Tea Time: Using Restaurants as a Paid Sampling Program for DTC With Jennifer Commins of Pluck Tea

Jennifer Commins, founder of Pluck Tea and certified tea sommelier, shares her journey launching and growing her premium, eco-friendly tea business. 

This is a must-listen for tea lovers as she explores:

• the journey of tea from leaf to cup
• the health benefits of matcha, and why it's different than other tea
• one surprising truth about tea most people don't believe
• using restaurants as a paid-sampling program to grow DTC sales
• how Shopify saved her business during the COVID-19 pandemic
• one game-changing business decision Jennifer wish she did earlier
• why brand storytelling through organic social is a priority

Brands and products mentioned during this episode:

• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• Fevertree
• Pluck Tea: use code HAPPYHOUR20 on your first order

Timeline:
00:00
Introduction to Pluck Tea and Jennifer Commins

03:07
The Journey of Matcha: From Leaf to Cup

05:59
Understanding Matcha Preparation and Quality

09:02
Health Benefits of Matcha and Green Tea

12:00
The Process of Tea Production

15:07
Tea Brewing Techniques and Best Practices

17:56
The Importance of Tea Bags and Sustainability

21:14
Personal Health and Fitness Journey with 75 Hard

29:25
Embracing the Challenge of 75 Hard

34:17
The Journey to Starting Pluck Tea

43:52
Building a Brand Through Relationships

49:51
Adapting to Change: The Shift to D2C

53:17
Lessons Learned and Future Strategies

Transcript

Dan (00:02)
Hello everyone, welcome to the Shopify happy hour. On this show, you'll hear from Shopify founders, operators and experts on growth marketing strategies, lessons learned from the trenches and other nuggets of e-commerce wisdom shared over a different drink each episode.

Today I'd like to welcome Jennifer Commons, founder of Pluck Tea, which produces a wide range of hand blended top quality infusions for tea drinkers who value quality and sustainability. Simply put, Jennifer is on a mission to fix tea one cup at a time. Jennifer, welcome.

Jennifer Commins (00:38)
Thank you, Dan. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm excited. Do you have your tea ready to go? Good.

Dan (00:43)
I've got lots of tea ready to go. You know, since

we first connected, I've been trying lots of different pluck tea varieties. And I gotta say, the stuff's super good. you know, the brand is, you know, you're coming across as a high quality tea brand and...

Jennifer Commins (00:56)
Thank you.

Dan (01:03)
for sure that is definitely true since, you know, opening up the bags. One of the biggest things that I found is you open the bag up and you're just overwhelmed by a beautiful scent and aroma of the tea that is coming through. So yeah, I've been drinking different blends. I got to say the Earl Grey and the Control Alt Delete are the two favorites so far. So Earl Grey or Earl Cream, I think is that the name?

Jennifer Commins (01:28)
Ha

Real Grey Cream,

you got it, yep.

Dan (01:32)
great

cream. Yep. And then the control alt delete, which is a caffeine free kind of chill version. That is also amazing. I mean, everything's been great, but those are the two standouts. And then I've been waiting to try the matcha for this episode. And I just want to grab the jar before. So everybody can see some cool branding, got this nice little jar here. And when I went to open it up, I was a little surprised because it's actually a pop top.

Jennifer Commins (01:58)
Mm-hmm.

Dan (01:59)
I have not seen

tea before with a pop top for just, you know, matcha powder. So can you tell me what's going on with this?

Jennifer Commins (02:07)
Absolutely. No, these are great questions. And I have to say you have amazing taste because you picked two of our very top sellers. Earl Grey Cream is our number one black tea. And actually, the Matcha is our number one green tea. And really, five years ago, there's no way that I could have predicted that Matcha would be our number one green tea. But it really seems to have taken over the world. And that pop top is what preserves the freshness. So I'm actually a certified tea sommelier. I might be the only one you talk to today, Dan. It's a real thing. I have a piece of paper on the

the

wall and everything. And what that means is that I'm kind of tea obsessed and I go around the world. I pick up some teas along the way and some great new sources and suppliers. And this matcha is one of those stories. As a tea sommelier, I went to travel to Japan with a group of 17 other tea company owners, all in one place at one time. So it's pretty wild. And we ended up in this part of Japan that not a lot of people get to go to and it's called Kagoshima. It's a southern tip of Japan.

shadow of an active volcano. The terroir there is incredible. The volcanic soil is perfect for growing excellent tea. They're one of the newer tea growing regions in Japan, and that's where this matcha's from. So I get to go there once a year, sing some karaoke with the guys, get a tour, and plan our next year's harvest, because it's actually only harvested once a year. It's harvested in the spring, and that's what we call the first flush matcha. It's the first, those new buds are growing out of the plant, and they're,

plant's

been dormant and had a nice rest over the winter. Those first leaves are the most flavorful and most highly prized. Those are plucked. They are destemmed, if you can believe it, each one, dried into what we call tensha. And then that tensha is ground to order for us into matcha. And so that's what this is right here. It's pretty delicate because it has been ground. And that's why the pop-top's there. I know it's a long answer to a simple question, but it really is important to have a fresh matcha.

It does oxidize pretty quickly once you open it, so good to consume it within a couple of months.

Dan (04:12)
That's

fantastic. No, I'm a nerd on all beverages. So I love that you are a tea sommelier. My wife and I were looking to go through the regular wine sommelier training. We've gone through some of the Cicerone for beer training, but I didn't even know tea sommelier was a thing. So that is super cool. Okay. So I've got this matcha. So tell me what is, how much should I put in the glass and then how much water? looked like a temperature is about 180 degrees. Is that right? That the ideal temp? Okay. So is it? Yes.

Jennifer Commins (04:37)
You got it. Yep. Absolutely.

So one teaspoon

is a typical serving of matcha, and that equates to about two grams, depending on how nerdy you wanna get over there, Dan. I don't know if you got a scale. But one level teaspoon works really well. I'm actually gonna do mine in this little shaker. So this is something that kinda went viral on TikTok a little while ago. It's a matcha shaker, and it's something that the kids of Japan are using all the time. It's a lot easier than the whisk and the bowl and the traditional method, and a lot less cleanup afterwards.

Dan (04:45)
Okay.

Jennifer Commins (05:11)
I've got a teaspoon here, and here's my teaspoon of beautiful ground fresh matcha. I'm to put it in my matcha shaker. There we go. And I'm going to add that water. And as you mentioned, 180 degrees is ideal.

