KEY POINTS:
Daphne Raj and Joe Gehrke wanted their Teza juiced teas to stop traffic, but without the big marketing budget to buy billboards they decided on a different approach: covering their cars in long, fake grass.
And winding through Auckland's CBD, Teza's "grassy beasts" seem to be doing the trick - spurring double-takes, finger-pointing and the occasional near-accident.
On returning from seven years in London, where they worked for multinational companies, Gehrke and his wife Raj decided it would be a "nice idea" to start a business of their own.
Two years on they say "nice" is probably not quite the right word. "All the cliches are true. You work harder than you ever imagined possible," Raj says.
It began with a list of possible business ventures as long as Gehrke's arm, mostly relating to the food industry. Gehrke has a masters degree in bio-processing and worked on product development for the likes of Nestle, Kraft and Fonterra. Raj, who has a Masters in Biochemistry, became a "foodie" while working as a commercial manager for research and development firms in the food industry.
One day, while sitting in a Hamilton cafe and dissatisfied with the selection of too-heavy or too-sweet cold beverages, the couple drew a thick circle around the "iced tea" suggestion on their list.
This business concept came out of a trip to St Louis, Missouri, the city that popularised the beverage in the early 1900s. Gehrke and Raj were impressed to find that every St Louis eatery served jugs of iced tea, and everyone, from babies to grandparents, seemed to drink it.
Iced tea never really took off in New Zealand when Nestle and Lipton brought it here, but Gehrke and Raj were sure people would fall in love with the "extraordinary" product they had in mind.
They decided to bite the bullet but made sure they still had escape routes. "We said, 'Let's get to that obstacle, then that one'. And the obstacles just sort of melted away," Raj says.
The next 18 months were spent developing their beverage - like mixing a cocktail, it was a case of finding something that tasted and sounded just right.
Only high-quality ingredients - loose-leaf tea, pure juices, root ginger, stick cinnamon, vanilla from the pod - were mixed to produce four juiced tea beverages: Lemon & Mandarin, Velvetberry, Mango & Ginger, and Peach & Passionflower.
A Parnell design company was handed the job of creating the brand and packaging. Their designers had never worked in the food and drink industry before but were excited about the concept. Raj says some of the other design companies they had approached were more strategic than creative, coming up with "cheesy" ideas and urging the company to aim for the supermarket straight away.
As the target demographic, Raj and Gehrke were certain there was a place for a premium drink in the cafe market. Deciding against costly mainstream market research, they tested it on friends until they felt they had it right.
Once the Teza name and logo had been created and the copy written for the labels, Gehrke and Raj slipped into business suits, picked up their laptops and pitched their product to a factory whose contact details they had picked up at a food technology expo. The suits were a one-off, but their presentation made an impression and that factory is now supplying all of New Zealand with Teza teas.
Using a giant tea bag, the factory brews a 700-litre batch of tea, "all timed perfectly, no cutting corners". They still smash up the cinnamon sticks and crush the vanilla pods as Raj and Gehrke did in that kitchen two years ago. "We didn't want to compromise in any way," Raj says.
She and Gehrke have acted like a company bigger than they are; with a small budget that means getting very creative. "Every Saturday morning we would sit on the floor and have creative sessions. We wanted to make the product talk-worthy," Raj says.
One night they were drinking Velvetberry Teza and vodka and came up with the idea of covering the company cars in velvet. But the upholstery man they consulted put a stop to that.
Their next idea was to cover a car in grass to look like a tea bush. They pasted a piece of astroturf to a car door from the scrap yard, liked how it looked, and found an Auckland-based grass manufacturer to cover two cars and a delivery van. The grassy fleet can be seen on the road most weekends as the team drives to market days, events and beaches to do sampling.
It's been a "roller coaster", but sales have exceeded expectations and one of the biggest challenges is scaling up the company quickly enough. In nine months Teza has gone nationwide, with month-on-month growth sitting around 50 per cent.
Sometimes it's difficult to separate their working and professional relationship - "the divorce lawyer's on speed dial", Raj jokes - but they are focusing on core responsibilities. As "honcho, schmoozer, pusher", Raj focuses on sales, marketing and human resources, while Gehrke, the "ops geek, hippie, tea-man", works on on research and development, manufacturing, supply chain, finance and information technology.
They have hired two new full-time and two part-time staff and are attending New Zealand Trade and Enterprise's seminars for small businesses looking to export.
"New Zealand has a finite number of people; even if everyone drank Tezas every hour of the day, the business can only go that far," Raj says.
There won't be time for any more travel for a while, but Gehrke says the rush of growing a company makes it worth it. "You get something you are passionate about and it makes you want to jump out of bed."
It was a boost to beat much larger companies to win the Beverage Products Award at the Massey University Food Awards last month - judges commended the subtle flavours and said Teza was right up there with other top-end products.
But Raj is a little embarrassed about being dubbed a success so early on. "It's drinks, it's not rocket science, but we want to raise the bar."
