Discover Tea You’ll Actually Love

There is a whole world of loose-leaf tea most people never get to experience.

Not because it is impossible to find, but because it can be hard to know where to start. There are hundreds of tea companies, thousands of blends, and endless styles of black, green, oolong, white, herbal, rooibos, and flavoured teas. Buying full-size pouches just to try something new can get expensive quickly, and most tea subscriptions make the same assumption: that everyone wants the same box.

We started Tea Runners to make discovering great tea easier, more personal, and a lot more fun.

Every month, we bring together a large selection of high-quality teas from some of North America’s top tea companies. Then we let you choose what goes in your box.

Whether you are just beginning your loose-leaf tea journey, already know exactly what you like, or are looking for a thoughtful gift, Tea Runners is designed to help you discover something new to love.

Why We Started

Tea Runners was founded by husband-and-wife Charlie Ritchie and Jewel Staite.

Before starting Tea Runners, we were not tea experts. We were curious tea drinkers who loved the idea of exploring a huge and delicious category that felt surprisingly hard to discover one cup at a time.

At the time, Charlie was running another subscription company and saw how powerful a subscription box could be when it was built around discovery. Tea was the perfect fit. There were so many amazing flavours, blends, origins, and tea styles out there, but trying them usually meant buying full-size bags without knowing whether you would love them.

So we built Tea Runners around a simple idea:

What if discovering great tea could feel easy, personal, and exciting every month?

We launched in the fall of 2016 and shipped our first boxes in February 2017. From the beginning, our goal was to bring joy into people’s homes by helping them discover delicious new teas to love.

That is still the feeling we are trying to create today.

What Makes Tea Runners Different

Most tea subscriptions are curated for the average customer.

We learned quickly that tea does not really work that way.

Some people love bold black teas. Some want only herbals. Some avoid caffeine. Some want straight, traditional teas. Some want fun blends. Some are adventurous. Some know exactly what they like. If one box is curated for thousands of people, plenty of those people will receive teas they would not have chosen for themselves.

That is why Tea Runners is built around customization.

Most of our customers fully customize their boxes each month from a rotating selection of more than 30 teas. You can explore new styles, stick close to your favourites, avoid what you do not like, or build a box around your mood, routine, or caffeine preference.

We currently offer more than 250 teas, and customers can choose the schedule that works best for them, including monthly, every 3 months, every 6 months, or every 12 months.

The result is a tea subscription that feels curated, but not restrictive.

How We Choose Our Teas

Every tea we offer has to earn its place.

Our team tastes and evaluates teas with help from the best feedback source we could ask for: thousands of Tea Runners customers. Over the years, that feedback has shaped what we carry, what we feature, and what we recommend.

For straight teas, we look for freshness, quality, character, and a cup that feels worth returning to. For blended teas, balance matters most: the flavours should work together naturally, without any one ingredient overwhelming the rest.

Some teas are elegant and traditional. Some are cozy and familiar. Some are bright, unusual, or surprising. We like having room for all of it.

Many of the teas we sell have won awards from the Global Tea Championship Awards, and many come from award-winning tea companies. But awards are only part of the story. Some of our favourite teas were never submitted to competitions at all. They are simply wonderful teas we discovered along the way.

Built for Discovery

Tea Runners is for anyone who wants better tea without the guesswork.

It is for people just discovering loose-leaf tea. It is for longtime tea drinkers looking for variety. It is for people who want to compare styles, explore new flavours, or build a morning, afternoon, or caffeine-free routine they genuinely enjoy.

It is also one of our favourite gifts, because it gives someone an experience instead of just another product. A Tea Runners gift subscription gives the recipient something to look forward to, open, customize, and enjoy over time.

Customers often tell us they love the experience of opening the box, seeing the packaging, choosing their teas, and discovering new favourites they never would have found on their own.

Even our nautical branding — the ships, anchors, and sense of setting off somewhere new — is meant to reflect that spirit of discovery.

That is the heart of Tea Runners.

A Decade of Tea Discovery

Since launching Tea Runners, we have helped hundreds of thousands of customers explore loose-leaf tea in a more personal way.

Across Tea Runners and the tea companies we have acquired, we have shipped more than 1,000,000 boxes over the past 10 years and served more than 200,000 customers.

Tea Runners has also been recognized by a number of major publications and industry awards, including:

• “Best Food & Drink Subscription” — CNET

• “Best for Black Tea” — Food & Wine

• “Best Overall Tea Subscription” — Food Network

• “Best Tea Subscription” — Good Housekeeping

• “Best Food & Drink Subscription for Tea” — ZDNET

• SUBTA Cube Awards Finalist — Best Food Subscription

We are proud of that recognition, but what matters most is still the same thing we cared about when we packed our first boxes: helping people discover teas they are excited to drink.

Our Mission

Our mission is to make high-quality loose-leaf tea easier, more personal, and more fun to enjoy.

We do that by offering a wide variety of excellent teas, giving customers the freedom to customize their boxes, and making it simple to discover new favourites on a schedule that works for them.

Whether you are here to build your first box, send a gift, or restock a tea you already love, we are glad you found us.

Welcome to Tea Runners.