who is only 11 months older than me.) We were in the same year in school, so when the time came to go to college, we weren't actually planning to go to the same school, but happenstance made the same school our top choice, and we both got in, and we both went there. (laughs)

So that was the education part. We both came back home after education and worked a year in news media that was owned by our family at the time. Nabil stayed on. Much later, he went for a Master's to the London School of Economics, but at that time, I was so keen on becoming a writer that the work-life didn't appeal to me, and I just basically fled. I went back to the US to a writing program in St. Louis, Washington University, and I went there because they gave me a full ride. And once I finished that, I loved literature, I loved writing, so I wanted to stay with that, so I went on to do a Ph.D., of all things in comparative literature. And that was from NYU, and I partly chose NYU because it's in New York and what a chance to live in New York. And what an experience it was. So once I finished all my extended and extensive studies, I came back home, and my family, as you guys know, already owned this family business, which was diverse, quite diverse, and into different things. At that time, we were also branching into a lot of new areas as well, my father was heavily investing in new areas, and he was very keen for me and my younger brother to join the business. Nabil was already in it. And at that point, I kind of really felt like that, you know, I've so far been free to do my own thing, I've had fun, I did what I wanted to do, but I also had a real sense of obligation to my family and to the country where I come from. I felt this would be a great way to give back, so that's why I came back after my Ph.D. in January 2004, that I joined the family business. One of the projects that I joined from the getgo was our Teatulia Tea Garden, and initially, at that time, we didn't have a brand or consumer brand. It was just a tea garden, and I started work at that. As well as a non-profit, the first liberal arts college in Bangladesh that we founded as a non-profit project, I was involved with that as well. And that was the start.

Molly: Awesome.

Elsa: Cool, how did your father's story with the garden begin?

Anis: That's quite interesting, actually. It's an organic garden, and our company overall has also evolved organically. Because my father by training is an engineer and he studied on army scholarships, he got drafted in the army and spent a good chunk of his early career in the army, retired as a Lt. Colonel, helped found the Bangladesh military academy. But at the age of 39, he decided he felt that what he really wanted to do is his own thing. So he resigned from the army and started a company, and it was an engineering company because that was his training and his area of expertise. But 20 years on, that was in 1979...by 2000, he had met with enough success, with mainly his engineering, but also a couple of other businesses, that he wanted to invest more heavily in Bangladesh. He felt that was the best way to give back to the country and create more employment. And now one of our engineering units, which produces spun prestressed concrete poles for electrification, was located in this northernmost district of Bangladesh called Panchagarh. And a subdistrict of that, the very northern sub-district of Bangladesh, is called Tetulia. And it's so far up north in Bangladesh that you can, on clear days, see not only hills in India, but on really clear days you can see the Himalayas up in Nepal. That's how far north it is. And it was a remote area and among the tourist districts in Bangladesh, not very industrialized. And he felt, 'You know what? I've had a lot of success with this engineering unit in this area, and this is the kind of place that needs investment.' So he went on to build a jute mill there, jute being natural fiber that's usually used for making carpets or sacks, especially for agrarian product storage. He did that, and he felt that you know what, this area is suitable for a tea garden, and no one has made a tea garden here yet. Right across the border, there were tea gardens in India but not one in Bangladesh. So that's when the idea first came to him, from a desire to reinvest in an area that had been good for his business that was very much in need of investment. And that's how the idea of a tea garden came. The organic component came actually from more of a personal side because at that time, my mother, for health reasons, was really exploring all kinds of alternative life choices very deeply, from meditation to reiki to eating vegetarian. And in the process, she discovered organic, and I had kind of been exposed to that living in America, so in the house and the family, these are things we talked about. And I think collectively, we all felt ‘hey we are trying to do something new, and something that really gives back to people or society. So we are going to invest and make this garden up north, which will hopefully be beautiful, and it will create a lot of jobs, but why not make it organic?’ There are no organic gardens or farms of any kind in Bangladesh. They're rare. Some people did it, but it was informally, or even when it was done on a large scale in some cases, they were not internationally certified or certified in any way. But some people did do it; some people did try it, some had great success, they had done some work on scale, but not in tea. So we were the first organic tea garden from that area, and once we got into organic, we actually went far beyond organic, because the more we learned, whether it's the theories of somebody like Masobou Fukuoka, or also other teachers, other examples from around the world, we really felt that meeting the mere certification requirements of organic, while that itself is amazing and not easy and we think a great thing to do, very beneficial for nature and for the people who will work with the products or consume them, there was a lot more we could do. And what we went into was sort of a deep form of sustainability and regeneration. That's basically regenerative farming and eco-restoration, and it has been an amazing journey.

Molly: That it has. What's the biggest struggle that you've seen with this business, or what is kind of that mantra you guys live by?

Anis: Success didn't come easily or overnight. Partly because of the nature of the product, a tea plant takes seven years to come into maturity and give its full potential yield. You can start plucking around when it's 4 or 5 years old, but you need to be careful you don't want to damage the tea. Tea plants grow through its eventual desired shape, so when we were buying land and started to plant, you know, a lot of businesses you can launch the business and sometimes from day one or month one or simply within months of launching you have revenue and sometimes full capacity revenue or strong revenue. In a lot of cases, of course, most people don't break even in the first year or even in the first few years, but there's always revenue. But in this case, there was going to be no revenue for the first five years. We started planting in 2000, and we went into the auction, which is where all tea is traditionally sold in Bangladesh, for the first time in February 2004. That was my very first project for the group and the family, I'd just come back in January, and my father, who really believes in a sink-or-swim approach to training, told me we are going to go to auction with this tea. Take it to auction. So I started working with the team, went down to Chittagong, where the auction is, trying to figure out all the things you need to do. Make a nice fancy lunch of it, and one of the great tea masters of Bangladesh, who has now passed away, Mr. Nassam, who lived in Chittagong and who introduced our tea to the market, he said, 'You know, for a long time we've become accustomed in Bangladesh to drinking kind of low-end beer. It's great to get the taste of champagne.' That was his judgment on our first cup! On day one, when Bangladeshi teas were averaging about 80 takas a kilogram, which is maybe about a dollar, a dollar 10 cents, our first sale clocked in around 600 takas, and to this day, we have been the most prized tea in the Bangladesh auction but eventually when we made our own brand and then the international brand, of course, those teas go directly from the garden to the brand, to the package, packets that we have.

