As a dedicated chai tea drinker and with great coffee available at every turn in Australian cities, Anthea Cahill founded RealChai to ensure great chai is just as accessible. “It’s time to close the quality gap,” Anthea says. “Serving substandard coffee is sacrilege in the Aussie café scene. Chai lovers should enjoy the same dedication to quality.”

For the past decade RealChai has been available via Anthea’s online store. Now, Anthea is working with a national distributor to tap into the health food market too. “Our vegan, gluten free organic chai latte is really hitting the spot and proving very popular,”Anthea says. “It’s also a great way to give a Christmas flavour to vegan desserts. Think chai infused chocolate custard or chai soft serve ice cream – the list is endless.”

RealChai, now experiencing an impressive 30 per cent growth and is expanding rapidly to accommodate the market. Tea was never something this ex-IT executive ever thought she would do. “I used to think tea was incredibly boring until I sipped on my first authentic chai while backpacking in the Czech Republic many years ago during an existential crisis,” Anthea says. “It was the single most delicious drink I had ever tried and I was immediately hooked.” Upon returning to Australia, it took five years of procrastinating and making her colleagues “incredible 3pm office Chai” before Anthea mustered the courage to start small at a local market. “I was literally testing the market and the response was fantastic,” she says. Within eight months Anthea had quit her public service job and was making chai full time.

Fast-forward to 2018, RealChai is growing due to its premium quality and natural ingredients, presented beautifully in sustainably sourced, innovative packaging. As well as growing her successful business, which she attributes to a talented team of three staff who make all the products in-house and an incredibly supportive partner, Anthea has also been growing her family, with two daughters Chloe and Summer. “My daughters are still little – my youngest is only a few months old, but chai is such a big part of our life and its scent wafts consistently throughout our home that I think the love affair with chai is likely to run in the family. We have two mini chai girls in the making.”

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