How Kinship Milk Tea Built a Thriving Online Community Around Vegan Milk Tea

Caitlin Cash, the founder of Kinship Milk Tea, discovered her love of milk tea when she was travelling the world for her diverse tourism career.

Unfortunately, after returning to Austin from Thailand, she discovered that no truly viable vegan milk tea options were available on the market.

Propelled by her passion for delicious food and beverages, she launched her business, committed to building a thriving community within the expanding “tea culture” landscape.

Her venture quickly became a phenomenal success, leading to an expanding line up of tea flavors, inspired by the seasons of the year. This is the story of Kinship Milk Tea’s rise to success.

Read on to learn all about:

• Where Caitlin’s love of milk tea began.
• The reason why she launched her business.
• The philosophy and values that drive Kinship Milk Tea forward.
• The mission and vision behind the Milk tea collection
• What makes Kinship Milk Tea so unique in the current market.
• Which flavors the company offers, and what they’re inspired by.
• How Kinship Milk tea delivers an exceptional customer experience.
• The biggest challenges Caitlin has faced on the path to success.
• The greatest accomplishments of Kinship Milk Tea so far
• What Caitlin wishes she had known before starting her business.
• The biggest mistakes Caitlin has made on her journey.
• The advice she has to offer new business owners.
• The current ecommerce platform used by Kinship Milk Tea
• What’s next for the Milk Tea business.

… and so much more

Before we start, please tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi, everyone! My name is Caitlin Cash, and I’m the founder of Kinship Milk Tea. We arean Austin-based ready to drink vegan milk tea with a focus on tea forward flavors andrefreshing drinkability.

I grew up in Austin, and I’m a true leisure athlete mostly focused on mountain biking.

I love to spend my free time cooking new recipes, not taking myself too seriously, and I recently taught myself to like olives and had myvery first martini, which I loved. I’m currently riding the roller coaster of entrepreneurship i.e. laughing and crying and in disbelief daily.

Please share the story behind starting your business. Whatinspired the creation of your brand?

After graduating from the University of Texas, I worked abroad for 6 years, first in education and then in cycling tourism. I feel really fortunate that I was able to experience so many different cultures in my 20’s, and I spent most of my time in tea forward countries like Thailand and Ireland.

I was teaching English in central Thailand, and every morning before school, I would stop at the local 711 and pick up a bottled milk tea – and it became part of my daily ritual.

When I moved back to Austin, I started tinkering in my tiny home kitchen and anytime friends would come over, Iwould force them to try my newest recipes – I wanted it to be good; I don’t like to doanything halfway.

My friends started taking milk tea to work and then their co-workersstarted reaching out and asking to buy it. And I was like, oh shit, this isn’t forsale.

It kept snowballing, and I realized that I had to either go for it or shut it down. I started Kinship in the fall of 2019 (which ended up being horrendous timing to start a business) and put it on pause for all of 2020.

We relaunched in the summer of 2021 in smaller stores around Austin, and 6 months later Central Market reached out asking to carry us in all 10 stores in Texas, which I honestly thought was a prank (to be fair the buyer’s name is Guy).

We are thrilled to announce that we are launching in the Austin metro Whole FoodsMarkets this spring, and we are gearing up for that as we speak!

Kinship Milk Tea was born from my desire to bring a spark of joy to my loved one’s days. Our high quality loose leaf tea is brewed strong and stirred up with oat milk and turbinado cane sugar.

It’s not too sweet, not too creamy – it’s the Goldilocks of milk tea. It’s the perfect pick -me-up with a kick of caffeine to energize your day. Find us all around Texas in Central Market, Royal Blue Grocery, Tiny Grocer, Thom’s Market and more.

Is there a particular philosophy or values that drive your business? How do you ensure these are reflected in your products / services?

When I think of Kinship, I think of us as the unruly younger brother that’s really lovable but doesn’t follow the rules very well. We break a lot of the molds in tea culture by steeping our tea within an inch of its life to draw out all the flavor -that’s what allows it to stand up to the oat milk and sugar.