So, our big challenge was that initially, there was no revenue and the land itself was not easy to acquire because Bangladesh is a very, very congested country. So, a lot of times, there's a lot of spats and disputes. You know you buy the land from a family, and then you discover there are two brothers who can get paid, two of them had come and taken the money and gone, and now you have to settle it with these two. So there was a lot of heartache like that, but that's all power for the course here and at his point since it's so much more mature here those kinds of issues have settled and also initially we were not getting a lot of response from international buyers. That took a long time. And that's partly why we thought of launching our own brand. And ironically enough, once our own brand was out there on the market, some very top end buyers from Japan, Germany, certainly from the US or elsewhere approached us and were willing to pay us the kind of price that we wanted because we felt we should be valued on par with the best organic teas in the world. Whereas we were initially being offered a very low price because initially, Bangladeshi tea at that time did not have that kind of marquee value in the tea world.

So if you ask for a mantra: persistence. Resilience and persistence. The tea business, certainly at the garden level but possibly even at the branding level, is probably not for people who want to see revenues right away or have big fat margins right away. It's a business that you have to have a little passion for the product or the project and the stamina financially and otherwise to go a while before things start paying off.

Elsa: Thank you, Anis. Can you tell us how you decided to develop the cattle lending program and what drove the process?

Anis: Once again, that was one of those things that organically came about from responding to direct needs, or we were doing one thing, and then something else becomes apparent, or obvious or is a challenge that needs solving, and in this case, the challenge was that there were no organic, no certified organic players in Bangladesh, there was no acceptable organic fertilizer that we could just buy off the market, and also our own philosophy was such that we wanted to make it our own as much as possible, a very sort of self-sufficient, self-contained process, so we needed a lot of organic fertilizer, and one of the key ingredients for that would actually be cow dung. And the kind of quantity we needed was very hard to source just by going door to door, or how do you get so much? And then we actually started a dairy farm and that kind of went out of control. Even now, we have over, I think, 800 heads of cattle in the dairy farm, which is pretty large, probably one of the larger farms in Bangladesh. You may have way bigger farms in countries like Australia, or Argentina, or certainly the US where you have millions of square miles of land, but in Bangladesh, these things are on a very different scale. But we realize that we've got a sizable farm, and it's still not enough, but we don't want this farm to become bigger than the tea garden itself because that's not the main area where we want to be working. So what could be the solution? And we were sitting around just gabbing about it in our bungalow in the tea garden, and the way the question was formulated was kind of like, 'Where can we get three thousand cows?' And in Bangladesh, in the rural area, most people do a lot of homestead cattle rearing. They'll have just maybe two cows or four cows. I was kind of like, you know, within a radius of us, a certain radius of us, there are enough families with enough cows that we have them, the question is how do we get to them? And that's when, since Bangladesh has a long history of cooperatives and especially in world-famous models of NGOs that mostly do microfinance lending, so that kind of a concept wasn't very alien to us, and at that point, it became almost intuitive that we need a co-op because the co-op gives us the structure of the organization to be able to do the daily collection readily. It's not possible to go to 3000 individuals on a daily basis with whom we have nothing but just a daily transaction relationship when they have their own use for the cow dung, or they're busy that day they don't want to give it to you; they are busy doing something else. So we had to put it in a structure and incentivize it for them, and this cow lending program, which is very attractive for them. Then they're also incentivized to pay us back in the form of cow dung, and that's how it took off. And it's now serving a much bigger purpose than what we started with, with so many lives really transformed by it.

Elsa: Building on that, I know the women are the main cattle lenders in the co-op program, and in Bangladesh, women are not held as equals. How did you entice women in the community to want to be members of the program?

Anis: Well, in this case, it was actually very easy because, on the one hand, we are a socially and culturally still quite a traditional and conservative society, and women face a lot of restrictions or even outright discrimination that men don't face. But in many respects, actually, Bangladesh is also surprisingly progressive, and many Americans will probably be shocked, especially compared to other Muslim majority countries. For example, in Bangladesh, birth control has been a huge success, whereas, in certain countries like Pakistan or elsewhere, there's a lot of resistance to that. For that matter, abortion is legal. It's not a hot button issue in Bangladesh. So you know cultures are very interesting that way, even when you think that this is a more progressive or advanced society, they can still have things that are so shocking or scandalous for them. Whereas Another society, where you don't have many of the other liberties, can still be so at ease with those things. So when it comes to women and women working in the workplace, agricultural or otherwise, the decades of microfinance lending had already created the grounds for rural women to participate in the financial economy. So given that background, it wasn't a hard sell at all to go to the women and say, ‘hey, now you take a cash loan, and then you have to pay it back.’ But with a cash loan, you do a venture, and depending on which venture you do, sometimes if it goes belly up, you're still under obligation to keep paying the debt back, and then either you need a new loan, or you can get into a lot of trouble. Sometimes that happens. But in this case, we were going to give you a cow. And you pay us back in the form of cow dung, so as long as you take care of the cow, which you probably already do with the one or two cows that you already have or own, it's very easy. So for most of the women who have joined our program, many of them were already in microfinance, and some of them still might be, but actually, some of them actually ditched microfinance for this, and it proved to be in a way, safer, kind of debt to take and safer kind of investment to manage.