In practicality, what that means is you can boil your kettle, walk away for five minutes, and then use the water. In some cafes in Japan, they'll actually decant freshly boiled water into a secondary teapot that's ceramic. And that teapot will absorb some of that heat, bring it down about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and then it's ready to go in a quicker, more controlled way. But at home, you can just leave that kettle for a little while and walk away and come back. So I've screwed the top back on. How are you doing over there, Dan?

Dan (05:56)
I'm doing great. You know, I have a

little coffee frother, I'm kind of getting a rig in my tea, but it should work. And I've got the, I mean, look at the beautiful green here. That is definitely some high quality stuff.

Jennifer Commins (05:59)
perfect.

Look at that!

Excellent.

So you can really taste the difference and you can see the difference certainly in the color of the matcha. The greener it is, typically the more premium the quality of the matcha is. As you go down the quality scale, you get more sort of yellow and brown tones.

And that kind of, you get kind of near the bottom of the scale of matcha, and that's what you would call culinary matcha. Nothing wrong with it. It's great stuff. We use it a lot in ice creams and candies and cookies and that sort of thing. But because it's grown later on in the year, and those flushes are typically the fall flush or the later harvest in the year, the plants are growing at a higher temperature. They're actually growing faster and developing more astringency and bitterness in the leaf. So sometimes people are afraid to try matcha because they've had

experience where it's been bitter and unpleasant. And so the earlier, general rule, the earlier it is plucked, the less astringent and bitter it might be. And the more green it is. So here we go. Easy peasy. Shake this up. And once I've got this infused and shaken, I can pour it over ice. I can add milk, do an iced matcha latte. I can add warm milk and have a hot one. What are you going to do with yours? you going to try it straight up?

Dan (07:06)
Awesome.

going straight up.

So I did a little frothing here. So got a little froth on top. So question for you. So what so why it why with matcha do you shake or froth when with other tea you don't?

Jennifer Commins (07:23)
Yes.

you just eat, well, matcha is the only time when we're consuming the whole leaf. You think about a tea bag or a loose leaf tea, we're always separating those leaves before you consume the product. Either taking the tea bag out or you're putting that plunger down in your fresh French press or however you choose to make your tea. When we use, when we do matcha, when we shake it or agitate it or whisk it, you're incorporating air, which makes a beautiful, velvety, frothy experience. And matcha is kind of like a suspension. It's not a soluble product. It's something that

that likes to sort of be suspended in the water and that's when you get that really velvety mouth feel. And actually, on your cup I see that there's a beautiful raft of foam that's developed, like a very satisfying bubble bath. That's another measure of quality. the longer those bubbles stick around, the fresher and better the matcha is. And I bet you, if you walked away from that for about an hour and came back, you'd still see some bubbles on the top of your matcha. And again, that's a sign of freshness. Yeah.

Dan (08:28)
interesting. So I wonder if that's somewhat

similar to coffee where the bloom, you'll get a bigger bloom in coffee when the beans are super fresh and roasted recently, freshly ground, and you'll get a really nice bloom when you're doing a pour over. But if you get, you know, mass market store bought coffee beans that were roasted two years ago and then you put them in, like you get no bloom. So I wonder if there's something related to that.

Jennifer Commins (08:43)
Cool.

I will totally buy that. Absolutely. Sounds right to me.

Dan (08:54)
Yeah, well, thanks for

the background on this. So cheers. Let's let's get into this.

Jennifer Commins (09:02)
Absolutely, cheers to you. And I poured mine into, I've got a mug here.

Dan (09:08)
That is excellent. That is very high quality. So I've had a fair amount of matcha straight and then what I'll do, I prefer.

Jennifer Commins (09:12)
I'm so glad.

Dan (09:18)
often will drink matcha lattes. The only problem with matcha lattes is if you go to a coffee shop or a tea shop and get a matcha latte, often they're just adding tons of sugar and I don't like that. So I'm cool with matcha and a little bit of milk, but not much else. But this is actually, it's very clean, it's very tasty. I'm not getting any of that astringent flavor whatsoever. So this is a beautiful cup of matcha. Yeah.

Jennifer Commins (09:28)
Yeah.

Nice. Well, I'm so glad you like it. Thank you. You're absolutely right.

With the latte culture, would say in North America, 95 % or maybe more of the matcha that is served on premise, meaning in restaurant or cafe, would be made into some sort of a latte. And definitely flavors have been a big, big push in the matcha market. We see a lot of strawberry infused matcha lattes. I've seen pistachio. I've seen all over the map.

those syrups that people like Monin carry and manufacture. It's amazing some of the things that you can come up with, right? Those recipes can get pretty complicated. I'm a traditional kind of person myself. I do enjoy it straight up. In Japan, you can purchase it, and actually in New York too, there's some great matcha cafes where you can have it thin, thick, it all depends on how much water is incorporated. You can have it on ice. And then just having like a splash of milk as opposed to 90 % milk, 10 % tea.

is always a good thing, but a lot of the matcha latte products that are out there actually do include sugar and some also include dairy product. And what they're really aiming for is a convenience for the customer at home that they could just add water and shake or use a frother or whatever they want to do. And then you've got this matcha latte that's sweet and kind of meets that customer demand for the sweetened matcha latte. But I'm always encouraging people to try it first without the sugar.

Dan (11:04)
So I mean, this is the perfect one to do it with because so, you know, when you're getting somebody into a new, let's say new flavor profile or something that is just.

served on its own. So if I meet people who are kind of a little bit younger and they're used to drinking coffee and the only coffee they've had is with milk and lots of sugar, my gateway coffee drug for them will be Nitro coffee because it's a little bit sweeter, a little bit creamier, but it's still just coffee. There's no added stuff, right? With tea, if somebody's drinking lattes, to get them to drink just straight up green tea or matcha for most brands, it might be a little bit tougher.

Jennifer Commins (11:29)
Hmm.

Right.

Dan (11:46)
right? But this is delicious. This is a really nice, I mean you can tell that you've put it, I can tell you've put in your work with sourcing, so the quality is definitely there. Can you talk to me and everybody about...

like the health benefits of matcha because green tea, matcha, I know there's lots of reasons why people should be drinking this, but as a tea sommelier and somebody who runs a tea brand, I am sure you can explain this much better than I can. So what's the deal with matcha and why should people be drinking it?

Jennifer Commins (12:00)
Sure.

