Sweet Leaf Tea Company
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Beverage |
| Founded | Beaumont, TX, 1998 |
| Founder |
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| Headquarters | Austin, Texas |
| Products | See products section |
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Number of employees
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43 |
| Parent | Nestlé Waters North America |
| Website | sweetleaftea.com |
Sweet Leaf Tea Company is a producer of ready-to-drink organic teas and lemonades made with 100% pure cane sugar, owned by Nestlé and headquartered in the Penn Field Business Park in the South Congress area of Austin, Texas. It was founded in Beaumont, TX in 1998 by Clayton Christopher and David Smith. Sweet Leaf Tea is available in 16 oz recyclable aluminum cans, 16oz glass, 12oz PET and 20oz PET at specialty grocers across the United States.
On April 2, 2008, Sweet Leaf Tea Company announced $18 million in private funding from Catterton Partners. On May 29, 2008, Sweet Leaf Tea Company filed suit against an Arizona-based company for the name of their sweetener, SweetLeaf Stevia. On March 23, 2009, Nestlé Waters North America made a $15.6 million investment in Sweet Leaf Tea. It acquired the rest of the company in 2011.
Sweet Leaf Tea was founded in 1998 in Beaumont, TX by Clayton Christopher, using $10,000 and his grandmother's recipe for home-brewed iced tea made with cane sugar. Christopher was inspired to create the business after returning from a road trip throughout Alabama and Mississippi, where he saw the abundance of homemade iced tea that all the local "mom and pop" restaurants served. He could not find bottled tea on the market that tasted like homemade iced tea and thus decided to make a bottled tea as tasty as the one his grandmother Mimi used to make. In 1999, Christopher's childhood friend David Smith joined him at the company. Early production consisted of brewing tea in crawfish pots in Hen's kitchen, using pillow cases as "tea bags" and; then using garden hoses to transport the tea to plastic bottles.
In March 2009, Nestlé Waters North America invested $15.6 million in the company. In March 2010, Clayton Christopher stepped down as CEO and was succeeded by former Nestle General Manager Dan Costello.
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Wikipedia