So it actually wasn't very hard, once we had the idea, we approached them. I actually remember the very first loans we gave out. It was in our garden, I had gone myself, and the very first 25 women, some of whom are still our members, I gave out 25,000 takas cash to each one, and at that point, it was just about a program, and we had no idea where it would go. That was maybe in 2007 or 8 I forget. Maybe 8. And now it's well over 3000 members.

Molly: Amazing. Thank you so much for taking us through the garden story, your father's story, your history. I kind of want to go backward and talk a little more about your personal life. We know that you're an author, and we'd really like to know about what you're writing right now, what drove that inspiration to write books. You have produced a couple of books already.

Anis: Yup

Molly: Just tell us a little more.

Anis: So ever since I was a kid, actually, somehow, I was totally taken with the idea of it. I just loved reading, I loved literature, and what I wanted to do more than anything else was writing. Even though I have really enjoyed business and do it full time, my passion for writing has stayed with me. By now, I have written a collection of short stories, a novel that came out from, which is available in the US, it's called Good Night Mr. Kissinger, a novel, a political novel, political satire that came out from Penguin Random House. I've also written a very short novella called For this Depths, which is out only in Bangladesh. And I just finished a new novel called the New Barbarians. And it's actually set in New York, about this age we are living in of hyperconsumption. And I wanted to take another kind of, really sort of, what I think is a fun take on that through the experience of foodism and taking things too far. It's about two friends who start a wild game restaurant in New York, and after a while, as they get into more and more financial trouble, things go haywire in all sorts of ways that I think are fun and interesting.

And I also write a lot of op-eds, not a lot but quite a bit both for Bangladeshi domestic outlets, including our own Dhaka tribune, but also I've written op-eds over the years for The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, usually, on or about Bangladesh. And many other outlets. So I do some non-fiction, mostly in the form of op-eds or journalistic articles, and then some literary essays here and there.

Molly: That's awesome. Will your new book be available in the United States?

Anis: Well, I certainly hope so. At this point, I've just finished it. I'm about to start shopping it around, and now I have to fall on my knees and pray to the high heavens of publishing and see if the right people pick it up in the US, the UK, and elsewhere.

Molly: We're crossing our fingers.

Anis: Thank you.

Molly: Will you tell us a little more about the Bangladesh Lit Fest and maybe the Liberal Arts College and those kinds of things?

Anis: Ah, Sure. So the Dhaka lit Fest is something that started in 2011 with the pilot program that was in collaboration with the Hay Festival, the famous Hay Festival of the UK. But in 2015, we decide to start going our own way and rebranded it as the Dhaka Lit Fest, which is now run by me and my two friends, Ahsan Akbar and Sadaf Saaz and all three of us are just passionate about literature, and we have a very certain international perspective when it comes to arts, culture, and literature. And we felt that despite a very rich history and heritage of literature in Bengal, somehow Dhaka in Bangladesh had become a little cut off from the really rich and diverse world of experiences out there, worldwide. Which, for lack of a better term, one might call world literature or whatever you want to call it. And we wanted to put ourselves back in dialogue with that wider world. And Dhaka Lit Fest was the platform that accomplishes that. We have brought, over the years, several hundred authors from all over the world and not just authors but all kinds of personalities from Nobel Laureate Scientists to beloved megastars like Tilda Swinton but also in really renowned authors like the late V.S. Naipaul, William Dalrymple, and many many others. Vikram Seth, and it's just been a tremendous experience for both readers and writers locally to engage with many kinds of writers and thinkers from around the world. And we've really also focused on bringing people from what for us are far-flung places. You know, bringing people from India, UK, or the US would be sort of an obvious choice for us, and they do dominate that because of the Anglophone connection, but we also go out of our way to bring writers from countries like Cuba, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Palestine, Syria, and so many other places. And that has really been an eye-opener for us. And the writers have come and have had a chance to discover Bangladesh, and Bangladesh has, in the process, gained many friends around the world.

Elsa: You mentioned your partner Ahsan, and I know the Tea Bar in London has more of a book focus. Can you speak a little bit about the UK Teaulia Division and how you decided to expand?

Anis: We had always, actually, had a little presence in the UK, even before we came into the US, initially through placements in Harrods. They have carried our tea for a long time and promoted it very nicely and at a certain point. And so at some level, and given that there's a big Bangladeshi diaspora there and that the UK is such a tea focused, one could even say tea-obsessed country, we felt that as an international brand, and given Bangladesh's historical connections to the UK, it made sense for us to have a face or a presence there as well. And at some point, rather than staying only in other outlets or chains, we felt it would be interesting to replicate the idea of our Denver Tea Bar and see what that would do for the brand whether we could communicate the uniqueness the brand of our tea, of our story our commitments, to the consumers in a more direct manner. And so far, we've been very pleased with that experiment. The shop in Covent Garden had done really well, was getting an amazing response. Unfortunately, we had to shut it down for now due to COVID. We will hopefully reopen next year, maybe even in a new location. But that was the whole idea behind the tea shop in the UK, to tell the Teatulia story to a wider world and given our passion for literature and given how for many tea drinkers, books are also a passion or for many book readers tea always goes with their reading especially in our culture, it kind of made sense to have a cozy atmosphere of books, and it was really Ahsan's idea to do what we call the 'Ten Books Library' so we get people of interest to name their ten favorite books and that's what we put up on the shelves there. So mostly these are people who came to our Dhaka Lit Fest, the kind of authors, stars, thinkers, scientists, that I've mentioned, journalists, they have given us, all friends of ours, have given us that list of books, and we get those books from second-hand dealers, and we put them up. People who come in are most welcome to just sit there and flip through any book they pick up. And if they want to, they can pay for it and take it home as well. So it's just been a lot of fun.