You

great question. I mean, the health benefits of green tea, which is matcha, are well studied and well documented. In fact, green tea up here in Canada land was mostly sold in health food stores up until fairly recently, meaning about 15, 20 years ago. And so high antioxidants, polyphenols and flavonoids, neutralized free radicals in the body. There's all kinds of research around longevity and communities of people that consume a lot of green tea.

Japan being one of the blue zones is a great example. And I think, you know, when we think, in terms of modern sense, we think about energy most often when we think about green tea and specifically matcha. Again, as you ingest the whole leaf, you have the benefit of all of the energy that that plant has to offer because you're not removing it at the end. And I mean, let's touch a little bit about energy and clean energy and caffeine because I think this is a fun topic that people...

don't always think about or know about, and it's pretty neat. So the word caffeine, right? Caffeine, the root word is cafe. That's actually specific to the coffee bean. So when we talk about tea, people often ask, you how much caffeine is in my tea? And I mean, the answer is...

Zero. The amount of caffeine in your tea is zero because what tea has is called tailleen. And tailleen is spelled T-H-E-I-E-N-E. It's the French word for tea is tailleen. And then tailleen is the compound that's specific to tea. And you might meet people in your life that can drink tea, but they can't touch coffee. And one of the reasons for that is that the tailleen in tea is bundled with all of these other complex

flavonoids and polyphenols, which actually slow down the absorption of that compound in the body. Metabolized time and metabolic time for this is about two hours as opposed to coffee where you consume the coffee 20 minutes you're up, another 20 minutes you're down, maybe you're having another coffee, maybe you want something sweet or something salty. Tea is very different. It's a sort of a quiet focused energy that lasts a longer time. A lot of people can actually enjoy a black tea or a green tea right before bed and have

no problem getting a great sleep. So I think also there's some sort of softer health benefits around this idea of ritual and taking some time out. You the time it takes to prepare a great cup of matcha or a great cup of any kind of tea. You mentioned control alt delete as a caffeine free option. I'm actually drinking that today on our call. I love it in the afternoon. It's just a great cleansing.

you know, actually a palate cleansing tea because of the lemongrass and ginger that's in there, very calming and soothing. And I think that, you know, we're all dealing with so much stress in this world. Taking that moment to have a great cup of tea can really deescalate some of those anxious feelings that we can sometimes get. And that, course, has wonderful health benefits.

Dan (15:07)
Fantastic. So as a aspiring tea nerd, not a tea sommelier, but an aspiring tea nerd, can you talk to us about what the process is from tea leaves growing somewhere in the wild to then them ending up in this cup? Like what is the process to turn those tea leaves?

whether it's matcha or a different type of tea that I think the process is a bit different. What does that process look like?

Jennifer Commins (15:38)
Yes.

Okay, so one of those mind-blowing tea facts that I love to talk about is that all tea comes from the same plant. Most people think that a black tea and a green tea and a white tea are all coming from different plants. In fact, the plant is one and is Camellia sinensis. There's two main types of Camellia sinensis. One is the Camellia sinensis assamica, which is indigenous to India. And then there's another version, which is Camellia sinensis sinensis, which is the Chinese plant.

So two main types. Within that, there are many, different cultivars. So if we focus just on Japanese green teas, for example, or Japanese tea, for example, we've got probably 20 or 30 different cultivars. The cultivar is a specific...

sort of a specifically bred plant. Now there are no GMOs in tea, which is kind of cool to know as well. It's all selectively bred as clones that are taken off the strongest plants and then new fields are planted from those. The most popular one for matcha is actually Yabukida as the most widely grown. This one that we have in our hands is Saimudori. So a little different, little smoother. What happens in the case of matcha is that the tea is grown. It is in

In Japan, it's mechanically harvested. In many other places of the world, it is hand-plucked, hence the name of my company, which is Pluck. The tea leaves are then harvested. They are put through a process where they are washed, they are steamed, they are dried, and then de-stemmed. This is an amazing machine. I've seen it. I still don't understand fully how it works. To me, it's magic. There are these electronic eyes that see each tea leaf individually and somehow crush it just so, so that you could remove the central spine of

each tea leaf. Isn't that amazing? So that then becomes Tencha and that is the product that we use to grind to make into matcha. But before we do that, we actually age it in a very cold temperature for about six months. And that really mellows out the leaf and, you know, buffs out any edges and just makes it that beautiful smooth matcha that you're experiencing today. If we move over to say a black tea, what happens there is the tea leaves are harvested, again, washed and then they are crushed or rolled. They're all of these

different types of machines that manipulate these leaves and crush them, roll them, really kind of beat them up. If you think about fresh lettuce, if you cut it with a knife and you walk away for a while, those edges are going to turn brown, right? Or if we cut open an apple and we leave it out, or we have a bruised apple versus a not bruised apple, it tastes very different. And that's really what's happening with those tea leaves. You're crushing them, you're breaking the cell wall structure, and all these enzymatic flavor transformations are happening in the tea leaf, which is creating what we call, of course, flavor. That's why a black

tea is going to taste so different versus a green or a white tea because you've really developed very different flavors over time. And a black tea might sit there and ferment or oxidize. We use those words interchangeably for several hours, nine, 10, 11, maybe a day. It depends on the tea maker. Whereas a green tea, you may just let it hang out for maybe two, three hours before you dry it. And these are very rough estimates because I have to tell you, I've never met anyone who knows everything about tea because I bet there are at least 10,000 different

unique types and varieties around the world and different styles of making them.

And every country in the world has their own unique tea ceremony, whether it's using the Camellia sinensis plant or it's using something else. Like in South Africa, we have roebus. In Brazil, we have mate and Argentina as well. It seems that every country around the world has their own tea tradition. But broadly speaking, important things to know is one plant that can do many things from white to green to oolong to black. And if we're in China in the Yunnan province, even Pu'er, which is actually an aged black tea, where they don't dry.

completely, compress it into a cake, put it in a cave, let it age. Some of those tea cakes are actually worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction. I look forward to tasting one of those one day. So truly, it's a magical plant and roughly speaking that's how it's made but as I mentioned there's a million exceptions to this rule.

Dan (19:52)
I it. I love the walkthrough of how tea is made. know, there's so many products we have in our life that we all take for granted, whether it's a food product or a beverage product. And, you know, at some point in life, I just realized I want to know how all this stuff is made. So thank you for walking me through all of that. A couple other random questions about tea. So, you know, when I'm brewing tea, whether it's black tea, green tea, any of the Rydles you mentioned.