Tea culture can be pretty snobbish and we aren’t that. We want to be approachable and playful.

Our mission is connection through common ground. When I think of a bottle of Kinship, I think of it as a distillation of experiences and people I’ve met along the way during my travels.

I want it to evoke a sense of nostalgia and make you feel something. Life is messy and imperfect, and so are we.

What are some signature products that your brand is known for, and what makes them unique?

We make high quality vegan milk teas served chilled to energize your day. They are very tea forward; we want the tea to be the star of the show. Almost the entire bottle is strongly brewed loose leaf tea, and then there’s a splash of oat milk and homemade simple syrup made from turbinado cane sugar.

We currently have 4 sku’s, and it’s easiest to understand their flavor profiles interms of seasons.

● Earl Grey is spring – the OG and the best seller (most familiar to consumersso it’s a good gateway), with hints of lavender and citrus. It’s very perfumedand floral!

● Wuyi Oolong is fall – it’s a crowd pleaser, with hints of toasted hazelnuts,butterscotch, and apricot jam (very sweet and savory).

● Lapsang Souchong is winter – it tastes like a campfire in your mouth (the smokiness comes from the tea leaves being withered over pine branches.) It’s the tea version of mezcal.

● Our newest addition to the lineup – English Breakfast – is summer. It’s a nofrills, straightforward black milk tea – easy drinkin’ and one that you’ll grabagain and again.

How do you ensure a memorable and satisfying experience for your customers? We try to knock it out of the park with our flavor and refreshing drinkability!

We want each customer to experience a small spark of joy when drinking a bottle of Kinship, to slowdown and embrace the moment, to connect with friends and family.It comes first with creating a great product – from packaging design to the flavor to the brand ethos.

What have been some of the biggest challenges you've facedin running your business, and how did you deal with them?

In general, there’s no rule book for being an entrepreneur.There’s so much to know and figure out on a daily basis, and a lot of times you’re scrambling to come up with a solution quickly.

One of the biggest challenges was simply figuring out where to start. When I decided to start Kinship, I reached outto about 15 different CPG entrepreneurs based in Austin, and I asked if I could buy them coffee or lunch. Not a single one turned me down!

That’s absolutely incredible – what a powerful statement on collaboration and lifting each other up. I asked each one of them a ton of questions and wrote down their answers, then I went back and found common threads.

That was myrule book. It truly takes a village, and I’ve had so much mentorship and friendly faces helping me along the way!

What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishments so far?

Our greatest accomplishment thus far is the customer base that we have built. We look at every customer as if they are our close friends, and we strive to make an excellent product every single batch.

We have brought our customers along for the ride since day one, and they truly have our backs.

What do you wish you knew when you started?

I wish I would have know how much of a roller coaster entrepreneurship is when I started! There are so many high highs and low lows, and you are just trying to navigate it on a day to day basis.

Most of the days are a slog – you’re working onnitty gritty details like permits, licenses, pricing strategy, etc.

It’s super detail oriented and most of that stuff is the thing that keeps the lights on. Connecting with customers and partners is my favorite part, and anytime I get to do in-store sampling events or other events, it really adds fuel to the fire.

I am reminded every single time I’m out there talking to people why I’m doing this. Entrepreneurship is really challenging, but really rewarding. There’s no playbook for it, and you’re constantly having to adapt and refocus on what your purpose is. But I wouldn’t change it; I love what I do!

What was your biggest mistake?

My biggest mistake was sending out an entire shipment to stores without barcodes onthe labels! I was updating my labels, and I sent them to print without UPC codes onthem. I got a call from our distributor and he was like, “we have a problem.”

He explained to me that the stores weren’t able to accept the product because they couldn’t scan them in and couldn’t sell them.

It was such an oh shit moment, and I took full responsibility for it. After this panic moment, I just had to laugh. That was all on me.

And now I double check and triple check my work!

What advice would you give to someone aspiring to start their own business in this industry?Talk to every single person you can before you start!

There’s such a culture of paying it forward in the industry, and talking to people about their journey can be so helpful in steering your ship in the right direction.

