Jonathan Blakeslee, owner, works at the counter at White Heron Tea & Coffee in Portsmouth. Courtesy photo.
Jonathan Blakeslee, owner of White Heron Tea & Coffee in Portsmouth, liked experimenting with different products at local farmer’s markets to see what perked up customer’s taste buds. Sales percolated so Blakeslee turned his small wholesale business into a café now selling over $1 million worth of tea, coffee and other goods annually.
Blakeslee’s passion for tea was born from time spent in Japan. He also frequented West Coast tea houses. “I just loved the environment. It became part of my daily experience,” he says. He received an in-depth education in tea working in tea houses spending hours smelling, sipping and reading about specialty varieties.
That daily experience turned into a business in 2005, when White Heron Tea opened after purchasing 5,000 empty tins and importing tea to fill them. The business was first located in Portsmouth and moved to Rollinsford. Blakeslee partnered with Seacoast restaurateur Jay McSharry, who owns many restaurants including Jumpin’ Jays Fish Café in Portsmouth, to return White Heron to Portsmouth in 2013. While McSharry is an investor, Blakeslee is still majority owner.
White Heron serves a variety of drinks and food, including organic coffee and 70 organic teas. All the teas are hand blended and packaged in NH. Many of its most popular teas, including Cranberry Apple Ginger and Daybreak Chai, are among the original blends created in 2005. And those teas are distributed to 70 stores and cafes throughout New England.
“A lot of White Heron has evolved out of a community approach and the relationship with our customers,” Blakeslee says, adding sales for 2014 were just under $1 million, a considerable increase from the $300,000 in sales he saw in 2012 before opening the full-scale cafe. As of November 2015, the company had already surpassed its 2014 earnings.
Currently cafe and retail sales, along with some web sales, make up about 70 percent of business, while 30 percent remains rooted in wholesale. The company has 20 employees and Blakeslee says he is considering a second cafe.
To learn more, visit whiteherontea.com.
By Adam Bergeron of the Young Reporters Project, a partnership between University of NH and Business NH Magazine.