There's a different steep, recommended steep time for lots of these different teas. Can you talk about why that is and what happens if you're like I've done through lots of my life where I put a teabag in, I put water on, and then I just let it sit until I'm done? And why is that not a good thing and why is it better to follow those recommended guidelines?

Jennifer Commins (20:36)
Hahaha.

I'm gonna give you two answers, Dan.

One is the tea sommelier answer and the other one is like the good human answer. Okay, so the tea sommelier answer is when we steep certain teas at different temperatures, we get different flavor expressions from them. So for instance, a white tea has a very gentle and nuanced flavor. Some of the tasting notes we think about with a white tea might be peach or magnolia, really gentle, beautiful, subtle flavor. If we bomb that tea with super hot boiling water,

we might miss those. We may get a lot more astringency and some bitterness and it may taste sort of flat. For a green tea, bitterness gets extracted with temperature and time. So the longer we have that tea in that hot water,

higher the temperature, the more chance we have to extract some of those bitter elements that we may or may not want in our tea experience. And then for the black teas, they love hot water and they love time. So those black teas like to be opened up over boiling water, maybe three to five minutes. For white tea, rule is around two to three minutes. Some of the green teas from Japan, like the senchas that are really delicate and beautiful, maybe a minute and half or two minutes is enough.

always encourage people to play around with these rules because they are kind of just guidelines. And some people love a bitter cup of tea. You mentioned leaving that tea bag in until the very end. There's something in the UK called a builder's tea. And builder's tea, you want a fork to stand up in that stuff. It's meant to be strong. So I think that's the tea simile answer. But to be honest with you, however you enjoy your tea is the right way to make tea. Right?

ways of doing things, our own rituals. I've had endless debates with people about milk in first versus milk in second. Honestly, it's how you like it and what brings you joy.

Dan (22:42)
It's such a more relaxed way to enjoy a beverage. think a lot of people were intimidated by wine for such a long time because there were so many rules around it. then, you know, people just start to realize, do what you like. everybody's, everybody's taste profile is a little bit different. Everybody has different habits throughout the day. And if you're rushing out the door and you don't have time to sit there and measure, you know, I've had this tea bag in for 60 seconds or 90 seconds. It's like, just drink the tea and enjoy it. You're doing something good for yourself and bringing

pleasure, so that's good. And I will say I'm getting some pretty nice focus from this matcha, so whatever this is doing is working well in terms of concentration. So that's great. Okay, so what's up?

Jennifer Commins (23:21)
Excellent.

Excellent. That's great. Focus is good. It's great thing. We need more of it in the world.

Dan (23:27)
That is, that is, that's it, that's it.

Okay, another random T question. Can you talk about the T satchel or the T pouch? What is the actual name for that? And does it matter what it's made of or how big it is or how, let's say, dense it is, how tight that filtering is? Can you talk about that?

Jennifer Commins (23:32)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm,

absolutely. All of these things matter for sure. So at Pluck we use actually reclaimed sugarcane fiber material for our fully compostable tea bags. So ours are fully plant-based and you can just compost them. If you're in a warm climate, you can compost them at home or if you have municipal composting, go for it. The shape is actually really important. When you have a high quality tea, especially larger particle sizes, just like people, they want to relax, they want to stretch out.

their best, you want to give them room to do so. So that's why the pyramid shape kind of came about. And it's kind of neat because when it's manufactured, it's sort of a long tube. And then as the knives cut the material, they come in at a right angle. And that's what creates that sort of triangular pyramid shape. It actually comes from a flat material, which is pretty neat. So that's sort of about the shape. In terms of size, you want the size of the tea bag to be able to accommodate those leaves once they've been fully saturated. And one good example of this is when we have an

oolong tea where you may have a full leaf kind of curled up into a ball. We have a milk oolong for instance, which is one of our most popular teas, sort of a cult favorite, has great milky buttery flavor. But if we didn't make that tea bag a little bit bigger for those leaves, they just wouldn't have enough room to stretch out and give us all the flavor that we want from them. I mean, room to move. And in terms of the filter material, I prefer the mesh style because it does allow better flow of water into the tea.

and out again. Some of the papery bags that are out there, unfortunately there are several manufacturers that still do use a plastic to seal those tea bags. If you're ever looking at a white tea bag that has a sort heat seal edge, the only way that that heat seal happens is if there's plastic in that tea bag. And if you try composting it, a few months later you reach your hand into the compost, strange people like I might do something like this. And what you lift out is something that looks a bit like a cobweb.

The only thing that's remaining is actually the plastic. All the paper fibers kind of composted away. I look forward to a day when tea makers move away completely from polypropylene and polyethylene for sealing their tea bags. There are alternatives out there, but they do cost a little more. And I think if you're in the supermarket shelves and you're waging war against your biggest competitor and you're one of the biggest companies out there, maybe those few extra cents just don't make sense. But it's unfortunate.

that that hasn't quite happened yet. But there is, you know, there are materials like PLA, which some companies are using, that are fully compostable and plant-based. So, yeah.

Dan (26:30)
Well, you know, think we're all aware, most people are aware that ingesting plastic and microplastics is pretty bad for our health. So think consumers just need to do to bring about any sort of change and that's voting with our dollars and our wallets, right? So it's supporting companies that are doing the right thing for people's health and not purchasing tea or any product if there is potentially that impact of ingesting plastics that isn't going to cause harm today, but years on top of

that's gonna probably cause some pretty pretty problematic things. So awesome. Well, thank you so much for indulging all of my random t-nerd questions. Let's move on to the next thing. So we were communicating back and forth over the past couple weeks and one thing I think we both discovered is that we are both doing the health and fitness program 75 hard right now. So how's that going for you?

Jennifer Commins (27:05)
Yeah.

Day

22, Dan. I got my water right here. I'm on liter three. What liter are you on?

Dan (27:31)
You know, so

what it says, my second year doing it, the hardest part of the first year was probably that gallon of water every day because it took a while to, well, I'll take a step back. So for anybody not familiar with this program.

called 75 hard and this guy Andy Vercella created it. I don't know how many years ago, but there are different rules that you were supposed to follow for 75 days as a way to get in better shape, improve your health and fitness. And also it's a mental challenge because you have to do the same thing every day. And if you miss anything on any day, you have to start over. So it's really motivating to make sure you're doing all of it. So basically the rules are two workouts a day for 45 minutes each. One has to be outside. You've got to drink a gallon of water.

