Full Moon Tea Company- Brewing a Unique Tea for a Unique Town
Photo Credit: Tiffany McFalls
By Meg Hale Brunton
“I’ve always been a tea nerd,” says the owner/operator of Full Moon Tea Company Katie-Lynn McDonald. She recalls attending her first high tea when she was 21 at The Crooked Tea House of Windsor, the oldest tea house in England. Living paycheck to paycheck most of her adult life, McDonald unabashedly says she intends to make Full Moon Tea Company a million dollar company and a national brand. “I believe that I have what it takes to be very successful. I’ve always believed that if you take a leap, believe in yourself and follow your heart, it’s gonna work out.”
“I’ve always been very colorful; maybe a little bit eccentric,” says McDonald. Growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, McDonald says she was always the ‘rainbow sheep’ of her conservative family. Because of this eccentricity, she says she felt at home in Asheville, NC. “This is where I feel I’m setting down roots as I get older.” One quality that made McDonald unique was that she made a plan to become an entrepreneur at just sixteen. After moving to Asheville in 2010, she enrolled in culinary school at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College where she fell in love with pastry-making.
After graduating in 2014, she landed a job as a pastry cook at The Grove Park Inn, followed by one at Old Europe. Both jobs taught her a lot about business management, as well as cooking for people on a large scale. In 2019, she became manager of the bake shop at Warren Wilson College until the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in her being temporarily laid off. McDonald used the time to return to AB-Tech to learn graphic design and web development. A school friend had contacts at a local spice company that offered McDonald an administration job at their farm. She quickly became the business’s General Manager. “I learned the absolute good and the absolute bad of running your own business, and that’s what I needed,” McDonald explains. She oversaw all the business’s events, marketing, social media, and sales. McDonald thought that she would eventually be offered a partnership in the business, but realized that it would never happen. “At the end of the day, I was putting 110% into everything I did to sell somebody else’s legacy, to sell somebody else’s dream. I started to feel like my potential wasn’t really being fulfilled.” Then, fate stepped in to help McDonald reach her full potential.
The Restoration Hotel, a luxury boutique hotel out of Charleston, SC was preparing to open a new location in Asheville and wanted to partner with local female-owned small businesses. They reached out to Anna Beth Eason at High Noon Roasters to provide the coffee for the hotel coffee shop, restaurant, and the rooms. They asked Eason if she knew any local tea-makers. Knowing McDonald’s background in business management and food preparation, Eason called her and suggested she start her own business. “I consider myself the luckiest person in the world. I was able to start a tea company with a big wholesale contract right off the bat. I was able to do this before the company even had a name,” McDonald says of the fortuitousness. “To have the opportunity to start your own business with that foundation is absolutely phenomenal.”
McDonald quickly went to work learning everything she could about making tea. With a background in herbalism, she researched the Camellia Sinesis plant and visited tea plantations to learn how the tea plants grow. She studied cupping and held regular tea tastings with friends, neighbors, and the hotel staff to perfect her flavors. McDonald feels that her years of working with farmers through the spice company, combined with her pastry chef taste buds, have made her uniquely qualified to create teas with the ideal taste. She also grew up around herbs and berries, having a father who was a permaculturist. “It’s an evolution. The world of tea is infinite. I’m still learning,” she says. Eventually, she created her five base tea blends: Strawberry Honeysuckle White Tea, Smoky Mountains Cowboy Chai, Appalachian Lady Grey, Evening Peach Orchard herbal tea, and Hibiscus Berry Yerba Mate. All of her blends are made from 100% whole botanical ingredients, sustainably sourced, with no additives, fillers, or sweeteners.
The Restoration opened in April 2023. By December of that year, McDonald had launched a full retail line for her business Full Moon Tea Company. Doing all of her tea-making out of a shared kitchen space in Black Mountain, McDonald got to work building up her customer-base. Within two months, she had nineteen wholesale accounts in five states across the country. Recently, Full Moon’s teas also became available for purchase at The Biltmore Estate. “I’m very politely aggressive. I think the most important thing is I’m not afraid to ask for what I want,” she says. “I have a very clear vision for what I want my business to be. I 100% believe in my brand.”
McDonald takes pride in the fact that she has a 100% return rate from the tea samples she gives to potential clients. “Once they try it, they want it. The tea really does sell itself. The tea is delicious. It’s beautiful, it’s high-quality, it’s fun and exciting,” she says. Now 42, McDonald looks back on 2023 as a wonderfully life-changing year for her. Not only did she start her business, but she also met the love of her life and became ‘bonus mom’ to three kids. Feeling that all the pieces of her life have come together at exactly the right moment, she is eager to see what the future will bring. “I’ve realized that everything that I have been through in my life has created a unique perspective, that I can have something that’s unique and that’s mine, that’s my legacy and my voice. That’s where Full Moon Tea Company came from. Now having that and actually seeing that is the most phenomenal part.”
For more information on Full Moon Tea Company, visit their website: https://fullmoonteacompany.com/
