Wize Monkey is growing and it's so freaking cool to experience it :)

Hi fellow Steepsters!

Some of you may be aware of our novel startup called Wize Monkey. In the very beginnings, we came here to get your thoughts on our product and see if it stands up to other teas and infusions. The reviews were passable, but we knew we could do much better. When you’re inventing a new category of ‘tea,’ I’ll take passable over terrible any day.

It’s been about two years since then, and our new farming partner Enrique has joined us not only as a founding partner but also production and innovation engineer. He’s a Nicaraguan agronomist and third-generation coffee farmer, and he’s passionate about building communities, bringing education and proper nutrition to the local populations. He’s incredibly fascinated by the new avenue of the coffee leaf and all that we can make from it, all the while creating your-round income for workers and upcycling a typically wasted by-product of the coffee cycle.

This August we’ll be going back to Nicaragua to further develop our CLTeas and see what other profiles and styles we can produce. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited, fulfilled, stressed, engaged, and inspired in my life. There is so much to do that it’s hard to decide where to start.

We’ve been working super effing hard to get this far, and we feel like we’ve still barely scratched the surface. That being said, last summer’s harvest employed 25 people (mostly moms looking for off-season work) and generated over 10,000 hours of work that wouldn’t have existed. This summer we’re employing 75 people, and the hours are accumulating as we speak. This social impact is what drives us, and we have so much more to accomplish!

Everything started as a school project, and now we’re actually making impact and selling the CLTea we set out to create three and a half years ago. Over those years, we’ve kept getting requests for loose leaf, and we finally have them! We posted them on our website, and you can get 20% off with the code Steepster20.

The future looks bright for Wize Monkey and the category of Coffee Leaf Tea. You can ask Dan Bolton, Geoff Norman, or other Steepsters here. We are so happy to be in such an interesting industry with so much to discover, learn, and people to connect with from every background we could imagine.

Thank you so much for being a global family of tea drinkers and allowing us Wize Monkeys to join the family with our funky CLTea :P

Much love,
Max

Co-Founder of Wize Monkey
WizeMonkey.com