Elsa: That's really cool. I heard a rumor that Tilda Swinton was involved. Can you tell that story?

Anis: Yes, she was actually. She was the very first person to give us an idea of a list of 10 books. She has been a great friend to the Dhaka Lit Fest and when we told her that we were doing this Tea Shop in London, and it would have this interesting library in it, she has, many of her fans don't know this, but she is a huge, huge fan of literature and in particular, poetry and when she heard this, she was just so excited she actually helped us develop this idea and was the first one to give us the list of ten books, so she's been a very good support for the shop.

Elsa: Wow, cool.

Molly: As Teatulia is a family business, what do you hope for the next generation?

Anis: Well, isn't that an interesting question because on the one hand, I would, of course, love to see the next generation, so to speak, carry the torch, break new ground, do whatever they think will be interesting at that point. They will take it into new directions, maybe do new things, expand it in ways we can't foresee, transform it, etc. But as a personal thing, I also feel that I have to be careful not to "impose it on the next generation." Because I don't know what their personal and individual desire is going to be. In which case, as we involve as a family and a business, we would like to look at a way of modeling the business where if members of the next generation are interested and qualified, they can join the management of the business and contribute and also reap some rewards. But if they're not interested or sadly not qualified, then I don't think we will want them in management, but we will want them to do whatever else they might be qualified to do. And that may well happen. How do you know someone's not going to turn out to be a professional athlete or to play tennis or be a musician or wants to do their own thing? Whatever that might be, I have no idea. Maybe they want to become a lawyer or a scientist. You don't know. So if that happens, then they would be shareholders, but we would then have to institutionalize and professionalize the management so that hopefully, this great brand and stories definitely have meaningful continuity. And you know there are many examples of this kind of continuity around the world. Many families are in their 3rd of 4th generation. They are no longer directly in management. They may even have controlling shares, but the company is actually even publicly held or privately held, but very professionally run. So yeah, I would love to see the next generation take this into areas that we can't even foresee, but who knows. The next generation might not be literally the generation from our own family, but it may be the next generation who are kindred in spirit and who give the house of managing these businesses and creating something new.

Molly: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for all of your time and for letting us ask you so many questions.

Anis: Absolutely. My pleasure. 

Peppermint and Mint come from two different plants. We call our new tea "Mint" because it's made from organic spearmint and peppermint leaves, and our Peppermint tea comes from only peppermint leaves grown in our Bangladesh garden.
The two are similar in flavor, but our Mint tea contains a higher concentration of menthol, making its flavor more robust and more pronounced. The menthol makes the Mint tea taste like a classic crisp mint, while we describe our Peppermint tea as a buttery mint.

Our Peppermint tea comes in a compostable plant-based pyramid tea bag. While it may look and function like a similar plastic-based tea bag, ours is made entirely from plants, is compostable, and won't leach micro-plastics into your teacup. Our Mint comes in a classic, also compostable, paper tea bag. Both have no strings, tags, or staples to cut down on waste.

All of our teas that come in a pyramid bag like our Peppermint tea, are a whole leaf or "orthodox tea." The whole leaf is the same tea you'll find in a loose-leaf format but with the convenience of a pre-portioned and easy brew tea bag. Because the tea is a whole leaf, you can steep 2-3 times to extract all of the leaves' flavors. All teas that come in our classic paper tea bag, like our Mint, are fine-cut. Our Fine-cut teas use the same tea you'll find in our whole leaf bag but chopped into smaller pieces.

Although our Peppermint and Mint aren't identical, they do share some similarities. As with all of our teas, they're 100% organic, which is very important for tea because tea leaves cannot be washed before they end up in your cup. Whatever the tea leaves have been sprayed with during their growing cycle will be washed into your cup. We treat our teas with love, not chemicals.
Both teas are compostable. It's our goal to produce products that can go back to the earth as efficiently as possible. Peppermint and Mint are caffeine-free because they're herbals. Herbal teas are made using herbs and botanicals rather than the Camellia Sinensis plant. Most importantly, Peppermint and Mint are both delicious! So up to you, take your pick.

Molly

Hey everyone! We are back with another Founder's Friday. My name is Molly Waller and I am the Senior Marketing Manager at Teatulia, joined by my partner in crime Elsa Meyners, our Associate Marketing Manager. Today we’re sitting down with another one of our founders, Kazi Inam Ahmed, or better known to us as Inam. Welcome, Inam. We really appreciate you taking this evening to chat with us.

Inam

Thank you. I’m looking forward to the chat today.

Elsa

Well Inam, we’d love to start things off with you having us tell a little bit about yourself and an introduction.

Inam

Okay. So, I’m one of the Kazi’s of the  Kazi and Kazi Tea. In my family, everyone’s first name is Kazi, which always complicates things, so I go by Inam. So, the garden in Bangladesh from where Teatulia comes from, as we say the tea is born in Bangladesh, the garden is called Kazi and Kazi. The garden started around 2000, and that’s when I was in college. I was actually in America, in Wesleyan, in Connecticut and I was studying there. And I got a bit involved with tea at that point and then I moved back in 2004, and I worked at the garden for the first few years quite closely. Then after that, there were other working projects and business things that I did. It’s been a fantastic journey for the last, I would say, 16+ years for me, with the business. It’s a family business, living in Bangladesh and visiting our tea garden in Bangladesh up north. It’s in the foothills of the Himalayas. And having this wonderful brand of Teatulia that we have created in America based out of Denver.

Molly

That’s awesome. You said you were in college when your father started this? How did he decide that tea was the right thing at the time and that was the avenue he wanted to go down?

