Photography by Andrew Dominguez
“There was an exact moment when I was meeting with farmers in Sikkim that I knew Big Heart Tea Co. was larger than just a tea maker, producer, and seller.”
Big Heart founder Lisa Govro is speaking about her 2017 trip to India, where she realized that she had the power to improve the way in which spices and herbs are sourced—starting with her tea ingredients. It’s still a timely statement, because soon Big Heart won’t be just a tea company.
This year, Govro and her team pitched a plan to launch a marketplace dedicated to ethical and transparent sourcing of herbs and spices to Arch Grants, a nonprofit that doles out funding and connections annually to early-stage businesses, and they won—$50,000 of equity-free funding.
In Big Heart’s production space and office, just south of Cherokee Street, three team members (there are only six total) package boxes of chai product. The flagship item, the turmeric-based Cup of Sunshine, sits in its bright-yellow box alongside nine other colorful products. It’s calm and happy here. The atmosphere fits with the company’s purpose. As Govro puts it, “Big Heart Tea is a women-owned tea company on a covert mission to make people feel good.”
Photography by Andrew Dominguez
Scheduled for a full launch next year, the Big Heart Tea Co. Marketplace will allow food, beverage, and other manufacturers to source herbs and spices with complete transparency and traceability. A buyer who wants to support women in agriculture, for instance, can search the marketplace and find the farms and products that meet that qualification.
The concept has been a long time in the making. When Big Heart Tea started, Govro bought turmeric directly from a farmer in Hana, Hawaii, which allowed her to know every step it took to get to them. As it grew, however, Big Heart had to work with a larger corporate herb supplier to gain inventory reliability. “When we made the switch from sourcing our ingredients direct from the farm in Hana,” says Govro, “they lost their story.” Their importer wouldn’t answer questions about wages, fair labor or agricultural practices, or exactly where the spices were. Govro decided to travel to India to source more directly. With the marketplace, Govro says, “we’re telling the entire supply chain story.”
Photography by Andrew Dominguez
It also brought them Kunthearath Nhek-Morrissey, Big Heart’s vice president of business operations and supply chain. Nhek-Morrissey was working as a judge at the beginning of the Arch Grants process, and when she read Big Heart’s pitch, it stood out to her. “This really resonated with me, working from seed to shelf,” she says. “[Govro’s] sourcing ethically; she is taking care of the farmers—at the origin level all the way down to staff—and the team here and the way she manages,” Nhek-Morrissey adds. “The name Big Heart is so apropos to me, because I think this organization has a big heart. I think I’ve found my place.”
Arch Grants requires that grant recipients either relocate to St. Louis or remain in the area for one year to receive the $50,000. They’re in good company. Including Arch Grants, our city hosts five other accelerators, 10 Fortune 500 companies, and 15 Fortune 1000 companies.
Video created in partnership with HEC Media.
