Steve Schwartz: Founder & CEO of Art of Tea

Episode 659

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, we’re joined by Steve Schwartz, the visionary Founder and CEO of Art of Tea. What started as a passion for Ayurveda and the healing properties of herbs has grown into a leading tea brand, sourcing the finest organic teas from around the world.
Steve, widely known as a Master Tea Blender, has traveled the globe to build relationships with farmers, blending tradition with innovation to create unique, high-quality teas. His journey—from blending teas in his living room to partnering with luxury hotels, restaurants, and wellness brands—is an inspiring example of turning passion into a thriving business.
During our conversation, Steve shares how he built Art of Tea, the importance of ritual in daily life, and how he balances honoring tea’s rich history while pushing the industry forward. We also dive into the power of mindfulness, sustainability in sourcing, and what’s next for Art of Tea.
Whether you're a tea lover, an entrepreneur, or someone looking to bring more mindfulness into your day, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration. Tune in to hear Steve’s incredible story and learn why tea is more than just a drink—it’s an experience. Now on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. I am so excited to have my next guest. Steve Schwartz is the founder and CEO of Art of Tea, a brand that has redefined the way we experience tea. Steve’s journey started with Ayurveda and preventative medicine, where he discovered the healing power of herbs, and that passion led to Art of Tea, now a leading purveyor of organic and specialty teas served in many hotels, restaurants, homes, and, of course, direct to consumer as well. So Steve is the not only the founder and CEO, but the master tea blender. We were just chatting before we hit record that we started in the beverage industry about the same time, so reminiscing about the early days. So, so excited to finally meet you, Steve. Welcome.

Steve Schwartz 1:36
It’s an honor to be here. Yeah, this is gonna be fun. Super,

Kara Goldin 1:39
super fun. So let’s start at the beginning. So what inspired you to create Art of Tea, and how would you describe its original mission? Yeah,

Steve Schwartz 1:50
that’s a great question. I’m gonna go way, way back in time. So I’m in my late 40s now, and when I started the company I was in my it was in 22,004 right? So, so I’m going to go even farther beyond that. I got a full paid scholarship out of high school to go to college. And about six months into it, my mom got diagnosed with brain cancer, so I dropped out of college, I moved out of state, back to go live with her, and while I was living with her, we went we were just on allopathic Western medicine. There’s nothing wrong with Western medicine. It just didn’t work for my mom. So we went from one Western doctor to another Western doctor, some of the top hospitals in Los Angeles, and nothing worked for my mom. So after 10 months of being her primary caretaker, she passed, and it really woke me up. It got me thinking more about health and wellness, and I wanted to learn more about, like, my my body and you know, the healing aspects, other healing modalities that are out there and help my family, my community, my loved ones. But I didn’t want to be a doctor. I didn’t want to be an acupuncturist and sick needles and people. And there’s nothing wrong with either those. It just wasn’t my path. So I started a research and at that time, this was like 1995 I think, and there, was, there was no like alternative medicine and preventive medicine. They weren’t a thing. Integrative Medicine. These were not terms that were thrown around. So I was looking in, you know, trying to find different helium modalities, and I found this book written by this doctor who was running a school in New Mexico called the Ayurvedic Institute. So I flew out there, fell in love with the concepts behind Ayurveda, which really date back over 5000 years ago, based out of India. And this school combined eastern and western medicine together. And so I really fell in love with the alchemy of blending herbs and teas and botanicals while I was studying at the school, and I was chosen as the only student advanced enough to work with the masters at my school and how to blend and how to source. And this is before the internet really took off. I mean, there was this, like, one online store that people were starting to use for books, called Amma, something and and other than that, like I was faxing old, you know, suppliers in India make phone calls overseas, which was like, $2 and something a minute. And I remember, I was on a phone call with someone and overseas, and I needed to order ginkgo. And I was on the phone, and it was just in my mind, like, wow, this is $2 and, like, 50 cents a minute. And I said, I need to order some ginkgo. And they said, Do you need ginkgo on an eastern slope or a western slope next to a river? And I said, it doesn’t matter. I just need ginkgo. And he said, No, sir, it does matter, and you should come here yourself and experience it. So I was intrigued. I saved up my money. I worked four different jobs, cleaning houses, working at the school, being in school for. Time, waiting tables, doing whatever I could. I saved all my money, I got a backpack, and I, you know, after finishing this school and I started traveling around the world to find the best teas and botanicals possible. So I had no idea that I was going to start a tea company. I just knew that I was a huge tea nerd. I wanted to learn from the farmers. I wanted to feel the soil. I wanted to connect with where these plants and botanicals are being grown. And I started bringing this stuff back for friends and family, and I caught the attention of some chefs in LA including Wolfgang Puck, and they knew, they came to me and they said, listen, see, we know where our coffee comes from. We know where our wine comes from, and our chicken and our asparagus, but we don’t know that much about tea. Can you help educate us? And so we defined the tea service program for Wolfgang Puck fine dining. And then Caesar’s Palace said, Hey, we heard about you as this tea guy. Can you train a tea Somalia? Is there such a thing? Amazing. So there was no such thing as a tea sommelier at that time. So I trained the first tea sommelier at Caesars Palace about a year, year and a half, they’d fly me out once a month, and I trained the first tea Somalia in the US. So this is really sort of the fundamental I was working out of my living room at the time, and I was blending and packing. I had no investors. It really was. We had a baby on the way, and we were living in my mother in law’s house, and you know, these small batches that I was importing, because you couldn’t import these high quality teas at that time only, so you can get was the stuff you can find in the supermarkets. So I would go on these sourcing trips, bring stuff back. I’d blend in my living room, and it really grew from there, and eventually I had to hire someone. I

