We started selling tea online in 2005, from Darjeeling, India. The company was called Darjeeling Tea Exclusive then — a small online venture built around the teas Niraj grew up with. It ran for five years.
When we moved to the United States in 2010 and settled in Rochester, New York, we faced a choice. Darjeeling Tea Exclusive had taught us a great deal, but we'd come to understand that a business built on tea from a single region — even a region as remarkable as Darjeeling — would only grow so far. In 2011, we started Happy Earth Tea with a wider mandate: organic loose-leaf teas from across the great tea-producing regions of the world.
For the first year, that meant winter Saturdays at the Rochester Public Market — the only season we could afford the booth rates — selling tea in the cold to customers who, in many cases, are still with us. From 2012 to 2016, we shared a space inside a pottery studio at the Hungerford Building, a longtime home for Rochester's artists, where we hosted tea classes and events, mostly by invitation. During this time we also added a booth at the Brighton Farmers Market and South Wedge Farmers Market. Buoyed by the response of customers, in September 2016, we opened our first brick-and-mortar shop, a small storefront just down the street from where we are now. We moved into our current, much larger space at 696 South Avenue in 2020.
Fifteen years later, the work hasn't changed much.
Who we are
Happy Earth Tea was founded by Niraj Lama and Mary Boland. Niraj grew up in Darjeeling, where his family had been in and around the tea industry for years. Before tea, he worked as a journalist — a background that shows up in how we write about tea and how we think about telling the truth about where it comes from. Mary is a co-founder of the company and helps shape the look and feel of the shop, the teaware we carry, and the merchandising. She's also the person Niraj most often runs ideas past before they become decisions.
Eleven people work with us at the shop. We offer 401(k) participation after six months and paid leave after a year — because the promise we make about caring for the people involved in our tea has to start with the people who work alongside us.
What we do
We carry more than 80 loose-leaf organic teas, hand-packed on site in compostable pouches. Every tea is organically grown at origin. The selection spans Darjeeling, Nepal, Japan, China, Taiwan, and beyond — built around a small number of direct relationships with gardens we know, supplemented by carefully chosen distributors where direct sourcing isn't possible. The full account of how we source — and where the supply chain meets its real limits — lives on our sourcing page.
How we operate
A few practices sit underneath everything else we do. We're a member of 1% for the Planet, giving one percent of every sale — not profits — to environmental organizations we publish by name. They are currently, Finger Lakes Land Trust and Climate Solutions Accelerator. Our pouches are certified compostable, our shipping boxes are recyclable, and we offer carbon-neutral shipping through Shopify Planet. We hand-pack everything in Rochester because it lets us hold a standard of freshness and care that a co-packer line can't match.
None of this is a complete sustainability program. We haven't measured our full environmental footprint and we don't claim to have. What we do is concrete and ongoing. We'd rather tell that story precisely than market it broadly.
The promise
Organic loose-leaf teas, sourced from farms we know and chosen for the way they make you feel — packed by hand in Rochester, with care for the people and the planet.
If you're in Rochester, come visit the shop. If you're elsewhere, our online store carries the full range. Either way, if you have a question about a tea, a farm, or anything else on this page, we're a small enough company that the answer is usually one conversation away.