Inam

Well, actually the region in Bangladesh where the tea is from, that region itself is called Tetulia, which is why the brand we add an ‘a’ after the ‘Te’ and it became TEA-tulia. And that’s actually a very good region for tea. Like I said, it’s in the foothills of the Himalayas. Darjeeling is like 30-40 miles north of our garden. Basically, that region is called the Dooars (Duars) Valley in India. And you grow really good tea, beautiful tea. Unfortunately, because of the border in Bangladesh, for some reason on the Bangladesh side, tea was never really grown. It was kind of really fallow land that was not cultivated, that was not being used. A lot of it was just very poorly kept, you could say. And my father actually had other business over there, and he used to go there for years…... because of other businesses that he had which were more engineering related. He bought some land and was looking at that. The opportunity came where he saw that there was tea on the other side of the border, literally. So, if you go to our garden now and you stand...and literally you can have one foot on the side of India and one on the other side of Bangladesh. The tea garden in India and Bangladesh are separated by like 30 or 40 feet. So, you have teas on both sides. It’s the same land. It’s good tea. And he thought since such good tea grows here, we should also do it. Because it was a new garden, most gardens in Bangladesh or even in that region in India are old gardens from our colonial past, from the British time. And usually, they have their own history, in terms of how the people who work, how they are a part of the garden itself, there’s always been a lot of questions about how the people work and how they are treated, what their life and everything is. But this was going to be a completely new area where we don’t have people that will be available like that. So, we wanted to build a community that will benefit over there and at the same time also make good quality tea. So, the best way to do it we felt was, and my father also felt, was to respect the nature and the environment, and do as least as possible that we could do in terms of intervention and work with the community. So, we have a lot of interesting programs, with the cattle lending program, education, and other stuff. That’s how the tea started kind of, and it’s been a fun journey of how it’s just evolved from there.

Elsa

Yeah, I was reading about the Dairy Cooperative as how it originally started before it was a tea cooperative, that’s correct?

Inam

Yeah, so basically when we were doing the tea, there are two ways you can do organic. The important thing is to get certified to get an organic tea garden or do anything organic. And to make sure that you’re just not using the kind of fertilizers or pesticides that are harmful, either for the produce itself or the environment or the ground. But for us it became more of a holistic approach, we wanted to make sure that it was really sustainable, and, in that sense, we realized that for the garden, for the nourishment, for the soil we needed cow dung. So usually with most co-ops, which is very different over here...Bangladesh is also known for the micro-lending program with the Grameen bank and all of that. There’s always this idea of how you can build with the community and how you work with them. So, we actually went with a different model that’s not actually a microfinance model. We would actually just use our community nearby and not necessarily all of them work with the tea garden, and rather that way the community really benefits, where we will give them the cows and they will give back to us by actually sharing the cow dung. The cow dung was the main product for which we did this dairy cooperative. At the same time, they were also giving us a portion of the milk and that actually has been, like I said, it's a journey and it’s not that we had a full plan exactly of how it's going to go. Things have always evolved, and 16 years down the line, you ask so what was your day-to-day. This morning I was actually having a meeting with the people of the co-op and we were talking about what do we do because all the villagers and all are getting much better at how they manage the cows, so we are having more milk. so even the portion of the milk that they give is going up, and there’s only so much that the community over there can consume. So now we are trying to set up this little mozzarella factory set up. We are making some mozzarella which actually comes to Dhaka. So like we are making this mozzarella cheese that people can have for the pizzas or pasta or whatever, because there’s a lot of people that want that. There’s also some South Indian style cooking cheese, like the paneer, as it’s called, which has been really flying off the shelves: the retailers have been asking for it. So we just started that a few months ago and we are talking about that, and now we are trying to figure out how to make better quality cheese. One thing has always led to another thing like as we have always seen with our garden.

Elsa

Yeah, I am just so impressed with the integrative nature and your ability to adapt. I was wondering if you could speak a bit to the actual growing process of the tea and talk about the Fukuoka farming method?

Inam

I think a part of that was something that we would always have this discussion with my father and also like a few people we had who were friends who were helping us out. And kind of like understanding of how the environment and the land work, and I think one of the things my father would always say is, “Hey, you know what? If we are having a certain part of the tea that we are getting, if there are pests or others who are going to have other animals that we are getting….in that sense, it’s going to have 10-15% and it’s fine.” Because I think a lot of tea production becomes so much about what is the total yield we are getting from the acreage and garden and it becomes how do you maximize, and it becomes about what kind of pesticides are you using. But the truth is sometimes, one of the things that you face, you will get this very little bug called the red spider. Even if you get the red spider at times, it actually improves the quality of the leaves. So, you can actually produce much better tea even if it comes in, so it doesn’t even harm you in a bad way. Of course, you can get a real infection or spread of it that will not be good, but it’s all about how you manage it and over there, we actually with a lot of our trees, like neem tree and other trees and Vasaka tree which actually helps, where we were able to use the leaves and to grind them and mix it with water and other things and spray it to use as a natural pesticide. I think it's finding that right balance and not feeling that you have to get the maximum yield all the time. So, in that sense, I guess the Fukuoka method, we kind of felt like let’s not try to change how the environment works, in terms of focusing too much on artificial irrigation or pesticide usage or fertilizer usage. The truth is even using a lot of organic fertilizer that we could have gotten from outside. Instead, how do we make this whole ecosystem and cycle that works, and it works within the garden and within that area, and it’s not something that we’re having to bring from way outside, so really living off the land and having this we also do tea over there.

We do the dairy, and we also have a lot of vegetable farms over there so all the people that work in the garden can have the nearby quality organic vegetables that’s just from right there. That was always kind of the thinking that it just becomes this holistic, nourishing environment from which it’s truly sustainable.

Molly

I love our impact and how we benefit the community. I was wondering if you would actually elaborate a little bit about the adult education that a lot of the pluckers in the garden get.

