Meatless Monday: One Billion Bottles Sold!

Honest Tea reached a milestone late last week. Parent company Coca Cola announced on June 17 that Honest Tea had sold its one billionth beverage! 

This might seem like an unusual topic for a Meatless Monday post; Honest Tea is indeed meatless, but it is a beverage, not a food. But please bear with me as I spin the tale; it raises some interesting questions.

My favorite!

Honest Tea was conceived in New Haven, just a few blocks from where I live. In 1994, Barry Nalebuff, a professor at the Yale School of Management, and his student, Seth Goldman, discovered they shared the passion for the idea of a less sweet, but flavorful beverage. “We were thirsty,” they say. In 1997, the two reconnected. Seth, now graduated and working, had decided he would have to create a drink himself; Barry had just returned from India where he had been analyzing tea for a case study. Barry had even thought up a name for bottled tea made with real tea leaves — Honest Tea. Seth quit his job and started brewing tea in his kitchen. Just five weeks later, an interested buyer ordered 15,000 bottles!

Honest Tea was the first tea company to introduce a USDA-certified organic bottled tea, as well as the first to make a Fair Trade Certified bottled tea.

Coca-Cola invested in the company in 2008 and helped expand the distribution of Honest beverages. Coca-Cola purchased Honest Tea in March, 2011. Seth continues to run the company as President and “TeaEO.” Honest Tea is now sold in over 100,000 outlets. 

Coca-Cola is a multi-national corporation, makes a major portion of its profits selling drinks made with high fructose corn syrup, and is one of the largest opponents of GMO labeling. Many question how Honest Tea could choose to align itself with such a company. Indeed, the Organic Consumers Association has called for a boycott of a number of well-known organic product lines owned by companies who oppose GMO labeling. One of those targeted is Honest Tea. 

Many situations are not simply either black or white, however. In my mind, this is one of them. I do not know Seth, but I am acquainted with Barry. I asked him last summer, in the midst of the Organic Consumers Association boycott campaign, why Honest Tea had partnered up with Coke, and he suggested I read this piece Seth published in his blog last August — “All in the Family.” It came down to distribution. Honest Tea had a great product and mission, but it lacked a large distribution system. Coca-Cola could get their product out there.

Like the beloved liberal uncle at the conservative family’s holiday gathering, Honest Tea brings a different voice to the Coke family table. Seth wrote, “There are bound to be moments when our enterprise does not share all of the same ideas as our parent company. But there’s never been any pressure to compromise Honest Tea’s products, our ingredients, or our commitment to our mission…The company’s Honest Kids products do not contain any high fructose corn syrup. In fact, Honest Tea refused to yield to pressure from parent company Coca-Cola to remove the “no high fructose corn syrup!” language from the Honest Kids packaging.” Seth writes in his Letter from the Tea-Eo in Honest Tea’s 2013 Mission Report, “So we operate in that grey zone between what’s ideal and what’s possible and each decision brings trade offs.” [Sounds like my life..] You can read the full report here and make your own decision. 

I have chosen to support Honest Tea—a great product—despite the parent company’s intense involvement to block required GMO labeling — for the same reasons I still buy Ben & Jerry's fro-yo even though it is owned by Unilever. 

One billion bottles is a lot of tea. In honor of National Iced Tea Month (the month of June), Honest Tea enlisted the help of Sysomos, Inc. to look at every tweet about iced tea over the last year and to make some sense of the data. Based on the 117,441 tweets they gathered, they came up with an interesting infographic about who these tea drinkers are. I tweet so I know I’m in there somewhere.

Honest Tea is the drink I grab when I’m on the go — Mango Peach Açai in the glass bottle when I can find it. I wonder how many of those one billion beverage units were mine?

Happy Monday. Happy Summer. Stay hydrated. Have a great week!

On Mondays I often blog on food, food issues, or gardening in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

Saturday Short Subjects: GMO or Non-GMO? That is the Question.

On November 6, besides helping to elect the next president of the US, voters in California will consider a proposition which has been denied to residents of other states. They will have the opportunity to vote on an initiative requiring labeling of all genetically modified food sold in grocery stores in their state. 

If Proposition 37 passes, California will become the first state in the nation to require labels on genetically engineered food. The lobbying for and against the measure has heated up drastically over the last few weeks. The San Jose Mercury News reported that as of Thursday, August 23, proponents had raised $2.8 million, donated by individuals as well as organic businesses including Nature’s Path and Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. Opponents had succeeded in raising nearly $25 million. 

It should be no surprise that Monsanto is the largest single contributor to the opposition,  with a donation of $4.2 million. It was Monsanto’s threat to sue the state of Connecticut that caused the portion of  CT-HB5117 requiring labeling of GMO foods to be withdrawn. 

Other large and well-known corporations have joined Monsanto in opposing Prop 37. This pie chart clearly shows who they are and how much they have contributed to the war chest.

But what may surprise you is some of the ‘organic’ brands owned by Prop 37 opponents. The Cornucopia Institute clearly spells out the opposition and the companies they own, and what companies support the measure. 

The Organic Consumers Association is asking consumers to boycott brands owned by the opposition, and to go to their Facebook pages and consumer response lines to call them out.

This is no small request. Many of my grocery cart items are on the left hand side of this chart. I haven’t yet decided whether or not I can forgo them all. But it’s food for thought, and I’ve started in on the comments already – first one just sent off to Honest Tea.

In 2008 California passed Proposition 2, which prohibited the close confinement of farm animals in crates, so there is hope that this measure, too, might pass. Passage of CA Prop 37 could pave the way for passage of similar measures in the 19 other states with proposed GMO labeling. 

If you believe in the consumer’s right to know, here’s a chance to “Vote with your fork [or spoon or straw or bowl]. 

Why Saturday Short Subjects? Some readers may recall  being dropped at the movie theater for the Saturday matinee — two action-packed feature films with a series of short subjects (cartoons or short movies, sometimes a serial cliffhanger) sandwiched in between. Often the short subjects were the most memorable, and enjoyable, part of the morning. That explains the name. The reason behind these particular posts is that we are all short on time. My Short Subject posts should not take me as long to write or you as long to read (or try).