You've got to read 10 pages of some type of, let's say, personal growth book per day. You've got to follow some type of diet, so there's flexibility there, but you have to follow some type of diet that, you know, excludes sugar, excludes anything bad for you, and then no...

missing anything? Yes, thank you. So every day you take a progress picture and that is also, you you've got to get in the habit of that because it's easy to forget doing that each day. And if you do, once again, you got to start over. But to your question, the water, where am I at? So what I've learned is when I wake up, I just slam a ton of water. Basically, within the first 30 minutes of waking up, I'm doing a half gallon just so that I can

Jennifer Commins (28:36)
progress picture.

Ha

wow.

Dan (29:03)
knock that out and then the rest of the day I will easily get to my gallon goal if I do that. Otherwise if I also back load it and have a ton of water at night then I'm up every two hours you know going to going to pee so I try to do that early in the morning so I can knock that out and then the rest of the day be a little bit more relaxed. So I've probably already hit my gallon mark today because I try to get that done right away. So what are you doing are you tracking liters like throughout the day?

Jennifer Commins (29:16)
Yeah.

Good for you.

Yeah, so I have this great hack. So I've got a one liter bottle here. And you can see there's no elastic bands on it right now. But at the beginning, I thought, I need a really big gallon water bottle. I'm lugging this thing around. It's heavy. It's really annoying. And then I thought to myself, wait a second. If I just put different colored elastic bands on here and take one off and put it on my wrist every time I refill it, then I can have a smaller situation here. So I'm on liter three. And like you, I tend to wake up and

and consume a liter right away. But I'm also doing my first workout at about six in the morning. And and the workouts have to be three hours apart. You can't just stack them one after the other. That's not good. right now, I don't know what the temperature is where you are, Dan, but it's negative 18. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit. It's well below zero here. It is Bella Clava weather. It is definitely hot tea weather up here in Toronto.

Dan (30:26)
Yeah, we're

in North Carolina and summertime gets really hot. Right now it's actually cold. We got about three inches of snow last night. That happens once every, the last time that happened was about seven years ago. So basically the entire town is shut down. Nothing is happening. So exactly. Yeah, there's no, there's rare, there's a few plows, a few salt trucks, but not much because the town doesn't really need it because it snows so rarely. But the

Jennifer Commins (30:35)
wow.

Right. No one has snow tires.

Mm-hmm.

Dan (30:55)
point of all that is that it's cold and you know part of the workout when you're doing the outdoor workout and you're going outside and it's 20 not as cold as where you are it's a it's it's a mental thing because especially if you're doing it in the morning I know getting out of bed so I wake up pretty early and then it's realizing wait I've got to go work out and pretty dang cold weather it'll definitely build some grit when you do that

Jennifer Commins (31:20)
Absolutely. I actually have sort of chains for my boots. They're like these ice pick things that stretch over your shoe and prevent you from falling because one of my biggest fears is that I miss a workout because I get injured or something and then I have to start all over again. I'm very determined to do this the first time in 75 days. Are you going to do anything special for yourself when you finish?

Dan (31:41)
So

usually, so what I did last year is I went 90 days. wasn't planning on it, but on I think day 14, I had to start over because...

There was a, I was getting my second workout in for the day and I was pretty new to the program. So I didn't plan properly. There were tornadoes around and I went outside. It was really bad weather. I went outside and I set up everything to work out and I started getting alerts on my phone. It was really windy. There were tornadoes very close. So I got a workout in inside and I stayed up all night. was like, cause I do, I got a bunch of friends to do it.

Jennifer Commins (32:01)
no.

no.

Dan (32:17)
And I stayed up like every night, every hour. was like, I gotta reset. It didn't count. I didn't do my outdoor workouts. I reset it, went the 90 days. And at the end, there was one, I would go to a coffee shop and they had a really good almond croissant that I would stare at like every day. And so March 1, I crushed that thing for, or April 1, I crushed that and some good beer. So it'll probably be something like that again to reward myself. How about you?

Jennifer Commins (32:17)
Right.

So I was actually born in 1975 and it's 2025 today and I'm be 50. And if you add those two numbers together, you get 75, Dan. So, and I'm doing 75 hard. I'm gonna get a tattoo of 75. Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited. I don't have any yet. You know, I've waited a little while in my life and I've never really felt like there was something really important that I wanted to have tattooed on me. But I think this one, this one is,

Dan (32:58)
Yes, I love that, I love that.

Jennifer Commins (33:14)
a good one. March 6th. So I'll be doing 75 hard on my birthday.

Dan (33:15)
That is awesome. When is your birthday? March 6th, fantastic. Wow, that's amazing. Okay, so anybody listening, if you're listening

before March 6th or shortly afterwards, shoot Jennifer a note. We'll share contact info later and wish her a happy birthday. So, okay, fantastic. I love that you're doing this. It's a cool program for anybody listening. It's a really nice way to reset. And it's really good to connect with other people who do it because it's not the easiest thing. So to know other people are doing it.

Jennifer Commins (33:28)
you

Thank you.

Dan (33:42)
together, there's some good camaraderie there. So great job doing that. Now, since we are on the Shopify happy hour, we've talked a lot about.

Jennifer Commins (33:48)
You too.

Dan (33:51)
being happy and beverages and working out and now let's dig into some marketing stuff. So before we do, know, obviously you know more about tea than probably anybody I've ever met. Didn't even know tea sommelier was a thing and that is wonderful that you are that. Can you talk about just why you started Pluck Tea? Where did the idea come from? And what's your journey been like getting that, getting it started?

Jennifer Commins (34:17)
Okay, yes, absolutely. So I grew up in a household of tea drinkers and both of my parents were born in the UK. So conservatively we'd have at least four cups of tea a day. Soon as we wake up, right after school, one right after dinner or with dinner, and then before bed we'd have another cup of tea. And this was black tea and it was, you know,

I would say commodity grade tea. This wasn't fancy tea. There were definitely rules though. So my dad pulled me aside one day and said, okay, here's how you make a proper cup of tea. You preheat the pot. This is how many tea bags. This is how you pour, you preheat the mugs. And we would help each other out, make tea for each other all the time. But his only rule was my tea must be this color. So sometimes, remember earlier we talked about time. I would forget and I would leave those tea bags in a little too long. But if I could produce the right Pantone shade of beige,

My dad was happy. So I grew up in a tea drinking household. I actually went into a sales and marketing career first in the high end furniture industry, obviously a very straight line from furniture sales and marketing to tea sommelier. But here's one of the things that happened in this job. I had to take people out to dinner all the time. Not such a bad deal, right? But I was out four or five nights a week with architects and designers and they always wanted to go to the best places. Great. So we were going to these wonderful

wonderful places and they would all be coffee drinkers typically. I would order the tea and it sucked.