Kara Goldin 6:44
love it. So this, so you launched in 2004 and then correct, yes. So how long did it take you from, I guess, from being at the institute, to actually launching your first product? From being

Steve Schwartz 6:58
at the institute, I didn’t know that I was going to start a tea company. Wasn’t until Yeah, 22,004 I was like, I think I’m gonna try this tea thing. I saw what happened with coffee, the wave I saw what happened with beer and wine and spirits. And I thought, tea is gonna have a moment. And beyond just having a moment, it’s the second most consumable beverage in the world, right behind water, perhaps there’s opportunity for people to really connect with us on a deeper level, where it’s not just, you know, a commodity, it’s something that can allow ritual and health and wellness, a moment in time, for people to be able to take the leaves and water and be able to connect on a deeper level, even if it’s at the office or If it’s, you know, at home at the end of the day or start of the morning. So tea kind of means something a little bit different for everyone. So I thought that might be an opportunity to educate, to elevate that experience for people. And so our mission really hasn’t shifted. Going back to your original question, like, where do we start in terms of intention, and where are we today? So our mission, it really is, to impact as many lives as we can through tea. And when people think about tea, they need to add lemon and sugar and honey and all these other things to it. But when they have a high quality tea experience, and what we source at Art of Tea is the top one to 2% of all teas that are produced in the world. They’re hand crafted, organic whenever possible. We’re taking it. We’re doing our own blending and packing. So it’s just a whole different, elevated experience

Kara Goldin 8:30
that’s awesome. So when you think back on, you know, those early days, whether it was working with Wolfgang Puck or Caesar’s Palace, is there anything else that really kind of helped you to become what you are today? I mean, you did a lot of traveling and educating around where the product came from. I think that that it’s awesome too. But was there any partnership or anything that was like that you could pinpoint it. I mean, it’s funny, because I think of the hint journey as like a timeline, and it wasn’t just one, it was like multiple things along the way, but in those early days, what would you say, where you were like, Okay, we got this.

Steve Schwartz 9:15
So I remember reading E Myth, and in the book E Myth by David Gerber, right? Michael Gerber, sorry, but Michael Gerber, a phenomenal book, I think anyone that’s even remotely thinking about starting a business, it’s, it’s sort of like the the How to Bible of starting a business, a great little story. I’m sure it’s been mentioned on your podcast. So one of the things that he recommended was build a chart, build a chart of the all the different positions that you need within your organization. And so I put that, and by that was me as me packing and customer service and blending and sourcing and accounts payable, accounts receivable, sales, market, everything. And so what I, what I started to do, is. Put my name in all these different positions in pencil, and then start to figure out, what do I really, really suck at, and there’s a lot of things I’m bad at, and what am I really, really good at? And start filling the gaps with things that I’m really bad at, that someone else might love doing, love spending the majority of their day and time doing. So I started to fill those charts up in those areas. So that really had the biggest impact. And being able to find people that can really track with our mission, that are into the idea that we’re here to impact as many lives as we can through tea. So that made the biggest difference. And in terms of investors, you know, I’ve had a firm belief since day one that the investment really should come from the customer side. So if we have orders coming in, that should be able to funnel the business so there no artificial investment coming in. Really, the sales should pay for the health and wellness of the business. With that said, I did start with Aunt visa and Uncle MasterCard, so I had $1,000 credit on one credit card and a $1,500 credit on another credit card, and I couldn’t even believe that they allowed that for me, even at that time, because I was just starting out. But I was my wife, who I’m super grateful for, was very diligent in helping me make sure that we paid that every single month, and so that discipline helped us be uber responsible for our finances then and still today.