Can you please write a few lines about your currentplatform you're using (Shopify, Woocommerce etc). What aresome pros and cons of using it?

We are using Shopify right now. I used a default template when I was building the website and still had to watch about 20 hours of youtube tutorials to get there.

I love that it’s easy to change and update on my own because of the default settings; once you learn it, you can update it a thousand times easily. But on the same hand, the default template is limiting.

There are things that I wish I could do, but the template just doesn’t have the capability without a designer lending a hand.

Looking to the future, what innovations or expansions can we expect to see from your brand?

We are so focused right now on building brand awareness with our current set of readyto drink milk tea, that we haven’t focused much on line extensions.

I am super interested in trying a freeze dried version where you can mix it with water and have it in a travel format. Stay tuned 🙂

What does the ideal version of online business successlook like to you?

We don’t operate in the D2C space for our milk tea, so for us, it isn’t related to sales at all. For us, it’s all about continuing to build a community, both in person and online.

We want to bring a small spark of joy to your day – if we can make you smile or laugh with an Instagram post, then that’s success.

Our community is what makes this brand what it is, and we want to continue being our authentic selves and show that we are real humans behind the brand face. If we can convey that through our online presence, then that’s a job well done!

What aspect of your leadership style do you think needsimprovement?

I need to learn how to delegate better and hire people that are really great fits andcontributors!

As a solo founder with a small team, I tend to keep everything in myhead and sometimes have trouble even knowing what I need help with.

Once it’s named, then I struggle to turn the needed information over to someone to start working on.I’m working on setting the business up better foundationally so that I can offload more things.

I trust my team fully and want them to run with it and get creative, butI’ve found it’s difficult to even provide them the information that they need to get moving.

Which entrepreneur in the online space do you most admire?

I admire the folks behind Ghia, the aperitif brand. They have created such a world around their brand, and it’s just incredible. When you see something online, you can immediately tell that it’s their brand. They really tell a story through photos and shapes, and it makes you feel like you understand what the experience of drinking it will feel like. That’s insanely cool.

What has been your most significant investment in your online business?

Our biggest investment has been in the food science space as we try to increase our shelf life on our RTD milk tea. I thought that it would be an easier road – I looked around and all of these canned coffee companies make coffee with oat milk shelfs table, but tea is quite different as it turns out.

Everything we’ve tried thus far has resulted in the flavors being so muted that the product isn’t exciting anymore. I don’t want to serve a boring product, ever!

The really special thing about our milk teas is that there are so many periphery notes that you can find. We had a wine sommelier help us with our tasting notes, and she was really able to bring the experience to life!

What tool, resource, or asset do you value most in yourcurrent business?

I value the team that has worked on this brand the most! I am so fortunate tohave incredibly talented friends and I try to work with them whenever possible.

My closest friends have designed the logo, label, and full packaging, they’ve taken our first studio shots, they’ve helped us name it and give it life through a brand strategy.

So much of each of them are in this brand, and it’s our most valuable asset and resource.

What activity in running your business brings you themost joy?

I love the storytelling piece the most! I like the brand building and communitybuilding aspect.

It brings me so much joy being in front of customers and telling them our story and then seeing firsthand their reactions when they taste the product for the first time. It’s such a lightbulb moment – this is why we are doing this!

What distinctive trait do you believe sets your business approach apart?

I think that we are super focused on the journey – what can we learn from the process?

We aren’t focused on an end goal, but more so how can we make a difference in the space right now. I’m a really slow mover, and I like to do everything with intentionality.

We stand by that – if you treat people with kindness and continue putting out a great tasting product, then hopefully the bricks will fall into place.

Are there any business decisions that you regret?

The only thing I regret is not making decisions more quickly.

When I initially started the business, I had this mentality that everything needed to be absolutely perfect before I went with it. I didn’t understand that every single piece of the business is evolving; nothing should ever be static.

Of course the label will change 900 times, of course you’re going to continue tweaking the product itself – everything is fluid. I wish I would have let that perfectionism go a bit early on so that I could just make the best decision that was in front of me at the time.