[Review] Simple Loose Leaf - Tea subscription box

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Subscription boxes come and go, but Simple Loose Leaf has been around since 2013 with a nicely put-together brand and mountain of positive reviews that speak to its longevity.

I featured Simple Loose Leaf in my blog about favorite tea subscription services, in part because its model stands out in a sea of tea subscription boxes that follow the same boring look of sending out brown pouches with a hand-printed label slapped on.

Here’s a bit more about this sibling-run tea box subscription company from Arkansas and my review of Simple Loose Leaf’s tea sampler!

• Deluxe Tea Club - 4 loose leaf teas ($15.95/month)

  • Simple Chai

  • Blackberry Jasmine

  • Blueberry Le’Mint

  • Cherry “T” Herbal

About Simple Loose Leaf

I love to feature all quality small tea businesses on Steeped Dreams, but family-owned ones hold a special place in my heart. Maybe it’s the cozy vibes or feeling that an entire family is invested in making sure their tea is amazing.

Simple Loose Leaf is run by the Flock siblings, Andrew, Sarah, and Nicholas, who actively answer emails themselves and are involved in all the day-to-day operations.

I asked Andrew about what it’s like to work together as siblings and he said that the most rewarding part is having built something together. “We’re all at a place in our lives where we know who we are, we can talk about tough things together, and we’re all pulling in the same direction. The honest truth is, it’s great. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

And in the past almost 10 years, the family has built a highly rated tea subscription box with lots more for tea drinkers to love.

What to love about Simple Loose Leaf:

• Variety - Over 200+ teas to try

• Customized - You choose your preferences to only get teas you’ll enjoy

• Shop single teas - Buy your favorite teas separately or subscribe to a single one

• Smart packaging - Perfectly snug packaging with no packaging fillers and minimal waste

How their tea subscription works

With Simple Loose Leaf, you can choose between three different monthly subscription plans, Essentials Tea Club (two 1/2 oz loose leaf tea samples), Plus Tea Club (three samples), and Deluxe Tea Club (four samples).

Then, take a tea quiz to give your preferences, which go into curating your perfect box each month. They also have a guarantee that if you don’t like a particular tea, they’ll replace it in your next month’s box.

Finally, you’re able to cancel a subscription or even skip a month with no strings attached, just a month-to-month plan.

Partnering with the local community

Behind the scenes, Simple Loose Leaf has worked with a local developmental work center called Bost since 2017. Bost provides employment and life skills training to members of the River Valley area of Arkansas and Oklahoma with developmental disabilities. Their amazing teams do the tea packaging for Simple Loose Leaf in Bost’s safe, supportive and fun space. Every afternoon, Bost has a dance time where everyone stops working and they go down to the shop floor and play music.

It’s truly taken a village to build this supportive tea brand!

About Simple Loose Leaf’s teas

With over 200 teas rotating through Simple Loose Leaf’s subscription box, there’s quite a bit that goes into making sure each cup is beautifully blended and tasting premium.

When asked about what they look like in their tea sources, Andrew mentioned that one of the biggest criteria they have is how each tea supplier treats people. In other words, how they manage relationships. And while “good tea isn’t easy to find, finding great people to work with is still harder.”

Coming up with new tea blends

Simple Loose Leaf has nurtured a few long-term relationships with companies around the US, Canada, and Europe that lend a hand in blending their teas. These companies help bridge the gap from idea to sourcing and blending. They also help with more of the serious steps like third-party lab testing to make sure there aren’t dangerous chemicals, heavy metals, or mold/bacteria growing in the teas.

Simple Loose Leaf’s tea review

Cherry “T” Herbal smells just like a childhood fruit rollup!

My sampler included two blacks, one green, and one herbal tea, giving a well-rounded taste of the quality of teas and flavor.

• Simple Chai - Assam Black Tea, Cardamom, Ginger Root, Cinnamon, Cloves, Black Pepper, Chai Spice Mix (All Natural Flavors, Apple Pieces)

• Blackberry Jasmine - Young Hyson Green Tea, All Natural Flavors (Blackberry & Jasmine), Freeze-Dried Blackberries, Jasmine Flowers

• Blueberry Le’Mint - South Indian Black Tea, Freeze-Dried Blueberries, All Natural Flavor, Peppermint, Lemon Peel, Cornflower Petals

• Cherry “T” Herbal - Cherry, elderberry, rosehips, hibiscus, cranberry, blackberry, and raspberry with cherry flavor

Simple Chai came with a handy recipe printed on a postcard

The pack also came with a postcard of a chai recipe that I curiously tried, resulting in an absolutely fantastic chai latte. Just three days after receiving the tea, the Simple Chai sample is completely gone. This one was hands down my favorite and had one of the best spice blends I’ve ever had in chai—not too cinnamony.

The other three fruity blends all had a delicious, robust aroma that made it easy to instantly pick out the real fruit pieces. Upon opening the pack of Cherry “T” Herbal, I got hit with an intense blast to the past of fruit rollup smell, except all natural and in tea form. So much flavor!

The tea taste of the Blueberry Le’Mint was a bit subdued by the mintiness, so it almost tasted like an herbal without with black tea. However, I’m not a huge mint person (not even my toothpaste is mint), so it could just be my oversensitivity to it.

Blackberry Jasmine was another delightful blend, where you could make out two distinct tastes of jasmine and blackberry.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of tea and loved that each unique blend contained real ingredients that you could visually make out.

The only potential downside I could see for avid tea drinkers is that the tea pouch size can’t be changed in the subscription. So if you go through a 0.5 oz bag in three days like I did, it would only take less than two weeks to completely drink your way through the biggest tea subscription option of four teas.

Blackberry Jasmine with a refreshing side of blueberries

Tasting box requested from Simple Loose Leaf for review.

• REFERENCES

  [1] “Another Reason to Buy Directly from Farmers: You Could Help the Local Economy More.” Modern Farmer, 2 Oct. 2018, https://modernfarmer.com/2016/07/another-reason-buy-directly-farmers-help-local-economy.

  [2] “Hawai'i-Grown Tea: A Market Feasibility Study.” College of Tropical Agricultural, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2011.

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