Spokane’s Revival Tea expands to Coeur d’Alene

Revival Tea Co. is having a bit of a renaissance with its online business, but its walk-in business is about to expand as well.

The Spokane-based tea manufacturer had a soft opening this week for its established customers at its new Boba Bar and tasting room at 201 N. First St., Suite 101, in Coeur d’Alene.

It plans to host a grand opening Saturday for others to come taste the types of teas that have turned what started as an online operation into one of the fastest-growing tea producers in the country, according to founder Drew Henry.

“Coeur d’Alene is officially our third location,” Henry said. “But we are looking at adding 50 locations in the next 10 years.

“What we have learned is that people coming into our store to experience our brands typically becomes a customer for life versus someone who finds us online.”

Henry, who also doubles as the teamaker, started the business in Spokane in 2018 as an online-only business.

He and his wife, Cerina, then opened his first tasting room in 2020 at 415 W. Main Ave., Ste. 100, in a block of historic buildings.

The tea house, located in a former speakeasy, has several tables and a lounge area where customers can try more than three dozen teas and herbal infusions.

“We opened our Spokane tasting room one month before the pandemic hit,” Henry said. “The first 30 days, we had 4,000 people walk through our doors.

“We were panicking about how we would keep up with that. But, when the pandemic happened, we shifted back to our e-commerce” business.

The West Main location also had a 400-square-foot production facility. But Revival began getting so many online customers, Henry said he was forced to expand.

In 2021, he added a 3,290-square-foot production facility at 221 W. Riverside Ave. But the business’ current growth already has outgrown that facility.

“The headquarters on Riverside is where we blend, bag and ship all over the world. We are currently bursting at the seams,” he said. “We are now looking for a facility of about 10,000 square feet in the Spokane area.”

Tea time

Revival Tea has grown its “wholesale partners” to about 2,500 organizations like coffee shops and grocery stores, which sell its tea.

“Our furthest wholesale partner is in Maine,” Henry said. “We’ve doubled our business every year.”

While coffee generally is considered the king of beverages, U.S. consumers drink almost as much tea products, Henry said.

“But there are only 233 tea manufacturers versus more than 3,000 coffee roasters,” he said. “Compare that to 9,000 craft breweries.”

Revival Tea is the only tea manufacturer approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between Portland and Missoula, he said.

“Things have skyrocketed in the last 45 days,” Henry said. “We are just trying to keep up.”

With the online-business expansion, Henry opened a Boba Bar earlier this year in a location above the existing tasting room on Main Street.

Now, the public will get to see the new location on Saturday in the Lake City.

“It’s sort of a hybrid of the tasting-room model and the Boba Bar-model,” he said. “This is the first one that has blended those two themes.”