Inam

Even that education, it’s something, my father would say, it’s so important because in a country like Bangladesh, which is very poor, where you really are seeing much improvement in education in general to the country. Unfortunately, you really do have people who might have been born at a time where they did not get that education and now, they are working in our garden. So there’s two things that we have done. We have adult education that we have always focused on for people who work in the garden. So even in their paid time off work we would take them out for one hour at the end of the day and have a teacher or something teaching them the basics so they can at least sign their name. They can at least read like some basic words. We feel like that itself gives them a level of empowerment that doesn’t exist otherwise. Now with cell phone penetration and everything where technology is coming to you, even those little bits of knowledge, of being able to read, can go such a long way for their understanding and their empowerment. At the same time, in a very remote area like that, you always have problems, we talked about adults, but we also have problems with children. We have high dropout cases. The primary education scene in Bangladesh has vastly improved over the last 20 years but still, we will have kids that will drop out at a very early age (grades) at 3,4, 5, or 6. So we actually found a way with our Kazi Shadid Foundation, the KSF model, which does the dairy co-op and everything, to even support the community to actually run several small daycare centers, but it's mainly for kids who dropped out. It’s for kids who haven’t joined school yet or joined school and dropped out. When we put them through the system, suddenly you see improvements in them… so both these programs of adult education and the children who drop out have been really wonderful programs and really have felt like a contribution to the community.

Molly

Do you have any personal favorite stories of women or children that have gone through these programs and have come out on the other side, in some facet, that you would like to share with us?

"So even in their paid time off work we would take them out for one hour at the end of the day and have a teacher or something teaching them the basics so they can at least sign their name. They can at least read like some basic words. We feel like that itself gives them a level of empowerment that doesn’t exist otherwise."

Inam

Oh, absolutely. There was this woman who was part of our dairy co-op model. There was once a funny story because they really were struggling as a family and even her relationship with her family and her husband and everything was really difficult. She took just one cow from us. The long story short, over the course of 4-5 years, her whole family changed because over the course of years she actually ended up taking more than 4 cows and that actually with all the cows and everything she really had this small dairy farm. The whole family was doing so well, the children were doing so well, and it was so good. I remember our program coordinator had taken us to her home, and they were talking so positively about it and one point she said jokingly to the point, “you know, frankly, I don’t need my husband anymore now that I have all these cows”. Of course, you know that's a joke. It says the importance of how that empowered the relationship of that woman and her husband started respecting her so much. The husband was actually working for her then, helping her to do this work and run this, I shouldn’t even call it a farm, run this little dairy that they had set up. It’s a really impressive, powerful story. I would almost say they graduated out of it. They didn’t need us anymore because they were buying their own cows because they actually had that much money and they could afford it and everything. There are many, many, many, stories like that, stories of people who have worked in the garden and how their children have gone through our system and they’re studying in school and getting an education. We know that means these children are not going to be kids who are working in the gardens most likely in the future, of course, and they will be most likely moving to cities and everything. But that’s what our journey is supposed to be with this garden which is not like any other tea garden in Bangladesh where it was set in the colonial past. We’ve always heard about gardens like that in South Asia where you have this working structure where the garden workers are working there, and it’s almost as if they belong to the garden. That itself is a different concern, how they manage. That’s why our garden is the only Fair Trade organization in Bangladesh and we feel very proud and good that the people working there are getting empowered. They are doing better, and their families are doing better.

“You know, frankly, I don’t need my husband anymore now that I have all these cows”

Elsa

Yeah, that’s really amazing the whole cycle of the land and the garden but also of the community, being able to educate and empower the individuals. I know you touched on the mozzarella and having to adapt with the milk surplus at the garden and with the foundation. Are there any other new initiatives that you have started lately, or maybe since the onset of COVID-19, that you would like to share?

Inam

Well, I think one thing that we have always been looking at is doing different herbs. Anything that we are launching whether it’s in our Bangladesh market or even in the US with Teatulia, so whenever we are doing anything with tea, whether it is the jasmine, the turmeric, the ginger, we are always trying to grow more of those herbs. I think that’s actually something that we’ve been working on in the past few months. There’s a lot of these local flowers and stuff that we are starting to build up in our nurseries this year, and we are thinking of trying to see what kind of flavors or what kind of tastes we can get out of that if we mix it with our tea. That’s something that it always takes like a year or more than that. We grow it, we try, and it’s trial and error, but it's a lot of fun. And we are also trying to figure out other than the mozzarella and always doing new herbs and everything, like I mentioned earlier with our irrigation and that’s something that we don’t want to go into doing irrigation in a manner that is not sustainable. We tried something last year that worked very interestingly, where in the middle of the garden we kind of used some little bond areas where we did rain catchment with the water that stays from the rainy season and how we can use that for the dry season. Because we actually have a very big dry season from October to March so unlike many other regions in the world, like in Africa, in Kenya, Rwanda, or other places where tea grows where you have more of a longer rainy season or more of a year that you can actually pluck the tea, we don’t have that. So, if we can do irrigation... we don’t want to go underground to get water. We want to gather from rainwater or rainwater harvesting that we do, and we use that. That would actually help us get better irrigation for the dry season. That’s something that we have been working on, and unfortunately, because of COVID, it took a bit of a hit. But again, we will work on it over the course of the year.

Elsa

Inam, for a little bit of context, how much rainfall...you might not know this...but do you know the rainfall you get in the dry season versus the wet season?

Inam

Oh my god. I won’t be able to get the exact number...we always look at it, but the dry season, I actually mean from October to March, we literally get no rain. Like it’s not even a droplet of rain. I mean, sometimes, we would get maybe something like two inches in the course of five months. And then when it comes to the rainy season, you could actually have days where you are getting more than a couple of inches of rain for a whole month. This year, we actually after two decades for the first time….we actually had some flooding in our garden which we’ve never had. We had an incredible amount of rain that took place this year here. So our person who manages the garden, Shoab, always laughs and says, “I wish I could just take a portion of this rain of the rainy season and spread it through the dry season.” The amount of rain we get in the middle of the year, we wish we could spread it out. That would be brilliant but hey that's nature. That’s the way it works. We can’t control that.