Kara Goldin 11:29
What would you say were some of the biggest obstacles in those early days? I mean, you’ve talked about a lot of things you didn’t have experience in the tea industry, but you’re figuring it out as you went along. And you got some incredible partnerships early on, but there had to be some obstacles that you hit where you just thought, this is terrible, like a bad batch that you know you had sunk everything into I can only imagine, God, you

Steve Schwartz 12:04
know, I It’s funny. We’re talking about things that happened 21 years ago, and at the same time, every day is day one. Every day we’re starting fresh. Every day there are new challenges that we’re facing, and we have to approach it with fresh eyes and fresh perspective. And so those challenges could be, we’re dealing with an agricultural product, and we don’t know, just because there’s, you know, total crop, abundant crop one year, there could be total crop failure, or 50% crop failure the next year. And some challenges are, you know, with with spam and with the security that’s happening in terms of internet, you know, I’m sure most listeners have gotten an email from a prince in in Africa saying that they can wire them money, or, you know, they can send you money. So we got an email from the State Department saying the White House would like to do a blend with you, and we ignored it like this is spam. This is not true. There’s no way this is real. They followed up and said, Hey, we’re not sure if you got this, but we’re really serious. We think that we’ve identified you as being an ideal model for gifting on behalf of the White House that could really represent the United States and gift it to other presidents and ambassadors and other world leaders. Is that, is that okay? And here’s the first lady signature, here’s the President’s signature, here’s the state logo. And so that was a new challenge for us, like, Okay, well, what is, what does this mean, and what do we do around this, and how can we best show up. So this, this fun collaborative experience, going from our living room to now working on blends for for the White House was, was, was huge. You know, we’ve had other really dynamic, fun collaborations, from Sony to try guys to a number of other really fun collaborations, or Google headquarters slack, the communication tool, we do a custom blend for them. So I’d say these custom projects have been really interesting, lots of learning with each time we do these great collaborations.

Kara Goldin 14:11
Love it. So you wrote a book, and in the book, you emphasize the importance of ritual in your daily life. So incorporating tea rituals helps individuals find balance and mindfulness as well. But how has that helped you to become a better entrepreneur, and I guess, a better human just by, just by incorporating that into what you do every day?

Steve Schwartz 14:38
Yeah, so I have three daughters, and so we all, we all come together at the end of the day, and we have a tea kettle. The tea kettle whistles, so that old school classic signal where we could all come together and at the end of the day, and we unwind, we talk about what happened throughout the day, our learnings, our best practice. So. Failures, funny moments, and so tea has allowed the flow of conversation to happen within our family. So on a personal level, it’s a ritual that we all really look forward to, and even on the weekend. So one of the things that we do is we do a full digital detox as a family. We go from sundown one night to sundown, the another night for full 2425 hour period, we totally disconnect, and we make a special tea. So we tap off of technology, and we tap in through the presence of the moment. And tea really is that, that additional conduit. So I’m not saying people need to go through that extreme of turning off their technology for a 24 hour period, but for me, just taking seven minutes out, just seven minutes just turning the phone off, getting off social for a bit, selecting the leaves, getting the water ready, watching the water boil and allowing the leaves to fully unfurl in the cup, and being really mindful in that process, what happens? It’s so powerful. What happens is, through the catechins, the polyphenols, the flavonoids and the caffeine, those different chemical compounds within tea are known to create what’s called t mind, so with a high quality tea experience, like ones that you’d find it Art of Tea by drinking this. These are the same teas that are used in Zen monasteries throughout Japan for a tool for focus, for meditation. So you don’t necessarily crash in the same way that you do with coffee. And I love coffee. I definitely go to the dark side from time to time with a good cup of coffee, but tea has a different, elevated experience you’re able to tap into the moment, be fully present, but yet, without the jitters and without the crash,

Kara Goldin 16:47
definitely, when you think about your tea blends that you’ve created, is there one that holds special significance for you?