It would show up in a scratch metal teapot, sad little lemon on the side, water's too cold, tea bag on the side, in a paper wrapper. And I'm talking about a restaurant that might be $100 a person for dinner. And this tea bag is a 15 cent item that you could find at your local supermarket. So I thought to myself, what a disconnect, right? Meanwhile, my coffee drinking friends are having these multi-layered, extravagant, beautiful espresso based things with the cures in them and whipped cream or whatever.

And it was such a production. I thought, well, this is just not fair. I almost became an activist and thought, someone should fix this. So while I was working in this career in the design world, I enrolled in chef school. I'm obsessed with food. love cooking. It's my probably biggest hobby outside of tea. So I'm at chef school. I'm doing this over a couple of years at a place called George Brown here in Toronto. And one day, I get an email from the school saying, we are now offering a tea

And I thought, my gosh, this is definitely for me. So I enrolled and I was hooked. I mean, what a fascinating topic. It fed into all of my history, my flavor preferences, learning about all the different cultivars and the regions and methods and types. It was just right up my alley. I became a super nerd about tea.

Then I started working for a guy who was, you know.

not the easiest person in the world. And I have to actually thank him because he was such a terrible boss that one day I said, you know what? I'm leaving. I'm going to go start a tea company. I'm done. And I walked out. I called my husband on the way home. had three kids in a mortgage. And I said, OK, I think I just quit my job and I'm going to start a tea company. he thankfully, once he got over the shock, he was into it. So we made some lifestyle changes and I started the company. That was in 2012. With a vision to fix restaurants.

tea. And so what became important and what was really key in the market at that time was farm to table and this idea of the hundred kilometer diet or hundred mile diet where we're sourcing as much product as close to home as possible. And so I took that trend of local and of course the international flavors of tea and kind of created something which was a hybrid of both. We worked with farmers and still do who grow lavender for us, ginseng in Ontario. We have cranberries that are growing in Nova Scotia.

Chaga mushrooms out of the BC boreal forest and we're integrating these beautiful ingredients into Into our teas, which also of course must include imported ingredients since we do not grow tea in Canada However, you do in the Carolinas. You've got you've got some tea growing close to you. I think actually Yeah, you do

Dan (38:34)
even know that I need it. So the only

plant I know that is kind of an interesting thing is so the town we're in is called Wilmington, North Carolina, and Venus flytraps only grow I think within about 30 miles natively. They're indigenous to here within 30 miles and that's it. All the Venus flytraps the rest of the world they have somehow they can trace their roots back to being originated here but I did not know about tea so that's that's super cool.

Jennifer Commins (38:49)
Wow.

Yeah, you

do have some tea growing in the United States and I believe it is quite close to you. Anyhow, that aside, I started the company really by calling on those same chefs that I was taking clients to and showing them the tea. I'll never forget one of them. His name's Jamie Kennedy and he was sort of, and he is somebody who very much was about the farm to table.

movement and you know, he was he is an incredible chef and he he no longer has restaurants in the city But I miss eating his food every day He reached his hand into this at the time He only had loose tea reached his hand into the bag of tea grabbed some and ate it

And my jaw dropped because I was like, chef, it's tea, it's tea. Like, I got to steep it for you. He said, no, no, no, this is how I judge quality. I don't care if it's tea or it's anything else. This is how I judge quality. He said, I love it. And he switched his tea program over to pluck tea in that very moment. He became one of the most important and early clients that we had. And then of course word of mouth and, you know, just hustling, getting in my car and driving to the next restaurant and doing a little tasting and hoping that I could win their business at the time.

else really in the city who's doing this. The idea of tea pairings kind of came up too and with the low alcohol, no alcohol movement that emerged over the last five, six years, you know, having tea pairings that were non-alcoholic and healthful and also...

perfect accompaniment to food. You know, you think about cultures around the world, many of them consume hot tea with their food. So it was sort of a natural fit. We grew restaurant by restaurant and cafe by cafe, and all of the recipes for the teas are created by me. Over the years, we are actually able to build our own factory, so we no longer relied on outside help to make our teas. We have our own tea bag machine right here at Pluck, and everything that we make is hand blended in small batches, about 10 kilos at a time. And we either

sell it as a loose tea or all of our teas are also available in a bagged option. And that's really been, you know, I think the key to the success has been to bring all of that expertise in-house and own our own manufacturing. Because our speed to market on innovation is faster than anyone else, but also our freshness, the time to market. Think about the journey of a tea leaf, Dan. You've got, imagine a tea leaf is growing in China and then a lot of the premium or specialty tea makers that are of any sort of large size, typically

don't make their own stuff. They use co-packers or blenders from around the world. And for some reason, Germany is a huge hub for a lot of these blending facilities. So imagine a tea leaf grown in China goes and lands in Germany and gets made into a blend. And maybe that blend is called birthday cake, which I've seen. And so it's got some sprinkles in it. It's got some flowers. It's great. It's got a flavor on it, probably vanilla. And then from there, it's going to go to Morocco.

Why Morocco? Because there's a company in Morocco that's full of these tea bag machines and these packing equipment lines where you can do a huge amount of volume in a short period of time at a very high level. then, great, so now it's in a box, it's in a bag, it's ready to go, gets on a container ship and it gets shipped to the Port of New York or Montreal or wherever it's going. And then it goes to a distribution warehouse, right? So it hangs on a distribution warehouse and then it maybe goes to the brand and then maybe it goes to a retail

warehouse for like a major retailer. And then from there, it's going to go to the retail store, right? And then from there, you Dan might go, birthday cake tea. I'm going to grab this. I'm going to buy some. The amount of time it takes for that poor tea leaf and the amount of carbon footprint generated from this supply chain is outrageous. So in a world where we're thinking about sustainability and freshness and all of these things, to me, it seemed to make a lot more sense to find the sources, have the tea leaves

sent directly to us here at Pluck Tea by ship and then blend everything in small batches ourselves, know, first of all, it's much more satisfying. We're very much entrenched in the process. We own it. And I think our customers taste the difference in the cup, you know. We're known for super fresh tea, very fragrant tea. I think you mentioned, you know, the aroma when you opened it up and how great it smelled. And that all comes from really time and freshness and care along the way.