Molly

My question goes back just a little bit further. When you guys were exploring the United States, what made you make that leap into this market versus any other market?

Inam

That’s an interesting part because I was actually the first person I happened to...I was going to college in Connecticut, Wesleyan. I happened to be sitting at... this was my junior year in college...and I was sitting at my aunt's place for dinner where I met this Sri Lankan person. His father was the first tea garden, organic tea garden manager in the 80s. And I said, “Hey, you know my dad is doing a garden, putting in an organic garden. Can I call your dad?” And he was like, “Yeah, sure.” And so, this person’s name is Monjeev, he connected with his dad Moneek and I got in touch with him and he was a very friendly person and he said, “Hey, you know what? There's this tea festival that takes place, this tea conference in Las Vegas. It happens every March. Why don’t you stop by and I'll meet you and I'll show you how the tea market works here and the scene for organic tea if you ever want to.” It was my spring break in March and actually, instead of going down to Florida I actually went down to Las Vegas to attend this so I bought a suit and I went there and I walked around and I was like, “Alright, so this is how people sell tea.” The next year I had gone back to Bangladesh and I had joined the family business. I had worked in the garden and I was like, “Hey I’m going to go back again.” So I visited again. So the third year I visited my brother Anis, who’s one of the co-founders of Teatulia with Linda, and me and Anis went there and took some tea to sell it. We took some tea bags, set it up on a table, and walked around. By the time we came back all the tea was gone. So all the samples that we had taken for the first day were gone within the first 20 minutes. So we didn't know that one of us should have stood at the little booth and it was a pretty... I must say...It was possibly the most simple set up that we had because it was carried all the way from Bangladesh in a suitcase and everything got pretty crumpled in terms of the backdrop and everything that we prepared. But so many people were so curious like, “Wooow!” Because I think that we are aware of the only ones that were just sitting there or just standing there so I’m telling a story about the garden and most people don’t do that. They were very curious about all this tea that’s coming. It was mostly tea shops and all these women who had started their tea shop somewhere, they would say, “I love this story. It's a wonderful story. I would love your tea. Can you give me like five lbs of tea?” The amount of three cages. “No, I want to fill up a container, which is like 8000 cages of tea.” So there was no way that matching was taking place and I realized immediately talking to people over there that it’s a very competitive market the way the tea market works and the price just for this good quality tea that they were willing to give, they were very aware of what price in Bangladesh would be for an organic tea so they would just offer a price that was literally just one pence above that and I was like you know what maybe we should come here and try to sell the tea to all those lovely ladies who were like that wanted like two cages of tea from us. So I think that where the conversation kind of started between Anis and Linda who were all friends then. Linda had actually been to Bangladesh before that and she wanted to start out doing something new because she had left her family business and we wanted to start something new there and that's where the conversation started between them and that’s how we got there. Then of course how we realized in the course of the journey and you guys were part of the story that part of selling the tea is not necessarily always easy, but we have a beautiful story which comes all the way from the garden to the cup. We know the full story of the garden. We can really talk about it and I think we make really good tea. So, I think there's a lot of people who would like to drink that tea.

Molly

Absolutely, cheers to that.

Inam

Absolutely.

"Garden to cup, organic, sustainable, vertically integrated supply chain, we were already doing it. We were actually leading the curve. The more data points I got I realized that Teatulia was maybe even more than on trend, we were very much ahead of trend and that this was an idea that definitely an idea that could go somewhere.

Elsa

Hi everyone! My name is Elsa Meyners, I’m on the line with Linda Appel Lipsius, our founder of Teatulia. I’ll let her introduce herself. Take it away, Linda. 

Linda

Hey, yes I’m Linda Appel Lipsius the founder of Teatulia. Happy to be here.

Elsa

So Linda, I was wondering if you could speak to a little bit about how Teatulia came to be.

Linda

Yeah, so kind of a funny story. So Teatulia came about, because my husband and I were friends with this guy, Anis Ahmed. He’s a Bangladeshi guy who happened to be getting his PhD in English Literature from NYU. He met my husband, Adam. They met in a coffee shop called Grey Dogs. They had been both going to the same coffee shop for a number of days. Adam was writing the great American novel, Anis was writing the great Bangladeshi novel. They were both writers but hadn’t talked to each other. Then one day Monica Lewinsky walks in, and that broke the ice. They finally decided they had to talk about it and had to process who they’d seen. They’re kind of the same people, they’re both super smart, kinda nerdy guys and they hit it off right away.

So, Anis came into our lives along the way, and we were really just buddies with him. Anis was staying with us in Los Angeles and was telling us how the garden was progressing. They were interested in looking at the US market as an export market for the teas. At that point I had been working with my family’s business, Orange Glow, and we were selling the business so I knew I was going to have some time on my hands. I offered Anis to do a business plan and do a market analysis. So that’s how it really got started. And that was probably about 14 years ago really offering to help and not necessarily anticipating being with it fourteen years. But the more I learned about the businesses and the more I learned about the garden and the model, the more I realized that we really had something unique to bring to the market. 

Elsa

So after you met Anis and you were introduced, you put together this market analysis for Teatulia, at one point did you decide to really run with it?