Steve Schwartz 16:57
So you know, what we’re what we’re known for is we Earl gray creme. And this is such a it’s such a phenomenal P, it’s so good, right? Yeah, I’m so glad you like it. And essentially, when I was yeah, I became obsessed with creating these different formulas. I had, like a little notebook by the side of my bed. I was talking about this in the book as well, right? Write down these different recipes, even in the middle of the night, or be inspired by rain outside, or by my wife’s, you know, shampoo, or whatever it might be. There’s different things that have inspired different essences and different flavors that we’ve created, but Earl gray creme, what I noticed was Earl gray. What makes Earl gray? Earl Gray, it’s basically most Earl Grey’s are black tea with bergamot. Bergamot says citrus fruit. And so people tend to add cream to kind of cut through that citrus, and then they also add sugar to kind of round out that that tannin profile that you get from the black tea. So instead of adding all those different additives, what we decided to do was keep it really clean. Let’s add a true authentic Italian bergamot oil and a touch of French vanilla. And French Vanilla is more this Eggy, creamy style French vanilla. And so what you get is this perfect blend of black tea combined with that high citrus note and this nice, round, sweet finish to it. And one of the things that we do as a ritual as a family is we add fresh mint to it as well. So just sort of a take of a

Kara Goldin 18:30
great idea. No, I love it when you think about sourcing, you source throughout the world. Is there one part of the world that has been really difficult to actually, you know, source from today that maybe wasn’t few years ago.

Steve Schwartz 18:45
That’s a great question. So we, because we focus so heavily on organic, we, we are one of the largest suppliers of organic teas in the market. India has been very challenging. India went from seven major organic certifiers around the entire country, to now two and so we work with farmers. Like, for example, there are monks that we work with in South India, and I still go on these sourcing trips, and I love interacting with them and seeing how they live, where they’ll spend about four hours to six hours a day of learning, like deep learning, and four to six hours a day of working in in processing and and growing tea, and they actually employ 45 families within the community, and the way that they produce the tea, and you can taste the effect. You can taste the the the love and the passion and care that goes into this. And they don’t even know how to work with pesticides, so working with organic and working with some of these different small farms can sometimes be really challenging, making sure that we’re doing everything we can so so some of our teas have been held up for about six to nine months because of some of the bureaucracy, but we’ve been able to overcome a lot of those challenges. And. Um, and making sure that we’re still working with these small farms and and really making that impact on a global scale as well as on a local scale.

Kara Goldin 20:10
Are there certain regions that have cropped up as being super great for you now that that maybe weren’t a few years ago, and from a tea production standpoint,

Steve Schwartz 20:21
yeah, I’m always on a discovery. So first, what is tea? So, you know, sometimes people think of tea as so many different things, as a function, as a tool. So we know that coffee comes from a coffee bean, and tea actually comes from one evergreen shrub called camellia sinesis, so some little wine, and in order for you to have a good glass of wine, it has to come from grapes. But there’s so many different kinds of grapes. And is it from Sonoma or Napa or Bordeaux and and who’s the artisan that’s crafting it, and how’s it stored? So the same sort of thing happens with tea. All true tea comes from Camila senesis, and therefore you have white and green oolong, black and poor tea. And it depends on the artisan that’s making the family, like that’s that’s processing it, or the estates that are running it. But if it’s not from Camila sunesis, then it’s not a tea. So chamomile, for example, is not a tea. It’s in a completely different category called tizon. And by the way, you now know more than 99% I

Kara Goldin 21:24
know I did not know this, but it’s interesting. Yeah,

Steve Schwartz 21:27
so I’m always on the hunt. I just got back from a sourcing trip and interacting with our different suppliers overseas and learning from them, like what they’re really excited learning from them. And you know, whether it’s there’s been a typhoon in a particular area, or they’re working with new soil conditions. They’re using volcanic ash or crab shells to help influence the flavor profiles of the teas and the origin. So I always say I’m more addicted to learning about tea than I am drinking it, because there’s just so much to learn.

Kara Goldin 22:01
So so exciting. So you, you and I talked about, you know, you’ve made a conscious decision not to go into retailers. And I think that every entrepreneur has to make some, you know, big decisions. You can change your mind along the way too. But I would imagine that many retailers have approached you over the years, but why have you made a decision to to really focus on hospitality as well as direct to consumer?

