“One Oprah Chai Tea, Please!,” may be an order you could be making at your local Starbucks or Teavana in the very near future. Oprah Winfrey has teamed up with these very popular coffee and tea shops and will be expanding her, already huge, empire in a new way!
On Wednesday at the Starbucks shareholders’ meeting, Oprah made a huge announcement. Huffington Post reports that she has collaborated with Starbucks and Teavana to create her own signature chai blend of tea. “Teavana Oprah Chai” will be sold in Starbucks and Teavana stores in the United States and Canada starting April 29. A portion of all the proceeds will be donated to her very own Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation, which helps young girls in South Africa.
In a video of Oprah’s visit to the Starbucks headquarters where she began the process of choosing the teas flavors, she admits, “I was a little nervous coming in today. I woke up at 2:16 this morning thinking about choosing the best tea that would satisfy me and also satisfy all of our customers.” The Hollywood Reporter also reports how she claims that she doesn’t just like tea, she loves it and couldn’t be happier that she’s come up with a blend that she loves.
Oprah’s blend is described as a bold infusion of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves, loose-leaf black tea and rooibos. You see her standing at a table lined of different spices alongside Teavana’s director of tea development, Naoko Tsunoda. “I like things really spicy,” she says. “I like things chai’d up.”
CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, also participated in this tea tasting and said his favorite moment of the process was when she finally found the perfect blend. He says, “At the end, when she tasted that, watching her expression and her smile, saying, ‘This is my tea!’—[that] was fantastic.”
Oprah enjoys that this is more than just something like a clothing line or perfume line, which are things she’s been asked to do in the past. She believes this is something that is organic and fun to do. She believes Starbucks is “more than just a coffee company” and that “it’s about nurturing the human spirit.”
Oprah is known for putting her name on only successful products and it seems this tea is going to be a huge hit! “I think we got it right,” she happily admitted. Look out for this spicy tea blend at your local Starbucks or Teavana store at the end of next month.
Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