Linda

Yeah I mean honestly, It happened pretty incrementally. So at first I was focused externally, focusing on the market, what the opportunities were. Initially we actually were really thinking of going after tea shops, which we pivoted for a number of reasons. They really weren’t receptive to the idea of a new origin tea and the opportunity actually just wasn’t that big. So we pivoted to CPG (consumer packaged goods) and packaged tea because the size of the prize was much bigger, but the challenge remained how to stand out in a crowded, relatively low interest category. So we eventually understood that the story was something unique, and if we could really tell the story we could really set ourselves apart. Also with unique packaging, we could stand apart. So I really initially just focused on the external market. Honestly, until my husband went over there; He went over there to shoot a video for the website. When he was there he was sort of able to tease out both through video and his own experience how different this was. Actually how unique this regenerative tea garden that was built on the permaculture, sustainability principles was in the scheme of things. That then coupled with going to some tea conferences while listening to a lecture and everything single thing that Teatulia represented. Garden to cup, organic, sustainable, vertically integrated supply chain, we were already doing it. We were actually leading the curve. The more data points I got I realized that Teatulia was maybe even more than on trend, we were very much ahead of trend and that this was an idea that definitely an idea that could go somewhere.

Elsa

I had no idea Adam was the mediator between the whole relationship.

Linda

Yeah, he really kinda was.

Elsa

Thanks to Adam. I was also wondering if you could highlight your favorite piece of our sustainable culture or vertically integrated. Like out of what you’ve seen in the garden and how we do things, what’s the piece you like to highlight the most?

Linda

I think, honestly, just the simplicity of it. I remember the first time I went to the garden and just driving around, being just continually blown away by what the garden is and being like "wow this is really revolutionary, and this is next level, progressive thinking." And all of a sudden I was like "wait, this actually isn’t." This is how it’s supposed to be. In the last hundred years, 100-150 years, this ‘gee whiz science’ has come in and interfered with the right way to do things, and our connection to the land and mother nature, and her wisdom. We’ve screwed it up. We’ve short circuited the entire natural system and what the garden has done has really gone back and trusted that the earth and the natural cycles, they’ve done it for million years, nobody needed humans to come along to help. It’s the simplicity of it that I find so spectacular. We tend to just really complicate things. And the other thing is the healing nature of what we do, at every step of the way. You go over to the garden and you see this land that is just destroyed and just utterly devoid of life through human interaction through rock lifting and through the organic farming method, through regenerative farming, you can literally heal the planet. And then that trickles down to the people who are working the land because there’s more oxygen it’s a more vital system and it trickles further down the supply chain and the people are enjoying the tea because the product is clean the product is richer in nutrients than conventionally grown tea or produce or anything. And then just the over all minimal footprint and the fact that this is actually giving back and restoring. So a Couple of things. This is such an elegant system, such an elegant story and I look forward to getting more land and having more impact and reversing environmental degradation, one acre at a time as we go.

Elsa

That’s really cool. It’s funny I was thinking just today about in regards to movement and work and reading about the effects of sitting all day. It is just so simple, there are all these gadgets to undo this, but really the simplest thing to do it move and go for a walk.

Parallel to how we treat the earth. We come up with all these ways to do it but really all you need to do is let nature do its thing.

Linda

So much of it is because you can’t make money on walking. Nobody can charge you to go walk around your block. Did you read  The Omnivore’s Dilemma?

"...agriculture has gotten so f’d up is because you can make more money the further you take an ingredient, or product or vegetable away from just what it is."

Elsa

No, I haven’t.

Linda

Please read it. It’s literally a life changing bible for me. One of the many millions of lessons in it is that agriculture has gotten so f’d up is because you can make more money the further you take an ingredient, or product or vegetable away from just what it is. You know corn, if you’re selling an ear of corn you can make 2 cents. If you’re selling the same amount of high fructose corn syrup you can get $100 for a liter or something. So we’re just committed to transforming and bastardizing those natural things and then in the process the benefits get lost and people get hurt. It’s very unfortunate. That’s one of the things I’m hoping with COVID is that we go sort of backwards.

So no one is going to be able to afford the gadgets anyways? Can we just do away with them.

Elsa

Really stripping back the things that you actually need in your life and you’re spending 8 hours at your house a day, how much of this junk isn’t necessary?

Linda

Yup, almost all of it. 

It starts with the soil.

Our tea garden is not only sustainable, but regenerative. What started as a barren wasteland, is now a thriving, lush tea garden that grows some of the best tea out there.

We apply the teachings of Japanese farmer and philosopher, Masanobu Fukuoka. He believed that nature knows best, and to produce the healthiest land and crops, you must work with nature and not against it. Nature’s best and most nutrient rich soil comes from compost. We compost in 2 primary ways - vermicompost, and cow dung.

World of Worms

Take a look at our vermicompost plant at our garden in Tetulia, Bangladesh. Vermicomposting is the process of using worms to decompose organic material into worms castings, or worm poop. The worm castings is extremely nutrient dense and an excellent organic fertilizer for plants. 

Not only do we use vermicompost at our garden, but our CEO and Co-Founder, Linda, has her very own worm farm at her home in Denver. Meet her worms,  here.

Cow Dung

Next source of compost is cow manure.

When starting our garden we knew we needed a sustainable way to provide a steady stream of cow manure to support our 200+ acre garden, but we weren’t in the business of raising cows. This is where the cattle lending program was born. Our founder’s innovative solution was to start a cattle lending program where the women in the Bangladeshi community were loaned cows. They pay back the loan with cow dung that we use for the garden, and once the loan is paid off, the cow is theirs to keep. Win-Win! We’ve heard countless stories of families lives that have changed for the better because of this initiative, read more about it,  here.

While the process isn’t pretty, cow manure produces rich compost to enrich our plants the natural way.

Help Us Close The Loop

Our garden is on the way to becoming completely closed loop, which means everything grown in our garden has a purpose and is used. We do our best to make sure our tea is grown and packaged in the best possible way for the earth. 

Here’s where you come into play. We make our packaging almost completely compostable and recyclable, so we’re relying on you to do your part to dispose responsibly. 

Here’s how to do so: