As I’m proceeding on #thehappybagsjourney and getting closer to holding the first MiniMarieTea boxes in my hands, (Seriously guys, I’m OVERexcited about that. This does feel like I’m about to hold my third child for the first time. Ok. I’m a woman, I tend to exaggerate, but not that much though. This is a big deal to me, as you can imagine.) a question I get asked a lot lately is one of confusion. And I totally get that. In these times of information overload, who reads the full story or blog or listens to a full album, or reads an entire newspaper… we’re living a snippet life these days. It’s just how we are reprogrammed to be able to handle the information sea that surrounds us.

So I thought I’d clearly explain in short –or at least try to keep it short- what the difference is between MiniMarieTea and Happy Bags:

When I started this journey exactly one year ago now (Ok, can’t believe that…), I wrote a business plan about the perfect drink for kids I wanted to create: Happy Bags, a little tear bag with 100% fruit powder that one can add to a glass or bottle of water and the powder dissolves into tasty and healthy infused fruit water.

I did the first tests for that drink in a professional lab and soon realised this would take a whole lot of extra testing (which means time & money obviously), so in order to be able go into business either way, I decided to create another, slightly easier, product which I felt the need for, first: MiniMarieTea

The first all natural, all organic infusion for kids. With whole leaf herbs, fruits and flowers, straight from the best farmers. Packed into non-bleached tea bags in pretty bio degradable boxes made from grape residu. 100% the best tea for kids in the world. And that’s an understatement. Obviously.

Kids can drink MiniMarieTea with warm or cold water, by the way. Yep, it’s genius 🙂 .

There will be 4 blends of MiniMarieTea available:

Blue Marie, Red Marie, Green Marie and Brown Marie.

All named after the colour the magical tasty water turns into after you add one of those perfect non-bleached, bio degradable teabags.

I will reveal the exact ingredients of these blends soon, I’m just waiting on a few deliveries from farmers to make sure I can blend them right before I reveal them, you see.

The idea is that I get to go into business and sell MiniMarieTea (Worldwide? Yes please 🙂 but let’s start outside my living room first ;-)) in life style shops and bars and eventually to supermarkets too hopefully. On the back of that I hope I’ll one day be able to develop Happy Bags further and get these out there to your youngsters too.

I hope this all makes sense and clarifies the whole Happy Bags vs. MiniMarieTea story a bit…

I did decide I will name my company Happy Bags too.  So MiniMarieTea will be the first product of the Happy Bags company! The product “Happy Bags” itself will follow later, as explained above, this will take more time and money.

As for the situation right now:

I’m actually almost ready to blend the first 120 boxes of MiniMarieTea as we speak! (30 boxes of each blend that is)

All ingredients should be here next week. (You should smell my office right now… packed with kilograms of herbs, fruits and flowers… it’s magic!)

Amazing Truziwuzi is finishing up our MiniMarie packaging designs (What a team… over the moon with this one… can’t wait to show the designs to you…)

The perfect non-bleached teabags in my waterdrop logo shape with a waterdrop logo tag on it (Hey, what did you expect…) should be here next week…. aaaah can’t wait!

Here’s a sneak peek of the pretty teabag label btw! Hope you like it…

The grape-residu -bio -degradable-boxes are chosen and should be printed over the next few weeks.

The food label and specifics is being taken care of as we speak.

Then we wrap and it’s a wrap!!

So I’m thinking November I should be holding these babies in my hands…

Fingers crossed.

BUT dear readers, here’s the catch… these 120 boxes won’t be for sale yet. They’re for hand outs to taste makers and competitions etc. They’re for early promotion, buzzing, seeding or whatever we call that these days.

But mainly, they’re for the boards of those shops, bars and supermarkets out there. I’m hoping to convince them with these perfect prototypes to order larger quantities of MiniMarieTea.

And then I can finally start producing for you guys! Then you can finally get your favourite MiniMarieTea blend in a store or bar near your house.

There’s a lot of “but’s” and “and then’s” in this blog… so we’re not there yet as you can see… So bear with me please. Your support does mean a lot to keep going for that “get in stores goal”.

Let’s do this!

Today is a good day, to be start-up-honest.

On bad days, this last sentence would be more like “Let’s go find a normal job” 😉

But a dear friend said to me this week “don’t talk in doom scenario’s, because then you feed this thinking.” She’s right. Reminder/note to self: Thoughts are forces. Silencing the mind right now. Thinking happy thoughts. Yes We Can.

Love,

Isabelle