As “a Southern Belle” from Atlanta, the only tea Jamila Wright knew anything about until she met the man who would become her husband Alfonso (“Ali”) was the iced variety. Having grown up in a Jamaican-led household where “you drank it morning, noon and night” and “it was a cure for everything,” he introduced her to the hot kind and its healing properties.
The couple’s dates consisted of “tea-hopping instead of barhopping,” checking out other tea spots with an eye to opening their own space. For the past six years, their Brooklyn Tea shop in New York City’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood has provided a sense of community and promoted well-being by encouraging people to slow down and savor a restorative nice drink. It’s “a great place to meet, work and enjoy a cuppa,” says one five-star reviewer.
While Black-owned small businesses face additional challenges to other startups—such as limited access to investment dollars—the Wrights have survived through a blend of creativity, customer loyalty and unexpected celebrity backing. In addition to their Bed-Stuy location, they have a second tea room in Atlanta and will soon have some of their specialty teas available in Target stores.
Since opening its NYC doors, Brooklyn Tea has become a popular meeting space for some in the local area. People from different backgrounds “get to come into the shop and be a little less lonely together and have some intimate moments,” says Wright. “We get to trade secrets with each other, we get to celebrate big wins with each other. There are people who sit in the shop and they’re looking for work and we get to celebrate that they landed an interview while using our Wi-Fi.”
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There is also something of a health mission to the place. “We get to encourage the person who has an extremely sweet tooth, asking for six teaspoons of sugar, to explore a different way of drinking,” she says. “And after three months of a little bit of indoctrination, they’re turning their nose up at the idea of ever asking for sugar. So now this person is less susceptible to diabetes.”
In addition to mostly vegan pastries, the Brooklyn Tea menu also includes coffee, but tea is, of course, the main attraction—with more than 60 varieties of black, green, white, oolong, rooibos and herbal, hot and iced. The shop hosts tastings and Ali, a certified tea sommelier, presents The Benefits: Plant Medicine Unlocked, a podcast about natural remedies, herbs and botanicals.
“When they say, ‘skin in the game,’ this was . . . whole body.”
Celebrity support
The Wrights’ dream of making a community impact hasn’t been realized easily. They were unable to secure all the funding they needed to launch despite developing a solid business plan. A Small Business Administration loan didn’t come through in time, so they had to empty out their retirement savings to get Brooklyn Tea off the ground. “When they say, ‘skin in the game,’ this was skin, muscle, bone, whole body,” Wright says. Sometimes they slept on a cot at the shop while they were building it out.
The couple’s all-in decision also saw them leave previous career tracks. An English degree graduate of Spelman College, Wright followed that with a master’s in education from Hunter College in New York City. She worked as a dean of students before they launched Brooklyn Tea. A marketing graduate of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, Ali had a background in digital media.
Like its blended drink offerings, Brooklyn Tea mixes together the Wrights’ complementary qualities. “He’s the big idea guy,” Wright says, while she is “the task-oriented person, like, ‘How do we get this big dream done?’” They are “the idealist and the executioner.”
Brooklyn Tea had not been open that long when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered businesses across NYC, many of them never opening their doors again. With 85% of their revenue then coming from in-store sales, the Wrights feared the worst.
“We would have moments where we’re just sitting there watching Netflix because no one was coming,” Wright recalls. “It was a painful experience. It felt like a failure to launch.”
But “something beautiful” came out of those hard times. First, customers began to rally round. “We got to see people who [would] run in and drop $20 in a tip jar because they were too scared to actually be around us, but they wanted to make sure we were OK.” Others dropped off food for lunch to help reduce the Wrights’ outgoings. And then Brooklyn Tea went viral.
Television producer and writer Shonda Rhimes learned about the business and tweeted about “My favorite discovery of the day” to her 1.8 million followers. That high-profile endorsement was followed by Brooklyn Tea’s inclusion in Beyoncé’s Black Parade Route, a directory of hundreds of Black-owned businesses celebrating Juneteenth. “I cried, I screamed, I ran around,” Wright admits.
The exposure provided a lifeline and prompted the Wrights to pivot, adding online sales. They started with a selection box filled with different teas that people could buy to sample themselves or send as a gift to shut-ins. “Those began to really become a main part of what we provided and what we still provide,” Wright says. “But it wasn’t enough to keep us [going].”
Then came the rise of Black Lives Matter in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and further support for Black businesses “that brought us out of the darkness.” Online sales skyrocketed. The store went from handling 10 orders a month to receiving 100 a day. “We were able to pay rent. We were able to pay our staff. We were able to do things that we thought we wouldn’t be able to do,” all at a time when they had seriously been considering closing.
“There’s so many reasons to doubt . . . just don’t lose that hope.”
Community change
From their experiences, Wright has learned the importance of determination. For small business owners, “there’s so many reasons to doubt that we’re going to survive, but we’re in it because we hope we will, so just don’t lose that hope,” she advises.
She and Ali also realized that sometimes you need to make adjustments. When they started out, they were adamant about only providing loose-leaf tea because it offers the best drinking experience. But “after the pandemic, we were kind of being iced out of different opportunities because people needed or desired individual packaging,” so they introduced a line of four-bagged teas.
The biggest challenge for small businesses is scaling up, which the Wrights are hoping to do through a partnership with Target. The megachain recently invited Brooklyn Tea to provide tea for around 100 stores, prompting the Wrights to turn to their loyal customers for help in funding the outlay needed to provide all the additional inventory.
The pair have been encouraged by how their efforts to provide a place of community for people have been reciprocated. And with many small Black businesses closing, Wright believes it’s good for customers to help if they want to be part of local change. “If we’re thinking long-term [about] how do we create neighborhoods where we can walk out and which we can be proud of,” it requires a little sacrifice, she says, “because you might be saving that business from demise.”
Wright appreciates hearing customers say how much Brooklyn Tea means to them. “I like to know that I’m living a purposeful life, and I get a high off of that, and it’s something that I’m constantly chasing . . . that kind of addiction to feeling purpose led right here.”
From an interview with Jasmine Jordan
