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Guayaki Yerba Mate: an organic alternative to coffee
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Yerba mate is gaining popularity in the health world as a viable alternative to coffee. Like coffee, yerba mate is a stimulatant tea-like beverage with a unique flavor and balanced energy. However, unlike coffee it includes 24 vitamins and minerals, 15 amino acids and more antioxidant than green tea.
One company that has really gained traction in the world of mate drinks is Guayakí Yerba Mate, which offers organic yerba mate in loose leaf, tea bags, ready-to-drink bottles and energy shots. Founded in 1996 by David Karr and Alex Pryor, the two college seniors began with a passion for the drink and a desire to create a different business model based on restorative production for the rainforest-grown yerba mate.
Traditional mate and coffee production can be very devastating for the environment when South American countries use deforestation to grow crops. Not only has this conventional method destroyed the land, but it also has displaced many native tribes in the Amazon region. The Guayakí company offered locals an alternative with their shade-grown mate and began the world’s first fair trade certified yerba mate. To this day they purchase directly from small-scale farmers and responsible growers.
For those that haven’t experienced South American culture, mate is a foreign word, so in order to excel the brand, David and his brother took to the road in their mate-inspired painted van (now an RV) to go from stores and fairs brewing the mate drink for customers who instantly enjoyed its uplifting benefits.
Today, D.C. area consumers can enjoy organic yerba mate anytime with Guayakí’s ready-to-drink bottles that offer a variety of flavors from the original, which is slightly sweetened, to unsweetened, pomegranate, raspberry, passion fruit, citrus and mint. The mate drinks are very tasty. All but the unsweetened, are sweetened with either sugar or stevia (mint), but are not sickeningly sweet like sodas or other tea brands. But the best part is that the drinks are thirst quenching and provide the consumer with a stimulant without a rough crash later. Mate doesn't get people buzzing, but rather it just provides consumers with a boost that will help get them through their day, without harm.
Guayakí Yerba Mate can be found in many grocers in the Washington, D.C. area.
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