Seth Goldman’s next venture has a name — and it’s racing to a rollout.
The Honest Tea founder has unveiled Just Ice Tea as the moniker of his new bottled tea line, about a month after Honest Tea’s longtime owner, The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO), said it plans to discontinue the Bethesda-grown beverage brand. A few weeks later, Goldman decided to launch his own tea offering within Eat the Change, his 2-year-old snack startup.
Now, Goldman told us Wednesday, the company is “moving fast” with its first full-scale production run set for September — and a target of hitting shelves by October.
About the name
Just Ice Tea carries a simple name with a deeper meaning, Goldman explained in posts on Twitter and LinkedIn.
“Just” refers to tea’s taste and formulation of “recognizable and minimal ingredients” and “nothing artificial,” Goldman wrote in his LinkedIn post. The tea will taste “just sweet enough” or “unsweetened,” he wrote, echoing the Honest Tea motto its loyal followers have embraced over decades.
But perhaps more significantly, the word “just” reflects “our aspiration to respect and support our planet” and “a set of working standards that we aspire to support,” Goldman wrote.
The brand, both organic and fair-trade certified, won’t use synthetic pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and fertilizers. And it will ensure suppliers pay fair wages and follow International Labour Organization standards, “including no child or prison labor,” he wrote in his post.
To that end, the business will pay a premium on each pound of ingredients it buys — money to be directly reinvested into the communities, Goldman wrote. “The workers democratically vote on how the money is spent, empowering the workers, especially the women (who form the majority of tea pluckers), with financial resources and a say in their future.”
About the brand
The brand also comes from Honest Tea co-founder Barry Nalebuff and celebrity chef Spike Mendelsohn, co-founder of Eat the Change. That company raised $4.5 million earlier this year, which will initially fund the rollout of Just Ice Tea, Goldman told us this month.
“Of course, Just Ice Tea won’t, and doesn’t claim to, address most of the injustices in the world. But we know the fair trade and organic approach creates better economic opportunities for our partners and less damage to the planet,” Goldman wrote on LinkedIn.
Goldman and Nalebuff launched Honest Tea in 1998 before ultimately selling the business to Coca-Cola in 2011. But Goldman continued serving as the brand's CEO until 2015, and remained actively involved until stepping away in 2019. That’s when Coca-Cola moved the business line from Bethesda to Atlanta.
Though Coca-Cola’s announcement in late May that it would phase out Honest Tea disappointed Goldman, he initially said he didn’t want to lead another beverage company. But now, he said less than two weeks later, “I’m fired up to jump back into the pool.”
Coca-Cola — which is “prioritizing fewer, bigger brands” — said it plans to maintain Honest Kids, the organic juice line under the Honest umbrella, and explore licensing opportunities for the brand in other categories. The shift follows a difficult period for Honest Tea’s sales, which hit pandemic-driven supply-chain challenges.
