Personalized Tea For Mother’s Day (Win!)

This Mother’s Day, take a moment to celebrate those closest to you with Pluck Tea’s personalized teagrams! Pluck is a Toronto-based, female-owned tea company that specializes in small-batch, locally sourced premium teas. Many of their ingredients are upcycled, which directly reduces food waste by repurposing fresh ingredients that could otherwise be diverted to compost. For example the orange peel in their Citrus Ginger blend comes from a local juicer and the grape skins in their Southbrook Berry Blend are a result of the winemaking process from a vineyard in Niagara! We chatted with CEO and founder Jennifer Commins to learn more about the brand and the personalized teagrams! —Vita Daily

Please tell us a bit about yourself to start.

I’m the CEO and founder of Pluck Tea, a Toronto-based premium tea company, and a certified tea sommelier. I’m also a mom of three, and a grandmother of two!

When and why did you launch Pluck? What niche were/are you aiming to fill?

Pluck Tea was founded  in 2012 with a mission to fix restaurant tea. Today, our team of tea makers is proud to produce a wide range of top-quality infusions for tea drinkers who value quality and sustainability, wherever they may be.

What products do you currently offer, and what makes them unique?

We offer a wide range of teas including caffeine-free teas, wellness teas, black teas, green teas, rooibos tea, matcha and chai. We are a team of tea makers who blend in small batches by hand with care, as opposed to outsourcing production to third parties or far away co-packers. We also offer several teas with upcycled ingredients. People are loving our novel, zero waste refillable glass jars, as well as our locally sourced ingredients, such as lavender from Prince Edward County.

Tell us more about upcycled tea: what does this mean? Can you give us some examples from your own line?

We are proudly the first tea company in the world to achieve Upcycled Certified Product Status by the Upcycled Food Association (UFA) and Where Food Comes From. Upcycling is where we use ingredients from local fellow food makers that may have otherwise been wasted. Our Upcycled Certified teas include Citrus Ginger, Southbrook Berry Blend, CTRL+ALT+DEL, Chocolate Chai and After Dinner Mint. The upcycled ingredients include: citrus peel, saved and immediately dried by Chaser’s Juice in Toronto, featured in Citrus Ginger and CTRL+ALT+DEL; grape skins, saved by the winemaker at Southbrook Vineyards in Niagara, featured in Southbrook Berry Blend; and cacao shells, reserved and roasted by a local bean-to-bar chocolatier, featured in Chocolate Chai and After Dinner Mint.

How do the personalized teagrams work, and what makes these perfect for Mother’s Day?

Our teagrams are available year round and make the perfect gift for any tea-lover! We have special label designs for the holidays, including Mother’s Day. All you need to do is  select a tea, write your personal message and choose a label design and we’ll put it all together for you to create a uniquely personal teagram! Each includes 30 of our fully compostable, plant-based tea bags.

Speaking of moms, could you give us your top teas for Mother’s Day gifting?

This time of year the floral teas are always a hit, including Sunset in Niagara and Flowering Jasmine. Our Earl Grey Cream also has a cult following, and features a hint of vanilla along with the traditional bergamot. It makes a fantastic London Fog, and is a new classic. We also have our Pluck Pekoe which is our take on the classic ‘Orange Pekoe’, which is the top selling tea category in Canada. We’ve levelled up the quality, sustainability, and flavour with these teas to the point where we have many customers telling us they ‘just can’t go back’ to the other stuff. These teas are directly sourced from an organic farm in Rwanda that provides free schooling for the children of the tea workers, and that promotes women into management roles. For each kg of tea we purchase, we donate funds to support childhood education. 

pluckteas.com

Win! 1 of 2 $75 Pluck Tea Gift Cards!

Congrats Rosanna L. of Mississauga, ON, and David S. of Milton, ON, who will each receive a $75 Pluck gift card! Please note: if you are the winner, you will receive a DM (direct message) in Instagram directly from @vitadaily.ca. Please be wary of fake accounts, which often use similar handles with an extra or missing letter, number or symbol. We will never ask for a payment or for your credit card number, and we will never ask you to click through a link. If you are unsure whether you have been contacted, via Instagram, by us or a fake account, email us before responding.