Michael Ham @ Wild Orchard
The World's First ROC Tea
Michael Ham is the Co-Founder and President at Wild Orchard. Wild Orchard is the first brand to introduce Regenerative Organic Certified® (ROC) teas to the world. They have 27 SKUs including loose-leaf and bagged traditional green and black teas, botanical blends, and a unique black matcha.
The Brand
Wild Orchard launched in the U.S. in 2021. Its 1,000-acre partner farm is located on the island of Jeju off the southern tip of South Korea. While Wild Orchard was beginning their journey selling online and in a few retailers, the company hit a pivotal moment when Noma, a three-star Michelin restaurant, selected Wild Orchard for its pop-up in New York City. This has led to other opportunities in influential food service accounts like high-end cafes, hotels, and other Michelin restaurants across the country.
Key to their business is creating a breadth of tea flavors so that anybody can find a tea that they can enjoy.
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Their Story
Majoring in Kinesiology with a minor in human nutrition, Michael had always been intent on doing something to elevate the human condition. While he’d been drinking tea from the farm for years, it wasn’t until four years ago when Wild Orchard's founding members approached them with an idea to expand beyond South Korea.
In 1999, their partners developed the tea farm on Jeju Island with a vision to take advantage of the island’s volcanic soil, copious rainfall, and rich biodiversity. They planted seeds among the native vegetation using regenerative organic practices to create a rich microbiome in the soil. The patriarch of the farming operation knew that if tea plants could grow from seed and "out-compete" the native vegetation then these plants would produce some of the best tea in the world. Magical things started to happen as the tea plants became a part of the natural systems alive and well on the island. For instance, the island's geese began to support the tea plants by eating down the surrounding vegetation the tea was competing with.
“There are a lot of parallels in sports to life. A full team full of superstars isn’t gonna win you a championship, right? You gotta have a good mix. And I think agriculture is very similar. You have to have that biodiversity. It's not just about soil, it's about livestock, integrating insects and bees, and creating that ecology that allows nature to do what it's designed to do.” – Michael
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A Higher Value Supply Chain
Unlike the traditional tea industry where the supply chain flows through a myriad of hands, Wild Orchard teas are direct-sourced, and single origin, with the tea harvested and processed in South Korea.
“The typical supply chain has so many middlemen. There's lots of pressure on the farm to lower the price and the farmers get trapped by that commodity model. We’re showing the value of regenerative to conventional farmers saying, ‘If you engage in this, your farm will be more resilient, you'll be able to mitigate risk against climate change and you'll get a better return.’ We have to collectively create a market for that return and that value to the consumers because unless we provide that value proposition to consumers, we can't really gain market share.” – Michael
Top Tea
As part of their plan to gain brand recognition beyond South Korea (where the farm had already won multiple tea awards), they started entering the top tea competitions in the world – soon winning best green tea in three of the four most prestigious competitions, and second place in the fourth.
They’re also promoting sustainability (something the farm had been focusing on since its inception), earning Regenerative Organic Certification last year. They also have plans to lab test all their teas for caffeine content, nutrient density, and antioxidants to not only provide ultimate transparency but to show the difference regenerative agriculture makes in the end product.
"So we were like, we gotta get on to the world stage. So we started entering all the top tea competitions. There are the four most prestigious in the world, and I call it the Grand Slam because they're in the UK, the US, France, and Australia. To our delight, we actually won the best green tea in three of those and second in the fourth one. So that's when we got even more energized. And then the next thing was OK, how do we create not only the best tasting teas according to the tea experts, but how do we infuse it with the message of sustainability?" - Michael
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Same Plant, Different Tea
Unlike other crops, tea has multiple harvest cycles. The first flush is the most precious, hand-picked in the spring. The leaves are very small but offer the smoothest taste with the most antioxidants. These are the teas that win the awards. The second and third flush are harvested later in the spring and is more suited to mass production. Wild Orchard eventually hopes to harvest year-round to take advantage of the different taste profiles that come from harvest timing.
Every type of tea – whether black, white, yellow or green – comes from the same tree. The difference comes from the level of oxidation, with black and dark teas having the most and green tea the least.
Finding Their Route To Market
Michael admits they’re still refining their story.
There’s the regenerative angle that highlights the huge impact converting tea to regenerative could have across the world. After water, tea is the second largest consumed beverage in the world. The tea plant is also a perennial and one of the best crops to adopt regenerative principles.
There’s also the refreshment angle. Four of every five cups of tea consumed in the U.S. are iced tea, and consumers are looking for more cold drinks as temperatures rise due to a warming planet. Unlike sodas and sweet teas packed with sugar, Wild Orchard cold brew iced teas are sweetened with a touch of maple syrup or honey and offer all the health benefits of green tea.
Michael believes that food service is their golden ticket, offering better margins and opportunities to expand through cold brew bottled teas, tea pairings, and other innovations.
“We’ve spent the last couple of years looking at all the different channels. As one of my mentors says, every channel is like a child. The more children you have, the more resources and energy you have to spend. We’re still a small team of five. For retail distribution, we’re trying to limit it to a select group of super-aligned retailers where we can go in, do demos, and really help to educate consumers on regenerative.” – Michael
Our Path to 50% Market Share 4 Regen
Michael believes it starts with the brands and educating consumers. There’s also a need for collaboration, starting with retailers all the way through to policymakers creating incentives for farmers to transition from conventional to regenerative.
“The clean energy movement is a great example. You’ve got brands like Tesla that have accelerated the movement to clean energy, industries getting on board, and policies and incentives being made. Ultimately, there’s no one answer – the answer is in all of us. ” – Michael
You can check out the full episode with Michael from Wild Orchard HERE.
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This ReGen Recap was produced with support from Kristina Tober