NEW ROUTES THROUGH CAPITALISM
choice. During my experience in the mutual fund business, we found people working in hospitals and their retirement portfolio would be investing in tobacco companies. Until you helped people understand that they were doing that, it never crossed their mind. They were making a choice: it just wasn’t one they were conscious of. I think most of us would agree that we do share common values about the hopes for the planet, but the gap is between the values and the actions.
places we never had our product before. BT: In a market space that is growing more crowded, Honest Tea makes a strong effort to remain relevant. What keeps you experimenting?
SG: One reason is because it’s fun. Another reason is because it’s part of how we grow. The more we can keep doing things differently, the more opportunities we’ll see. Every time we can go to a retailer and say, “You don’t have a product like this,” BT: You started out catering to grocery they’re likely to take that product. Our stores’ needs. As Honest Tea has grown, first innovation in 1999 was to be the first have you changed the customer that you to make an organic bottled tea. That’s had have in mind when making your teas? a big influence on the rest of the beverage industry, and you’ll see a lot of other SG: We’re not changing the products. companies offering organic drinks. The What has changed is our reach. For our same with fair trade, that also pushed the first ten years, at least 75 percent of our envelope. Whenever we find an innovasales was in natural foods stores. Now, in tion that especially furthers our mission, the past three years, we’re reaching con- that’s when we really get behind it. One sumers who are in college or in a conve- of the big innovations that we’re working nience store or a drug store. Those are on is to be able to incorporate a new kind
of resin into the bottle that we use. We’re working on a project with Coca-Cola to be able to use a resin made out of plant-based material, and so it would continue to be recyclable, but it would be renewable, and that’s very exciting from a sustainability perspective. BT: Honest Tea has kept a pretty flat administrative structure and a start-up atmosphere despite your tremendous growth and purchase by Coca-Cola. Why did you choose this path for your business? SG: One of the reasons we succeeded is that we have a really distinct culture, identity, and way we do things. We knew, and Coke knew, it would be a mistake to have Coke buy the company and then get all corporate. If we started walling people off and creating executive suites, it would have changed the way we operated the brand. It’s nice that we’ve been able to keep growing, but, at the same time, maintain the culture that got us there. !(
Interviewed by Alex Chuka
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