We worked with MyTEA Chief Tea Officer, Tina Chen, to refine the tea flavours and ensure the Tea Lattes reached all legal food safety and labelling standards.

MyTEA produces natural, plant-based tea lattes that are real-brewed with Fairtrade tea leaves and organic ingredients.

We met Tina Chen, founder of MyTea in 2018, when she attended a London AgriFood Innovation Clinic Branding Workshop. Her product was a vegan ready-made iced tea, designed for the health-conscious consumer.

We linked Tina with LAFIC's Adri Bester, Senior Food Technologist at LSBU. A total of 22 hours was spent:

• Training Tina to carry out Consumer Sensory Analyses activities, enabling her to derive the most appropriate recipe for her tea lattes
• Commissioning the appropriate laboratory tests for establishing legal shelf life
• Helping Tina ensure her teas are compliant with UK legal labelling information.

MyTEA also joined the LAFIC programme at a total of 24 hours. These networking and training events helped innovators like Tina learning skills in:

• Business Model Canvas
• Branding
• Intellectual Property
• Product Development.

The results:

• MyTEA took 4 new vegan tea lattes to market in 2018
• MyTEA received their first retail order from a vegan cafe at Imperial College London. MyTEA is now available at Farmer's Markets around London and they are hoping to be available in Wholefoods and Selfridges shortly
• Tina has already hosted a Food Futures stall at Borough Market for one week in June 2019 - She will also be hosting the LAFIC Food Futures stall two weeks in December 2019
• MyTEA recognised as an Innovation Brand at 2019's YFood Expo.

MyTEA have now rebranded as HumaniTEA following a successful crowdfunding campaign. Find out more and treat yourself to their delicious tea at humanitea.co.uk.