![]() ![]() In August, The Chai Box learned that it would make the list. But Winfrey's team had apparently heard about The Chai Box through one of Sunny's AmericasMart connections, and watched Sunny's Instagram chai meditations. Mere months later, one of Oprah Winfrey's interns reached out to Sunny, asking if The Chai Box could send samples to be considered for Oprah's Favorite Things list.Īt first, Sunny thought it was a mistake. Today, The Chai Box - up to seven full-time employees, including Sunny and her husband, and 20 part-time employees - directly trades with some of those same farmers.Īs business blossomed, the company outgrew Sunny's basement, moving into a nearby 4,000-square-foot production facility in February 2021. Her father-in-law lived in Kerala, India, a region known for its spice production, so she and her husband traveled there to sample potential ingredients and meet local farmers. "Not everyone knows that the spices are good for things like inflammation, digestion and blood circulation." "I wanted to teach people about this drink that is so meaningful to our culture, but also helps you, too," she says. Sunny says she only wanted to launch The Chai Box if she could "sustainably and ethically" scale organic ingredients from India. "I had doctors and nurses me from their breakrooms and telling me it was comforting to them to watch while they were dealing with Covid."" A woman on a mission "People started doing their own chai mediations along with me," Sunny says. It was The Chai Box's first major breakthrough. She continued posting her chai meditations, and to her surprise, Instagram users started tuning in. Sunny lost her job, and her husband was furloughed. Sales rose, but Sunny kept her full-time consultant job. There, she sold multiple tea blends - her "True Blend" mixture, for example, includes orange pekoe, assam and Darjeeling - gaining several new customers and networking connections. In 2020, she paid for a booth at AmericasMart, a local gift tradeshow. In 2019, Sunny landed deals to sell concentrates in local coffee shops near her Atlanta home. She also started posting " chai meditations" to Instagram - a 20-minute morning ritual of blending chai in her kitchen. That breakthrough was years in the making.įor the first two years, Sunny says, she operated The Chai Box casually, fulfilling orders once every two weeks. But The Chai Box isn't just an overnight phenomenon. Those monthly sales are sustaining today, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. (The company declined to confirm revenue numbers.) In November and December, that number rose to $377,000, according to a CNBC Make It estimate. In September and October 2021, the company brought in just over $93,000 in revenue solely off those variety packs. Then, last year, The Chai Box was named to the Oprah's Favorite Things 2021 list - and the sales bump was immediate. ![]() She offered individual tea blends and concentrates, but primarily sold variety packs. So, in late 2016, she started a side hustle, launching a website called The Chai Box from her basement. When Sunny made chai during her sons' playdates, another mom asked why she wasn't selling it. "Chai was the one thing that connected me back to India, to my culture," Sunny, 48, tells CNBC Make It. She got married, had three sons and taught them how to make chai, too. As an adult, Sunny climbed the corporate ladder as a "human performance" consultant for companies like Accenture, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. ![]()
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