About Us

A Look Inside

We're Eric and Nicole, co-owners of The Tea Drawer, and we'd like to share the story about how our little online shop came to be.

Let us take you on a journey inside Eric's teenage dresser drawer. You wouldn't have found anything out of the ordinary-- shirts, pants, underwear, socks, etc... but if you opened the bottom drawer, the largest one, you may have been surprised by what you found.

Herbs. Lots, and lots, and lots of herbs. An amount that would have most parents reaching for the nearest intervention line. Except these were legal herbs (mostly...we think?), from greens to oolongs, lemon balm to calendula, there were roughly 50 different herbs tucked away at any given time. Eric was obsessed.

Friends and family jokingly referred to it as the "herb" or "tea" drawer. It was a  mini apothecary in the middle of rural Pennsylvania.

Years later, while we attempted to come up with a name for this online tea store, Eric's sister asked him if he remembered his old tea drawer. It only took a moment for the smiles to break over our faces and realize we had stumbled upon the name. The Tea Drawer. 

Enter Yaupon

Nicole and I happened upon Yaupon in an old book about the history of North America, which briefly referenced it as a coffee substitute during the civil war. With Eric's undergrad in anthropology and Nicole studying wildlife conservation, we've always held that history helps us tap into our collective human story-- whether through song, story, food, or tea, our history is the connective tissue that lets us know where we came from, and in some way, who we are.

We regularly consume wonderful drinks like green tea and coffee, but what about something that directly connects us to our land? That's what Yaupon is to us. It’s drinking history and taking in North America. And there’s nothing better than sharing that with others, so we hope you enjoy it!