NEPAL TEA COLLECTIVE: CONNECTING TEA FARMERS WITH TEA LOVERS
ON BIG BLEND RADIO: Pratik Rijal and Nishchal Banskota, co-founders of Nepal Tea Collective, talk about their teas and how they are working to make the tea farm-to-table supply chain traceable and transparent. Watch here in the YouTube player or download the podcast on Spreaker, PodBean, or SoundCloud.
Nepal Tea Collective is a public benefit corporation that distributes quality organic black, green, oolong, and white teas, as well as gift boxes and bundles. Sourced from four different small-holder farms in Nepal, their teas are packed at origin and come in biodegradable bamboo pouches, which are locally handmade.
Nepal Tea Collective aims to bridge the gap between tea farmers and customers by moving past the middlemen and working directly with producers. They are actively working to make the tea farm-to-table supply chain traceable and transparent by putting QR codes on all product labels. When scanned with smartphones, these QR codes offer information on the farm where the tea leaves were grown and when the particular bag of tea was plucked, packaged, and shipped.
“The tea industry is ripe for disruption. There are way too many middlemen creating little to no value at all. They’re depressing the income for the farmers and degrading the quality and freshness of tea for consumers,” said Nishchal Banskota, Founder and CEO of Nepal Tea Collective. “We believe consumers deserve to know exactly where their tea comes from and whether or not it’s single-origin. We think of ourselves as a movement to reinvent the tea supply chain and make it more sustainable.”
“We’ve taken the further step of becoming a public benefit corporation (PBC) to really challenge the status quo and make a sustainable business with a core mission to do good for the tea farmers,” continued Banskota. “Becoming a PBC in fact mandates us to our public benefit purpose with legislative reporting requirements which enforce an enhanced level of accountability and transparency. We really want to challenge ourselves to do what is right for the farmers and the industry.”