MEET B.W. COOPER

The passion for tea that drives our tea master, B.W. Cooper, is as vibrant today as it was in 1965 when he became a tea trainee in London! Nearly six decades later, he is still strong at the helm, tasting teas and developing products with his sons and team working alongside him. Cooper’s virtue for authenticity fuels his unbridled drive for innovation, and he envisioned the role of sustainability, natural products, and the emerging organic world early on. Our tea guru brought those principles to fruition with the artisanal, hand-crafted, mighty-tasting teas that we know and sip on today.

OUR STORY

1948 Maybe my love of tea started right here with my Grandad, four years old, and already addicted to a cuppa! 1955 9 years old, lucky to make it to 10: I fell in the Grand Canal in Venice, and survived after a nice gondolier yanked me out! 1965 I join Lipton in London as a tea trainee at 21 years old and am very happy to enter a traditional profession in a company with a big global presence. 1968 In the tea bushes in Uganda when they were safe, right before Idi Amin takes over a couple of years later and changes everything. 1975 Lipton has moved me to the U.S. and I am part of the three-man U.S. Delegation to the International Standards Meeting in Jakarta. 1988 20 years later, I leave Lipton and join Celestial Seasonings in a leveraged buyout as Vice President of Research and Development. See if you can pick me out…I am wearing a cravat! 1994 After Celestial Seasonings is taken public, I start my own company and launch the Cooper brand in the U.S. We were the first all-natural, liquid tea concentrate in the market! Jan 2007 Launch the first all-natural High-Energy Tea and we named it BAZZA! It was an awesome product. It was so good Coca -Cola Consolidated made me an offer I could not refuse. I sold it to them a few years after the launch! 2009 The all-natural liquid tea innovation is recognized by the industry, and I receive the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. 2012 My peers voted me in as Chairman of the U.S. Tea Association, and I get to lead the industry for a couple of years. 2014 I decide to balance my iced tea business with a hot chai business and we acquire Third Street Chai. The first thing we launch is an iced tea in a bottle — go figure! 2020 Tea is a traditional business and the second generation are on hand in the wings ready to take over the reins, when this old tea man rides off into the sunset.

BW COOPER’S BOOK

Silver Spoons, Mad Baboons, and Other Tales of Tea is a memoir from International Tea Master Barry W. Cooper. Barry was raised in the heart of Kenya and spent his childhood playing in the wilds of Africa. The experience instilled a love for adventure that is still strong today. These chronicles walk readers through Barry’s eventful life and the learning he garnered from his illustrious career in tea.

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