The next Subscription Box Saturday post is here! Harts of America is an American tea company that focuses on using locally grown ingredients from the peaks fo Yosemite to the farms of Tennessee. Their mission is “to focus on ingredients native to our region for a unique blend of America in every cup”. I found this insanely interesting (Thank you Facebook for actually bringing me a relevant ad), and was quite excited to try their tea. They offer a subscription service called the Forager Club which allows you to try two full-size pouches of tea per month. Here are my thoughts:
What is the price?
The price of this is $7.98 for two full-size pouches of tea, which is equivalent to buying two of their teas at their current sale price. They also have free shipping. I honestly am not sure what their profit margin is since this tea is fairly inexpensive and you get a lot of it. They also have a code where you can get your first box free, but I am going to send you all on a quest to find it yourselves and explore their site.
How was the packaging?
These teas came wrapped in plastic with two additional postcard-sized pieces of collateral that explained the tea and the company. The tea itself was in nice brown tea pouches and was of nice quality. The aroma only slightly leaked out of the pouches, so I will keep them in their original packaging.
What is the sourcing situation like?
This company is quite transparent about where their tea ingredients are grown. All of the ingredients are grown in the US, and the location is given for each ingredient. Even though these tea blends are all herbal, they offer white and green teas on their site that are also sourced from US farmers. This is what originally drove me to this company: their traceability and the fact that it is all grown in the US. They also show pictures of the regions the ingredients come from.
Sleepynight Tea Extra Strength: I was extremely excited to try out this tea blend, as I have some difficulties sleeping at night. After trying this (and now only having half of the bag left), I can strongly determine that this is now my favorite tea before bed. The taste itself is quite simple, being mostly the chamomile and spearmint taste, which makes it easy to drink. I liked to consume it about 30 minutes before bed, as I would then get extremely tired around when I needed to be. If I drank it more than an hour before bed, any sleepy effects wore off and I ended up staying awake. I am unsure if there was a placebo effect, but anytime that I drank this tea, I would sleep really well and stay asleep. I ended up purchasing and gifting a bag of this tea to my future mother-in-law for her to drink as well.
Ingredients: Chamomile (from East Calais, Vermont), Spearmint (from Yakima Valley, Washington), Valerian Root (from Grant Pass, Oregon)
Pacific Northwest Peppermint: This was a lovely mint tea. Recently, I adjusted my water temperature when brewing mint tea specifically, to a lower degree of about 190⁰F instead of neat boiling. I have found that the resulting brew was quite less drying on the mouth and was super smooth. There is not too much to comment on the taste of this tea, as it is just a mint tea. But it does taste like a nice, high-quality mint tea. The leaves looked very nice, not whole leaves but minced a bit. Mint tea always leaves my palate feeling refreshed, and I go to it when my stomach is unsettled or if I have a headache as I find it quite comforting.
Ingredients: Peppermint (from Yakima Valley, Washington)
Would you Purchase from this Company Again?
Yes, to be honest, I already did. Since my first subscription box was free, I had always planned on purchasing one or two more months to help support the company. I also purchased two of their teas for my future mother-in-law for Mother’s Day. They reached out to me shortly after I received this subscription and actually sent me three more varieties of tea (so keep on the lookout for that review). With all of that being said, I will still buy another month or so from this company and share it with friends and family. I really love and respect this company. I found it lovely that they share all of the sourcing information with the consumer, and that they are quite affordable. However, if I was them, I would increase my prices slightly (sorry anyone who is reading this and are yelling at me for stating this) but $3.99 is quite inexpensive and I would gladly pay for their tea at a higher price point (maybe around $6.99/$7.99, especially since it has free shipping as well).
I hope you enjoyed this latest Subscription Box Saturday post. I really am enjoying finding all of these companies and sharing them with you! If you have any that I have not tried yet, please let me know in the comments! Also, if you have tried this company or want to try this company, make sure you share that in the comments as well! Happy Brewing!
-Danielle
Do not order from this company. I ordered tea online. They charged my credit card but never did anything beyond creating a shipping label. USPS tracking system shows it was never sent. I tried calling, emailing, texting with ZERO response from the company and NO WAY TO REACH A HUMAN BEING. I finally filed a fraud claim with my bank. It’s a shame because I have had the tea and it’s good – but this company has MAJOR problems with customer support. I noticed that on Amazon it has comments from other customers who have experienced the same extremely poor service.