Dan (43:27)
That's great, yeah, it's clear that the quality is several steps up from nearly anything you can get in the store for sure. And I love that you paired your background of food with tea and then you focused on getting into high quality restaurants near where you are. What were your other strategies to...

grow the brand early on. it sounds like you were just hustling, right? You were driving around to different restaurants, talking to chefs, sharing the love of your brand and tea with them.

Jennifer Commins (43:56)
yeah.

Dan (44:05)
What else did you do to get your brand off the ground? A lot of brands when they're first starting out, they don't really know exactly what to do and they're trying to do a million different things between growing organic social media or running ads or visiting restaurants or retailers or sending emails or making phone calls and they don't really know where to spend their time. What did you do besides going out and hustling and talking to chefs that looking back now you would say, yes, that was super helpful and that was a really good strategy to help us grow?

Jennifer Commins (44:36)
Well, I would say the hustling was critical because it gave us a proof point, it gave us legitimacy on the market, it gave us a competitive advantage, but it also gave us a paid sampling program. Imagine the pluck tea name is printed on all these menus. I mean, so many orders would be coming in to us at seven or eight o'clock at night. Why? Because people are having dessert and they're looking at the menu and they're looking at the tea tag and they're trying to figure out how do I get this at home? So it was kind of this incredible system, this sort of...

This was just a win-win to be at restaurants. It became this place where people were sampling our product with every meal. It was wonderful. Cafes then became the next port of call. And because of the sheer volume that they do in tea, and again, with that branded presentation of the plucked teas there, and then we started popping up some little retail destinations there. One thing that we didn't do, and I know we're on the Shopify happy hour, but I gotta say, my Shopify story is a little different than some of your other interviewees, I think.

happened

was 95 % of our business stand in 2019 was B2B.

Food service offices. did a lot with office tea because of course the office workers are going to these restaurants saying I want this tea at the office. I mean then the restaurants were like the mothership that fed a lot of growth and so many other channels. Yes we did some retail pop up stuff with some of the larger retailers in Canada. That was super fun. We did trade shows. I used to get up at four in the morning to do farmers markets to talk to people. And again that was great paid sampling. But we won the hearts and minds of people because we were frankly really humble and like work. And when I say we I kind of mean me because I

I think my first employee didn't happen until year two. But it was, you know, we built the company sustainably, one customer at a time, a lot of word of mouth, you know, and social media was super organic. was storytelling. It was new blends. was flavors and tastes. And hey, we just popped up at this restaurant and we had this like really great fan base. But then 2019 happens, early 2020 happens. We start hearing rumors of, know, that thing that happened in 2020 might actually impact us.

remember

being at a food, a restaurants Canada trade show, March, I feel like it was March 3rd 4th of that year. And I think we all know what happened by like the 14th of that year. My phone stopped ringing. We went from shipping well over a million dollars of tea a year to, you know, kind of zero. Unfortunately, we had to lay off our team. The government declared us an essential service because we're a food manufacturer. So we didn't have the option to just sort of...

pause and kind of good thing we didn't because it was about a two year odyssey up here in Canada with lockdowns, cetera. We had to, you know, that P word, that pivot word, we had to change it up. We had to change everything. So I locked myself in a room and I downloaded Shopify and I got out my iPhone. I took pictures of things and I kind of jumped off that ledge of I have no idea if someone's going to be here to catch me because I didn't know if our customers would be looking for Pluck

We didn't have an online store. We went from a standing start. And now we built it up into almost a $2 million channel, which is exciting and wonderful. But it was definitely, it was a little scary. What ended up happening was...

The people found us. They were looking for PLUK and we started to establish a pretty robust email list early on. People were signing up for the emails. I was telling stories of being in the trenches and trying to make this thing work. And I think because we were real and humble and honest and vulnerable about what

happened and people were concerned about the restaurant community and by virtue of that concern about the suppliers that fed the restaurant community. So we had this great groundswell of support. think one of the most important things that we did was really concentrate our base in one geographical area in the beginning because that you know happens to be the largest you know market in Canada being Toronto and it became it became our refuge and it became a place where you know people really

came out to support and that was phenomenal. But the Shopify store up until actually nine months ago was completely looked after by yours truly and I did graduate from taking pictures on my cell phone and using background remover but it was very much a DIY project and thrilled with the results.

Dan (49:07)
Well, very good for you for jumping in and taking care of that on your own and realizing that you did need to pivot as many brands did. And the successful ones are still around and the ones that did not are typically not, unfortunately. So good for you for doing that. So it sounds like your direct to consumer channel early on was really capturing demand that was created through all of your restaurant relationships. But to get to $2 million through a D2C channel, I imagine you're doing more than that now.

Jennifer Commins (49:31)
Exactly.

Dan (49:37)
and you're not just sort of there to receive orders, but I would guess that you're doing, you're going after some new customer acquisition somehow. Is that true? And if so, what are you doing to grow that channel?

Jennifer Commins (49:46)
We are.

We've had some pretty, I would say, inconsistent results using agencies over the last few years. think a lot of...

You know, founders probably have similar stories as technology changed and some got, you know, some stalled and some kept going in terms of their learnings and strategies, you know, changes. mean, gosh, it all happened so quickly. Today, what we're doing is a lot more organic content and we find that, you know, sharing the story of tea, sharing the story of pluck tea, the people behind the brand, providing value, you know, when you think about what do our customers want to hear from us? You know, probably they want to hear stuff like this, right? Talking to tea people.

That's what they want to hear. Doing static shots of like...

you know, here's a new package or, you know, here's a lineup of some things in a pretty looking kitchen. I don't think it's going to move the needle for Pluck Tea. I think a year ago or two years ago, that was just fine and it worked great. And the more money we put into meta ads, the more money came at the bottom in terms of, you know, profit on orders received. Today, we're looking at it quite differently. We have actually pulled a lot of our advertising dollars out of the main channels. We retained some...

some investment in the Google channel because it's highly, it converts, you know, there's high intent. It's converting really well. We're deploying some cash against launching at Amazon this year. Super exciting because we recognize that, you know, Amazon has changed the expectation window for people receiving their teas. You know, 24 hours seems to be the rule now and it should be free. So we figured out how to create a collection that is profitable for us, but also we'll get the product out to the customer at the right price.

