The Truth Behind the Defenders of Taste Tour

People keep asking me: Eric, how did you come up with the idea for the Defenders of Taste Tour? Well, I after tasting my competitors, it was hard NOT to! From healthy, all natural drinks that taste like cardboard to saccharine sweet options that use high fructose corn syrup (have you ever squeezed and ear of corn?  I have never seen sugar come out!), and leave you with a chemical aftertaste there was nothing available that marketed to consumers’ taste buds and was a also a healthy option.  That’s why I originally developed New Leaf teas, which are truly all natural and are sweetened with pure organic cane sugar.

Once we developed our outstanding teas, I started receiving letter after letter and email after email exclaiming, “I Love New Leaf,” or “New Leaf is the best ever,” or even, “New Leaf is amazing. I stopped drinking Snapple because New Leaf is just better!” It was very clear to me that once people tried New Leaf teas, they were hooked. Now we just needed to let people more know about us. So we started small: we created Facebook and Twitter fan pages, and we started to populate our YouTube channel with consumer interviews. But what was missing from those was the personal interaction with consumers.

So I came up with the Defenders of Taste Tour, designed not only to defend consumers’ taste buds, but also to help prevent them from making bad taste. The tour, which is currently taking place in NYC, has many facets.  First, it aims at introducing New Leaf to a lot of consumers. We know we are a young brand. So we’d like to take this opportunity to formally “introduce” ourselves to the greater NY-metro area.

Second, the Defenders will educate consumers – possibly even current New Leaf consumers.  Are you aware of the health benefits of tea? How about the fact that organic cane sugar has been empirically proven to be better for you than high fructose corn syrup – which has been scientifically linked to obesity? And, not only do we make the best tea in the world, but also the most delicioius lemonades!

Finally, The Defenders of Taste Tour is about having fun and making a lasting, positive connection with the most important people to us: YOU. So, if you happen to be in the five boroughs this summer, and see our New Leaf-green Defender of Taste car, run on over, grab a cold sample and pose with the Defenders. Or, track them on our Facebook page with Foursquare and you’ll know where to find them when they’re out and about causing a scene and taking some video. Who knows, maybe you could star in the next New Leaf video that goes viral!

Eric Skae

Founder and CEO

New Leaf is a publicly traded company under the ticker symbol NLEF.

Putting Bottles On Shelves

Hi.  I'm Eric Skae.  I am the founder and CEO of New Leaf Brands.  I put beverages on shelves.  I am new to blogging, but here is my story...

One of the opportunities I noticed was that the mainstream iced tea category lacked a healthy and great tasting beverage. I was surprised—many of the top iced tea brands contain artificial ingredients and my gut instinct told me that people deserved something better—a beverage that tasted great and contained only natural ingredients.

In 2004, and working with a shoestring budget, I created New Leaf Brands. I enjoyed spending several years developing our formula to get the taste just right—New Leaf was founded to set a new standard in taste for iced teas, which is why we’re known as “The Official Beverage of Taste™”. We seem to be succeeding at this because “Everyday with Rachael Ray” called our White Tea with Strawberry the “best tasting white tea” and our Green Tea with Mango just won first place at the North American Tea Championships.

In developing New Leaf’s line of iced teas, I deliberately chose all-natural flavors and selected the highest quality ingredients, which includes 100-percent organic cane sugar. The result is a better taste experience that rivals all other iced teas. From my experience, iced tea tastes better when it isn’t obscured by high fructose corn syrup and artificial ingredients.

According to the Ancient Tea Masters, teas are classified into six different tea families by color. For example, due to the bluish reflections of the Oolong Tea leaf in its dried form, Oolong Tea is classified as a “Blue Tea”.

I’m proud that today, New Leaf offers 13 all-natural and creative flavors of iced teas. Some of the flavors, like White tea with Honeydew Melon and White Tea with Strawberry aren’t offered by other brands. Following is an outline of our unique flavors:

• White Tea Flavors – Strawberry and Honeydew Melon

• Green Tea Flavors -- Plum, Mango and Ginseng & Honey

• Blue Tea Flavors -- Peach, Lemon, Diet Peach, Diet Lemon, and Raspberry

• Black Tea Flavors -- Sweet Tea, Mo-Tea-To (Mint & Lime), Unsweetened

Also, we introduced four new Lemonade flavors—Black Cherry, Strawberry, Homemade Lemonade and “The Tiger,” a refreshing blend of half-iced tea and half-lemonade a few weeks ago. So far, so good.

My goal for New Leaf was to develop an everyday beverage for the everyday consumer. To make this happen, our strategy includes focusing on convenience stores, delis, restaurants and pizzerias, in addition to health food stores and grocery store chains.

To ensure that New Leaf’s spectrum of iced teas are accessible to as many people as possible, our sales team is aggressively expanding our distribution both nationally and internationally. Our goal is to secure full national distribution within the next few years.

New Leaf has a strong presence in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and; in fact, our beverages are carried in Whole Foods throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southern California, Las Vegas, Arizona and Hawaii. Through recent agreements, we have doubled our distribution in the New York City metro area; expanded into southern California; secured Arizona and also established a solid presence in Chicago. New Leaf is quickly growing its distribution in Florida and the Southeast and is focusing on continued growth in the Midwest and West and Northwest.

We invite readers to follow New Leaf on Twitter, subscribe to New Leaf’s channel on You Tube and become a fan on Facebook.

Eric Skae
Founder and CEO

P.S. Bill, I wrote it!