Charbrew Tea is planning rapid expansion after reaching its £150,000 crowdfunding target.

As of 4 November, it has raised £154,090 in exchange for 11.97% equity in the business, in a campaign through crowdfunding site Seedrs. The project is being kept open for a limited period by Charbrew director Adam Soliman for overfunding.

Three-quarters of the money came from six individuals, including £65,000 from an anonymous person in Germany.

Soliman will use the funds to grow Charbrew’s retail presence in the UK and US.

It already supplies Tesco and Holland & Barrett, and last month made its debut in Waitrose with its packs of six tea bags, which have an rsp of £1.79 versus the £3.49-£3.99 price point of its 15-bag packs. “The main thing we’ve seen in the category is that there’s a big step up from standard tea to speciality,” said Soliman, noting consumers could be deterred by the high price of speciality tea SKUs. “Rather than people buying it once in a blue moon, we want them to pick it up as part of their regular shop. We developed the six-bag pack to help them bridge that gap.”
Charbrew is also developing three new varieties of tea bag and is set to expand the range of RTD iced teas it launched in May.

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