Steve Schwartz 22:31
You know, I always go back to core competency, and what are we really, really good at? And when I think, when I go to a supermarket and I see a wall of teas, where you have teas that have been sitting on a supermarket shelf for who knows how long and the quality of tea. So what do you find at most supermarkets is imagine getting a bag of unsalted, unflavored chips. So on the top of the bag, you get these perfect uniform shapes, and as you work your way down to the bottom, you get powder or dust. So what ends up happening is, as they’re producing our teas in the factory at origin, the dust flies up in the air, falls on the ground. They sweep that in giant piles, and that’s what’s reserved for most traditional supermarket tea bags. And so we’ve made a really conscious effort of let’s lean in on education. Let’s lean in on high quality sourcing. You can’t fool anyone on a high quality experience. So let’s keep our quality really high, and part of that is education and the right service. And we know that with hospitality, these people that work in hotels and restaurants and they care deeply about their products, and they want to represent the brands that they’re carrying really well too. So we did try and supermarkets at one point early on, but we found it to be more of a distraction, and I also thought, well, there’s still so much opportunity for us to work with hospitality. Let’s keep diving deeper. Let’s keep uncovering those partnerships and those relationships as much as possible. I’m often reminded of, you know, you can have a physician, a general doctor, general practitioner, that can do well as a general practitioner, but then you have a doctor, let’s say that there’s a doctor that specializes in the in the thumb, right? And they are a specialist in the thought what they do in terms of success, just being that specialist in the thumb is far greater than the general practitioner. So one of the decisions that we constantly have to make as a company is, what are we going to do, what are we going to continue doing, and what are we going to stop doing? And sometimes that stop doing list is just as important, if not more important, than the to do list, yeah,

Kara Goldin 24:42
definitely. So how many people do you have in the company now, we

Steve Schwartz 24:46
were a little south of 50 people at this point. So we do our own blending, our own sourcing. We’re based in Los Angeles, and then we have a second location that we’re opening up in South Florida. I

Kara Goldin 24:57
love it. And how many SKUs total? Yeah, we

Steve Schwartz 25:01
have a few 100 SKUs, and we’re constantly trimming. We’re caught. So I started, it’s a lot, it’s a lot, but we had a lot more. We had a lot more. We have, we have a four we have, sorry, like a core 4045, amount of teas that we do. But on top of that, we do some tea where we do ice teas. We do some other fun thing, not bottled iced teas, but where you make it at home.

Kara Goldin 25:26
I love that. That’s That’s great knowing what you know today about building out a business so your your best friend, or maybe your best friend’s son or daughter is coming to you and saying, you know, how do I do this? What? What are the key lessons learned? What would you say? What is the number one thing that you are so happy that you’ve done, or maybe the mistake you made that if you would have done X, it would have been a it wouldn’t have been such a sword in your side, or whatever the saying is you want to think about.

Steve Schwartz 26:06
It’s a beautiful question. The one answer that comes to mind is, if you tap into your gut and you ask yourself, What am I freaked out by this? And am I excited by it? But I’m a little bit more excited than I’m freaked out, then I’m doing the right

Kara Goldin 26:24
thing. Yeah, I love that, that that is that couldn’t be more true. So I think that you go back to all the mistakes you know that you made, it’s like, if you would have really not necessarily listened to your gut, but paid attention. Asked, you know, what should I be doing? Rather than asking everyone else what you should be doing? I think

Steve Schwartz 26:52
surround yourself with wise counsel. You should definitely surround yourself with amazing, brilliant people. And I was pretty surprised at how willing people were to be able to show up for me, even early on, like, hey, whatever you need, if whether it’s legal advice or mentorship or guidance, and so I would look for that. But at the end of the day, you, your gut won’t let you down, and you got to just listen to that. Yeah, I love

Kara Goldin 27:19
it. So Steve, this has been an incredible conversation. You’ve taken a deep passion for for an industry, an old industry, and really done such an amazing job. And you should be really, really proud. So very, very educational, awesome quality, everything about it. So for everyone listening, go check out Art of Tea. We’ll have all the info in the show notes too. But thank you again, Steve for coming on, and it was so nice to see you too, and thanks everyone for listening. Yeah,

Steve Schwartz 27:55
it’s just the beginning. Honor to be here. Honor to be tracking with you, and look forward to learning more about your tea journey. Thanks

Kara Goldin 28:02
again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now you.

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