Customization is king at BlendBee teas.
The warmth steaming from your hands on a frosted morning, the herbaceous melody playing on your tongue, the myriad of wellness attributed to 8 ounces … there’s a reason tea has been a fixture of diets for millennia. And here in Sparks, BlendBee is on a mission to empower people to naturally heal their bodies through loose-leaf tea. The business operates online and gives users the power to find their perfect mix of health benefits and flavor profiles through custom tea and herb blends.
Owner Jamah Dacus, a lifelong natural wellness advocate, founded the brand in 2014.
“I wanted [a tea with] ingredients like nettle, ashwagandha root, fennel … very specific herbs,” she explains, “and you can’t find that exact mix when you’re searching for premade blends. I wanted people to pick exactly what they wanted in their blends, whether it was for stress or to help sleep or for whatever they’re trying to create.”
The company now serves more than 25,000 customers, including area business owners such as Steamboat Hot Springs Healing Center & Spa, and has helped launch 10 other tea companies.
Brewing Up Health
Dacus always has been interested in how food and herbs aid in personal health.
“[Growing up], we always grew all of our own food,” she says. “It was just like, take care of yourself, honor and love your body, and it will honor and love you.”
Before BlendBee, Dacus was the director of an organic nutritional supplement company, where she worked with natural health doctors and Chinese herbalists. This inspired her to seek natural ways of healing common ailments “utilizing what we already have on this beautiful earth.” Because tea and herbs have been used for centuries as remedies, she sees this as the perfect way to stay on top of one’s health.
BlendBee allows customers to tap into natural remedies. Needing some stress relief? Dacus recommends ashwagandha root. Feeling like you need to rejuvenate your respiratory system? Choose Dacus’ go-to blend called Inhale, with ingredients such as mullein, eucalyptus, peppermint, and licorice fruit. Love chai but are allergic to cinnamon? Craft a tea that omits the spice!
When creating a custom tea blend, Dacus recommends starting with the flavor. The custom tea builder on the website is separated into flavor profiles, routing customers through floral, fruity, earthy, spicy, warm, and minty herbs with the ability to choose up to 10 ingredients. Users can commit to as little as a one-ounce bag — which makes around 10 to 15 cups of tea — for $10 plus shipping and fees. The best part is that every blended recipe ordered is saved to the account, allowing customers to order the same blends in larger quantities or make slight adjustments to perfect their blends.
Dacus also owns the tea brand ModestMix, which shows off her cheeky side with titles such as Chia F*cking Harder and Badass Babe.
“I really wanted to just bring some youth into it and make it more accessible to everybody,” she exclaims. “We have college guys ordering loose-leaf tea!”
Create your custom tea or shop BlendBee’s premade blends online at Blendbee.com. Find ModestMix in more than 500 stores across Northern Nevada and California. This spring, keep an eye out for Ode, a collaboration between Reno’s Black Rabbit Mead Co. and Forged Coffee Roasting Co. that will produce handcrafted sparkling tea utilizing BlendBee’s Crimson Kiss tea, a bright, tart hibiscus mix.
Helena Guglielmino is a freelance writer based in Reno. Understanding food is a powerful tool of connection and culture, she writes to break culinary comfort zones and inspire exploration of the palate.
BlendBee
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