Food & Farming

October 29, 2025

Just Ice Tea and my reflections on the evolving natural foods industry

Seth Goldman,

Just Ice Tea

This Autumn will mark three years since Just Ice Tea entered the market and 27 years since I first entered the natural foods industry with Honest Tea. These milestones give me the chance to reflect on some of the ways the natural foods business is evolving.

First, some thoughts on the retailers. While most natural food entrepreneurs and investors talk about how important it is to launch a new brand in Sprouts or Whole Foods Market, there are two networks of stores, INFRA (Independent Natural Food Retailer Association) and NCG (National Co-op Grocers) which are not as well-known but played a critical role for Honest Tea, Just Ice Tea and hundreds of other brands that launch in the natural channel.

INFRA marked its 20^th anniversary this Spring – with 360 members operating 650 stores operating in all 50 states, from Roots Market in Clarksville, Maryland to Down to Earth in Kapolei, Hawaii. With combined revenue of about $4 billion, INFRA is roughly half the size of Sprouts Farmers Market.

Though INFRA just marked its 20^th year as an association, many of its member stores have been around far longer. Good Earth Organic & Natural Foods and Rainbow Grocery in the Bay Area have been around for more than 50 years. And Fresh Plus in Austin is more than 100 years old. Kimberton Whole Foods in PA was using the name “Whole Foods” before Whole Foods Market, to which they are not related.

INFRA formed in 2005 when these independent stores realized they could have more purchasing power if they formed a “buying group” so that they could get the kind of discounts that the larger chains enjoy. Today INFRA works with Kehe as their primary distributor, and NCG is aligned with UNFI.

What I love most about the INFRA stores is that they operate independently. Though many of these stores are privately held, some such as the 4-store chain Oliver’s in NorCal is employee-owned. As independent operators, they can relate to the challenge’s entrepreneurs face. As a result, they are more willing to try new products and brands. That’s one of the reasons their customers are so loyal. I have always thought of INFRA as our farm system – if our innovations don’t get traction in INFRA stores, we need to go back to the drawing board.

We are proud that Just Ice Tea has been in the shelves and coolers of INFRA stores since we started. Our team has been selling to the INFRA stores since Honest Tea launched in 1998, so in many ways, we feel like founding members of INFRA.

We also feel founders pride with respect to the Purpose Pledge, a pilot program created this year by 18 forward-thinking companies to expand capitalism beyond shareholder primacy to one that values all stakeholders.

As an entrepreneur, I am duty-bound to serve my investors. I raise money from them to launch products that compete based on their taste, health and environmental and social impact. In exchange for their capital, I work to deliver a return on their confidence in my enterprise. That’s what happened with Honest Tea/Honest Kids when our founding investors realized a 23-fold return as a result of our sale to Coca-Cola.

But the financial return is only part of the story. Through the success of Honest Kids, we expanded access to organic drinks and helped reduce empty calories in the American diet.

And through Just Ice Tea we are showing how we can invest in tea farmers and their Fair Trade communities while building a powerful brand.

Capitalism has plenty of flaws but I’ve yet to see a system that does a better job deploying money to innovators and creating a marketplace for ideas and products. Between 1987-1990, I spent a year each in China and the Soviet Union. I saw ‘socialism’ rob people of their incentive to work and suppress creativity and innovation. A grocery store would be called Produce Store #5, and if there was produce to be found, it was usually a pile of dirty, flaccid carrots or potatoes. Produce Store #6 was no different.

But capitalism left to its own devices can also lead to gross imbalances and destructive outcomes. While government should enforce protections for workers, the ecosystem and consumers, it can’t mandate that corporations embrace higher standards.

That’s where the Purpose Pledge comes in.

Along with Dr. Bronner’s, Lundberg Family Farms and Yerba Madre, Just Ice Tea is voluntarily agreeing to Ten Commitments that embody a broader sense of purpose. The Commitments are still being refined but here are a few highlights:

• Product Quality & Impact – Produce high-quality products that align consumer wellbeing with the wellbeing of planet and people.

• Supply Web Integrity – Products meet or exceed high bar eco/social standards, such as organic or Fair Trade.