And beyond that, we are actually pulling back from the more traditional advertising of Metta.

And, you know, TikTok is well, TikTok is in an interesting place. And in Canada, actually, we can't sell product on TikTok. That's a, that's a U.S. thing. So we, we do, you know, produce content, but it is going to be, we're going to rely a little more heavily on the organic stuff. And I think when we have offers, we have something compelling. If there's an unboxing video, for instance, that does really well. We're going to boost it. We might deploy some, some cash against it, but we're actually, yeah, we're not so excited to spend a lot of money on, on traditional advertising right now.

We're finding that the you know because we have a repeat customer rate of over 50 % And I guess we've got a lot of word-of-mouth. We are growing fairly steadily I should also mention we're bootstrapped. So we are not VC backed We don't have you know a lot of cash being invested in Plectee We sell something you know we buy something for 50 cents. We sell it for a dollar We take that profit and reinvested in the company so

little different than what we were looking at a few years ago where a lot of food brands and CPG brands in particular were heavily backed by VCs and

know, burn, baby burn, you know, just burn that cash, build up the top line as fast as possible and have a good time doing it, I suppose, has never been our model. You know, we've always had to be profitable and sustainable. So if ads aren't performing, we aren't placing them. And we, frankly, honestly, could not figure out how to make ads that performed in the T channel.

we just couldn't. So we're thinking about more organic content and moving the needle that way.

Dan (53:16)
If you were starting over and wanted to build your business from zero to your first million dollars in revenue on a shoestring budget, what would you do differently?

Jennifer Commins (53:27)
I would...

I know you said she's string budget, Dan, but I think one of the biggest shifts that happened in the business was building our factory and bringing all of that in-house and making every tea ourselves and owning the manufacturing in a way that our competitors don't. I would have definitely invested in that sooner and I also would have gotten into the tea fields sooner. When I started the business, I couldn't really afford to be flying to Japan or, you know, sourcing products from from all around the world. And and that's critically

important. It's also margin enhancing to be importing products directly from source. those two moves would have been something I would have done earlier, for sure. And it also gives a lot of great storytelling to the mix when you're traveling and you're meeting the team makers. So I would do that for sure.

Dan (54:21)
Okay, so now let's move on to the speed round. So each answer around like 30 to 60 seconds or so. So what is one of your most recommended books?

Jennifer Commins (54:26)
Okay, I'll try.

Ooh, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Dan (54:36)
What's an under-the-radar product or brand you've used and like but most people don't know about?

Jennifer Commins (54:44)
under the radar product, I would say, my gosh, can I come back to that one? Hold on. Yeah, I need to come back to that one.

Dan (54:52)
Sure, sure.

Yep, we can come back. We can

come back. What's one thing in life you do better than most people, and how do you do it? So something you are just naturally good at.

Jennifer Commins (55:06)
I'm really good at training. I'm very good at explaining ideas and hopefully getting people enthusiastic about the subject of tea. I love to educate and share my knowledge.

Dan (55:19)
Tell me about your favorite shopping experience online or offline.

Jennifer Commins (55:25)
My favorite shopping experience is actually an experiential one. is a, I'm not gonna name them, because they're actually a little bit in my space, but there is a product line that they're heavily focused in organic cosmetics and shampoos and things like that. And one of the things that they do in their stores, which I think is so cool, is when you walk in, they sense that you have time, they'll pull you aside and they'll give you a hand massage.

And every time they do this, and every time I have the time, I swear, my cart size doubles. I'm buying everything. I'm trying all the things. I come home with big bags full of incredible stuff that I love to use. And it's just a little touch, but I think in a world where we're so disconnected, having someone you don't know in an environment that's about wellness and feeling good about yourself and other people in the world come up and offer you a hand massage is a beautiful thing.

Dan (56:22)
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It's a wonderful gesture. you know, I think I always say that retailers when they do VIP events and they have some of their best customers or they want to do, you know, welcome new customers and they offer champagne or food or something like that. There's just the law of reciprocity, Where if somebody does something for you, you feel like you should do something for them. But a hand massage is pretty intimate. So that's really cool. That's really cool. I haven't heard of that.

Jennifer Commins (56:45)
I know.

Dan (56:49)
That's great, that's great. Okay, so circling back, if you have an idea, what's an under-the-radar product or brand you have used and like, but most people do not know about?

Jennifer Commins (57:02)
Okay, I think this qualifies. I had to think about it because in my circle it's not under the radar, but it might be to others. There is a tonic water brand called Fever Tree. I don't know if you're familiar with them. But what I love about Fever Tree is first of all, their flavors are fantastic. They've elevated a product that really was like Pluck Tea or like tea in general, kind of a, know, it's an older product. Tonic water isn't new. But when three quarters of your drink is tonic water, make it great was sort of their call to action.

and it is so clear and focused, and the product delivers, and I just think it's a wonderful thing. I actually love it cut with their soda water as a non-alcoholic sort tonic thing. So I would say, know, fever tree is one that maybe people don't think about often, but I really applaud what they've done.

Dan (57:51)
I definitely see similarities with what you were doing with Pluck and what they were doing as well. awesome. Where can people connect with you to learn more?

Jennifer Commins (58:00)
Well, I'm on LinkedIn at Jennifer Commons. I'm fixing tea one cup at a time. You can also find me at Pluck Teas. So our handle is at Pluck Teas with an S and you can also find me at PluckTeas.com.

Dan (58:15)
Fantastic. And you mentioned that you have a cool offer for our audience who might be interested in trying pluck.

Jennifer Commins (58:22)
I sure do, so I would love to offer 20 % off of first order for your listeners with the code HAPPYHOUR20.

Dan (58:32)
Awesome, anybody out there who's interested in very high quality tea, this stuff is awesome. I will definitely vouch for it. It's some of the best tea I've ever had, if not the best tea I've ever had. And one of the guys on my team is really big in Earl Grey. So I gave him a couple of the satchels and him and his wife tried.

What is this stuff? So it is definitely high quality. Yeah, yeah. So you were definitely, definitely doing the right thing. So Jennifer, thank you so much for fixing tea one cup at a time through Pluck Tea, sharing your expertise and insights with our audience and bringing a really high quality product to restaurants and to consumers all over and for joining us on the Shopify happy hour.

Jennifer Commins (58:51)
that's so nice.

Thank you so much, Dan. Thanks for having me. And enjoy the tea.