Food & Travel...

Did you know that tea was the second-most popular beverage in the world?! Not only that, but for people in many cultures, tea has come to represent a kind of ritual; a powerful drink that cleanses the body and sprit.

Numi Tea sets out to create that awareness in all of its customers. The tea looks just like flowers. They use full, hand-blended leavesinstead of the dusty, leftover pieces, and the tea bags are made of GMO-freenatural filter paper. The tea is organic, of course, and with no added flavors.Surprisingly, and this was news to me also, lots of commercial teas still useadded flavors. Even the tea’s packaging is 100 percent post-consumer recycled packaging, and is packaged and handled by numerous disabled workers. It’s a tea of the people! Best of all, it’s a family-owned business, run by two siblings, Reem and Ahmed Rahim.

The co-owners were raised in Iraqand often had drunk dry desert lime teasan, based on a spice known as numi, or “citrus” in Arabic. Numi alsosells caffeine-free teasans, a term derived from the French "tisane"for brewed herbal beverage. Numi introduced teasans with rooibos and honeybushfrom Africa and lemon myrtle from Australian rainforests. This type of tea wasn’t at all available in the United States, so the company began to import it,along with other types of exotic teas. Almost immediately the tea rose to become the eighth-most popular tea on the U.S.market, which basically means, you have to get yourself some! It is the fastest growing of the top 10 tea companies in the world. This is a company that beganjust in Reem’s apartment.

Ahmed handles the business side of things. He owned a fewtea shops in Europe for a few years before teaming upwith his sister. Reem had no prior business experience. She’s an artist. So sheused her skills to create the companies packaging and overall image. Reemexplains the family's basic philosophy, “Our message is simple: art and tea gotogether as ways to helps us revive our spirits and experience the simple pleasures of life.”

There is a huge list of teas available on Numi Tea’s website. They ship to anywhere in the world, and wholesale is also available.You can even encourage your favorite local cafés to invest in the product. Check out the website here: Numi Tea. Teatime awaits you. Happy sipping!