• Fair & Balanced Compensation – 20:1 pay ratio (or lower) between highest and lowest paid employees.

• Living Wage – Employees make a living wage per by the MIT Wage benchmark.

• Community Engagement – Minimum of 1% of company net revenues or 10% of net profits allocated to philanthropic giving.

• Climate Positive – Commitment to emissions reductions.

• Capability Building – Collaboration to support each member’s achievement of all Purpose Pledge commitments.

You can read all Ten Commitments at www.purposepledge.org. We hope The Purpose Pledge marks a new chapter in the evolution of capitalism where shareholders are still rewarded but a broader set of stakeholders are taken into account. We welcome your input and support as we continue to refine the language around the commitments.

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And through it all, we continue to see growth for Just Ice Tea. After Honest Tea’s first ranking 22 years ago (#114), it’s good to be back on Inc. magazine’s 5,000 list of the fastest growing private companies in the United States.

Just Ice Tea’s growth from $1 million in 2021 to $23.8 million make us 88th overall and the fifth fastest growing food and beverage company.

When most people think about fast growth, they usually think about AI or other technology-driven enterprises. While technology has changed a lot since 2003, (I didn’t yet have a mobile phone back then), it’s remarkable to think about how much has and has not changed in the bottled tea world since 2003.

At the garden level in India, China and Africa, almost all of our tea leaves are picked by hand, the same way they have been for thousands of years.

*Cha de Magoma, the tea garden in Mozambique that is the exclusive tea supplier for Just Ice Tea canned line*

Once the leaves are picked, they are run through the same drying and tumbling systems that have been in use for more than 50 years, and the equipment is often older.

Until the 1950s, all tea gardens were organic because chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers weren’t widely used in the Developing world. Organic tea gardens now represent a small sliver of the global tea supply.

Technology for bottling plants has mostly stayed the same – there are some newer X-ray technologies to detect foreign materials and robots to stack pallets, but otherwise our brewing, filling, and capping processes are identical to the bottling lines of the 1980s.

Sales in stores are still mostly done in person. Our distributors use handhelds for taking orders, but the techies haven’t yet devised an app that does a better job of capturing shelf space than a hard-working sales rep. Though the amount of bottled tea sold online and shipped directly continues to grow, more than 90% of bottled tea is sold in stores and carried home.

But what people are drinking has changed. Soda used to be the biggest drink category. Today water is the largest category, and the market is flooded with seltzers and healthier sodas, not to mention more organic and Fair Trade options. And the packages have evolved too – bottled tea was almost exclusively in glass bottles back in 2003. Now more than 95% of the market is in plastic bottles or cans.

The tactics for brand-building have shifted from public relations to social media. But just as Honest Tea relied on sampling and guerrilla marketing as our primary strategy for recruiting consumers, the focus of Just Ice Tea’s marketing budget is focused on field efforts. Technology can do a lot of things, but even ChatGPT hasn’t figured out a way to hand out a sample cup of cold tea with a smile.

There continue to be great opportunities for investors who bet on improving our food system. Although progress does not always move in a straight line, especially with the frequency of social media driven diets (bacon should not be at the base of anyone’s food pyramid!), the general direction is toward healthier and more transparent foods.

Article by Seth Goldman is Co-Founder of JUST ICE TEA, a line of organic and Fair Trade bottled tea that’s Just Sweet Enough. Seth and his co-Founder, Celebrity Chef Spike Mendelsohn are also co-founders of PLNT Burger, a plant-based quick-serve restaurant that offers delicious burgers, fries, and soft-serve.

Seth is also the Co-founder of Honest Tea and Chair of the board of Beyond Meat. In 2023 he took on a new role as Chair of the Mission Guardians for Tony’s Chocolonely, an international chocolate company committed to creating an exploitation-free supply chain. He has been widely recognized for his entrepreneurial success and impact, including the Washington DC Business Hall of Fame, Partnership for Healthier America’s CEO of the Year, and EARTHDAY.ORG’s Climate Visionary of the year. He is a graduate of Harvard College (1987) and the Yale School of Management (1995). Seth and his Honest Tea co-founder, Barry Nalebuff are the authors of The New York Times bestselling comic book, Mission in a Bottle.