Since launching Revival Tea Co. six years ago, the tea company has experienced exponential growth, says Drew Henry, Revival Tea CEO.  

With a projected annual revenue of $2.2 million this year, doubling $1.1 million in 2023, and well above $690,000 in 2021, Revival Tea is well positioned for a coast-to-coast expansion, he contends. Over the next decade, Henry plans to open 50 franchise locations, each projected to generate $1.5 million in annual revenue. 

“We envision Revival Tea becoming the Starbucks of tea,” says Henry, a Journal of Business Rising Star in 2022.  

To get there, the company has launched a crowdfunding campaign that allows nonaccredited investors and customers to purchase and own shares in the Spokane startup.

The series CF Community Round is being raised on WeFunder, an online platform that enables individual investors to put money into early-stage startups and small businesses. 

In the company’s first three days of crowdfunding, it raised $151,000 from 94 investors, with a minimum investment of $250. Henry says the crowdfunding will be open for anybody who wants to invest through the end of September. 

Chip Overstreet, Revival Tea board member and former CEO of Spokane-based Spiceology, Inc., says the company has a large base of fans and customers who have been purchasing tea since its founding. He estimates the initial sum raised is mostly from the company’s customer base. 

“It speaks to the love of the product and the love of the company from the existing customers,” Overstreet says. 

Once Revival Tea reaches $250,000, WeFunder will then consider the campaign “live” and promote it to the platform’s investment group made up of over 70,000 investors, he says. Once the funding round closes, people will receive shares in the company, like a “mini-IPO”, he says. 

“We do have lofty ambitions down the road of becoming a publicly traded company and doing an IPO,” Henry says. “For us, this is the opportunity for our fans and our customers to come along the journey with us as we become a nationwide brand.”  

As previously reported by the Journal of Business, Henry and his wife, Cerina, founded Revival Tea with the intention of disrupting an industry that was ripe for change. While other beverages like beer, coffee, and whiskey had gone through a craft revolution, tea was still stuck in a stagnant place, the Henrys contend. In the U.S., for example, there are about 233 tea makers compared to 3,000 coffee roasters and roughly 9,000 breweries. The Henrys switched gears from an earlier desire to distill whiskey like the Henry family had done in Ireland, to blending teas. Six months later, they launched Revival Tea online with one blend, a freshly blended spiced chai.  

Revival Tea is valued at $10 million and has been named the fastest-growing tea company in the U.S. by the American Beverage Association, Henry says. It has about 25 employees and three locations. Its flagship location, Revival Tea Company Tasting Room, is a 1,800-square-foot former speakeasy from the early 1900s, located in the basement of 415 W. Main. Its second location, Spokane Boba Bar, is directly upstairs in the former Sweet Peaks Ice Cream shop and specializes in teas infused with boba, or tapioca pearls. That location, as of July 1, will be a standalone operation rebranded as Phoenix Café, says Henry. Its third shop is located at 201 N. First, in Coeur d’Alene, and features both a tasting room like its flagship location and boba drinks. 

Revival Tea has a five-person board that includes Henry and Overstreet, as well as Kevin Parker, an early franchisee owner of the Grants Pass, Oregon-based Dutch Bros Coffee; Skye Henderson, vice president of venture investments for Spokane-based Cowles Ventures; and James Mackness, founder of Motovotano LLC, which co-packs teas for Revival Tea. 

This fall, Revival Tea will reenter profitability for the first time in three years following the expansion and growth of the past couple of years, Henry says. 

In 2026, Revival Tea plans to open its fourth location, Henry says. As envisioned, the upcoming location will have a storefront, and a drive-thru, and be in a warm-weather climate in either Arizona or Nevada, he says. 

“It’s going to have a drive-thru because we know that in terms of building out revenue, that’s a huge driver,” Henry says. “The second piece, when it comes to warm-weather climate, what Starbucks, Dutch Bros, and a lot of other companies have found is that they are doing way more sales in warmer climates.” 

From there, Revival Tea will continue with its plan to open 50 franchise models in 10 years, starting from the West Coast, through the Central U.S., and ending in the East Coast, Henry says. Each location has an aim of reaching $1.5 million in annual revenue, Henry says. 

Last year, Revival Tea held a closed angel funding round that drew in $300,000 from five people, Henry says. Through that round, Henry noticed he had received an overwhelming response from other people who also wanted to invest. However, an accredited investor typically writes checks for a minimum of $25,000, leaving out a large part of his fan base. He turned to the Spiceology founder Pete Taylor for advice and was sold on crowdfunding and the idea of letting "regular people" have the ability to buy stock in his company. 

“Don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for venture capital and a place for angel investors,” Henry says. “But I thought it was pretty dang cool. …The ability for someone to invest in a startup early and seek those rewards.”