Sarasota-based Southern Sweet Tea Company, a family-owned Florida business, has taken its bottled iced tea range to 13 flavours. Blueberry, Orange, Blackberry, Hibiscus and a Half & Half blend join a line-up that already covered Classic Sweet, Unsweetened, Lemon, Peach, Mango and several other fruit variants.
The company's pitch rests on how the drinks are made. Each one starts as properly brewed black tea, steeped the traditional way and then hot-filled, a process the brand says helps retain the leaf's polyphenols and aroma. It avoids concentrates, extracts, chemical preservatives and powdered tea bases, and sweetens only with cane sugar.
Founder and CEO Laura Jean Eagles calls the expansion a major milestone for the brand's retail growth. It reflects a wider shift: shoppers increasingly want iced tea that actually tastes of tea, and that always comes down to good leaf, brewed well.
Source: Tea & Coffee Trade Journal