JIN JIN X HumaniTea
A collaboration with JIN JIN and HumaniTea
JIN JIN’s week-long collaboration with HumaniTea. We’re proud to say we’ve moved into our new home! This partnership was the first we've held at our new working space.
What is HumaniTea?
UK’s first Iced Vegan Tea Lattes, HumaniTea, offers a delicious, well-balanced tea latte beverage which supports well-being and sustainability initiatives through wholesome tea.
HumaniTea offers two flavours; Matcha and Earl Grey. Matcha Oat Milk Green Tea Lattes provide calm energy without the crash and jitters of coffee caffeine while bringing clarity and focus to the mind. Earl Grey Oat Milk Classic Tea Lattes provide a boost of antioxidants and natural energy.
It was a pleasure having the HumaniTea team visit our new office. We had a really productive fun morning making content for social media, taking pictures, videos and interviews. Find out how we made delicious drinks using a bottle of JIN JIN and HumaniTea’s Earl Grey Oat Milk Classic Tea Latte and Matcha Oat Milk Green Tea Latte below.
HumaniTea and JIN JIN mocktail recipe:
Ingredients for the shaken method:
20ml JIN JIN
200ml Earl Grey Tea Latte
Chocolate powder
Ice
How to make:
Place ice into the cocktail shaker
Add 20ml of JIN JIN and 200ml of Earl Grey into the shaker
Shake for 30 seconds and add ice to the glass
Strain the mixture into the glass and finish with a teaspoon of chocolate powder
Ingredients for the stirred method:
20ml JIN JIN
200ml Matcha Tea Latte
Matcha powder
Ice
How to make:
Place ice into a glass
Add 20ml of JIN JIN and 200ml of Earl Grey into the glass
Stir for one minute to mix it all up
Add a teaspoon of matcha powder on top of the mixture
If you want a discount on their products, use JINJIN20 at their checkout for 20% off!
Who is behind HumaniTea?
The founder of HumaniTea is Tina Chen. With her love for a quality cuppa and her desire to make a positive impact on society, Tina made a career switch from IT to just Tea, and HumaniTea was born!
Interview with the founder Tina
1) How and Why did you start HumaniTeas?
Tina: I started HumaniTeas because of my Taiwanese/American heritage. When I came to London I noticed bubble tea culture was growing. After doing some market research around what was available, I saw there were mainly coffee lattes, however, the market lacked ready to drink tea lattes. The iced tea market was really small besides a few big brands containing high amounts of sugar. It then came to me that I should create something with low sugar to help tackle the problem of obesity. I then started to create the product and source the ingredients, opening HumaniTea as a social enterprise. Our goal was to donate 5% of our profit to support wellbeing and sustainability initiatives. We ensured our ingredients were natural, clean and free from any artificial flavours. I aimed to create a product that was new to the UK market, relating to my Taiwanese/American heritage and also benefiting society.
2) What has your experience been like being a woman owned business?
Tina: I feel lucky to be in a first world country where women have a lot more power in the workplace, although it’s not fully equal, I still feel lucky to be in an environment where women can start businesses and get educated. However, as the founder I have received a lot of support for being a female and also being a minority ethnic group. There are also a lot of programmes that support that, for example, I got £5000 to my crowd-funding campaign; ‘Back Her Business’, a programme to support female founders. In essence, I really benefited from these programmes. In general people are really supportive, for instance, when I met Sohn (Founder of JIN JIN), she was very welcoming, friendly and open from the beginning. Overall, I’m really happy being a female founder and having the support network of over females.
3) What has been the most challenging aspect with the business?
The most challenging thing is setting up because a lot of ground work needs to be put in the business before it can even get to the stage where we are today. The first year and a half was a lot of work, for example I was doing farmers market, working in a commercial kitchen making everything by hand and working night shift in order to save costs in the kitchen. I was lacking sleep which became really unhealthy, however, now I’ve realised health is much more important since with poor health we won’t be able to work on the business. Starting the business was a lot of physical and mental stress, it’s definitely good to take breaks and have a support network. Another challenge was finding out if there was a market for it and raising the finances to go into production. There’s also times where you start to doubt your ideas but if you have the passion you’ll push through and overcome the obstacles. As of now, there’s challenges of getting into more retailers, I would love to get into Ocado since that’ll be a step up. The initial part, creating the recipe, the product and the branding is definitely the most challenging part.
4) What are your favourite mixes you have done with HumaniTeas?
The recipe with JIN JIN turned out really well, we mixed the Earl Grey with JIN JIN and chocolate powder on top, as well as the Matcha tea with JIN JIN and Matcha powder on top. We’ve made some mixes involving food such as scones and vegan cupcakes, instead of using milk to make the cupcakes we used HumaniTea. The milkshake mix was really good too, we made two versions, the first being vegan ice cream mixed with Matcha tea and peanut butter, the second version we added dark chocolate to the Early Grey.
5) What are your plans for the future?
We are looking to get into larger retailers, we want to continue with our independent retailers but we also want to expand into larger ones. Afterwards, we also want to look at exporting our products into other countries such as Germany, Australia and USA. We are looking into new flavours such as Turmeric latte, Rooibos latte or Chai latte. We believe those flavours will be popular since they’ll be caffeine free versions. We’re aiming to grow the business organically, be able to have good employees and increase our turnover. We need good employees who believe in our vision and would be able to help us grow the business.