Skip to content
Search
Cuisine Noir Magazine
Support Our Work - Donate
Support Our Work - Donate
  • Food & Drink
  • Travel
  • Lifestyle
  • Recipes
  • Book Grub
  • Events
  • Marketplace
  • Print
  • Podcast
  • More
    • The Culinary Scoop (blog)
    • Black Wineries
    • Videos
    • CN Review
    • Donate
Cuisine Noir Magazine
  • Food & Drink
  • Travel
  • Lifestyle
  • Recipes
  • Book Grub
  • CN Review
  • Marketplace
  • Print
  • The Culinary Scoop (blog)
  • Events
  • Black Wineries
  • Videos
Support Our Work - Donate
Support Our Work - Donate
Search
Cuisine Noir Magazine
Support Our Work - Donate
Support Our Work - Donate
  • Food & Drink
  • Travel
  • Lifestyle
  • Recipes
  • Book Grub
  • Events
  • Marketplace
  • Print
  • Podcast
  • More
    • The Culinary Scoop (blog)
    • Black Wineries
    • Videos
    • CN Review
    • Donate
Cuisine Noir Magazine
  • Food & Drink
  • Travel
  • Lifestyle
  • Recipes
  • Book Grub
  • CN Review
  • Marketplace
  • Print
  • The Culinary Scoop (blog)
  • Events
  • Black Wineries
  • Videos
Support Our Work - Donate
Support Our Work - Donate

When Tea Transports: La Rue 1680’s Global Luxury Blends Impress

Pictured: Stephanie Synclair | Photo credit: Sara Hanna
July 1, 2021
Ruksana Hussain
Share this article
       

International travel inspires Stephanie Synclair’s luxury loose leaf tea business.

Want to sip tea in the same regal style as the duke and duchess in the Netflix drama “Bridgerton?” Look no further than La Rue 1680, the organic and sustainably harvested luxury loose leaf tea by entrepreneur Stephanie Synclair.

When some businesses were shutting their doors during the early months of the pandemic, Synclair set up her business in October of last year. It was her love for travel that exposed her to the benefits of the beverage.  Sharing her passion for tea, a beverage she admittedly wasn’t a fan of as a youngster, seemed a good pursuit to indulge in.

Focus on Luxury

Why is it called La Rue 1680 though? Synclair says there is no big backstory here. Given her love for travel, she has been taking French lessons over the past year, and one of the first words she learned was la rue, which means “the street.”

She hopes her tea transports consumers to a place and time they associate with the blend they are drinking. “I am also extremely intuitive and spiritual and follow my dreams. After I came up with La Rue, I had a dream, and it literally said La Rue 1680, so it does not have any other meaning other than the dream,” says the entrepreneur who also has a marketing consulting firm now in its 12th year in business.

Stephanie Synclair of La Rue 1680 tea
Pictured: Stephanie Synclair | Photo credit: Sara Hanna

Prior to that, she worked in marketing in the corporate world, but wanting flexibility as a single parent to her son took precedence. Now she works alternate weeks of the month with clients and devotes the rest of her time to La Rue 1680.

In fact, it was those off weeks between that gave birth to the tea business. Where previously she would use that time to travel, the pandemic saw Synclair simply sitting at home, fair enough reason to start a new business, one where she hasn’t met many Black female owners of luxury tea brands. “People try to start a company, start smaller and never grow, whereas I came in wanting to dominate a very whitewashed industry.”

From the looks of it, Synclair is well on her way. Don’t take our word for it. La Rue 1680 has received rave reviews from American TV personality Carson Kressley and actress Drew Barrymore (as she sipped it on her TV show), as well as media mentions from Vogue, The Today Show and CNN, among others.

  • Courtney Alexandria Gets Candid About the Health Benefits and Building Community with TeaCourtney Alexandria, Owner of Candid Tea in Maryland
  • Savannah-Based Wayne Ashford Raises Awareness of Healthy Living Through Each BrewWayne Ashford Owner of Ashford Tea Company

Of course, the launch timing couldn’t be better as shows like “Bridgerton” and “The Crown” made the rounds, making drinking tea a regal and adult experience, one many reveled in as they worked from home or sheltered in place. But the focus on luxury loose leaf tea and accessories wasn’t by happenstance.

Travel and Tea

“I am all about luxury everything and one of the people that takes pride in nice things. There is nothing wrong in that…As women, we have the right to luxury today, and we don’t have to downplay ourselves to anyone. That has been my core message throughout my time in business,” says Synclair. “Coming into tea, I knew it was going to be something luxury.”

Strangely enough, this Southern girl raised in Alabama and now residing in Georgia never liked the sweet iced tea the South is notorious for. That love for tea blossomed later when she decided to take her consulting business and life overall—including her then 7-year-old son— on the road in 2012.

La Rue 1680 blends
Pictured: La Rue 1680 blends | Photo credit: La Rue 1680

Synclair traces her love for travel to a very young age, when she’d skip classes in high school to head to the library, making a beeline for the travel and business sections to plot her future. That naivete was quickly laid to rest with the 9-5 of adult life taking over. And when she became an entrepreneur as a single parent, she had her fair share of naysayers.

Realizing she’d never have the perfect moment to plan her travels, she purchased one-way tickets to Italy. Synclair had plans to figure things out during that first month in a vacation rental. But her business ended up doing well and funded the rest of her travels.

“We spent a year traveling, and during that time is when I was really exposed to tea and tea culture. In Europe, yes. In Asia, definitely,” she shares. A glass of Champagne typically accompanies luxury spa treatments in the United States, but she found that in Bali, Thailand and Singapore, there would be tea.

Though she’d initially refuse, she quickly realized, “My idea of tea was not their idea of tea. I would watch ladies in the village dice up ginger and honey and turmeric and make these wonderful blends. I decided let me quit saying no, that’s very rude to the culture and I tasted it.”

That was the beginning of her tea-exploring adventure and realizing a whole other world of tea she didn’t know anything about. Today La Rue 1680 tea is sourced from Hawaii, Africa and Asia, specifically Thailand, Sri Lanka and India.

About 16 varieties are available for sale online and a whole new range of lifestyle products— beautiful plates, teacups and saucers, kettles with gold trims, cute coasters, and stickers—are now available for pre-order. Clients range from across the U.S. and Canada. Flavors such as India Street Vanilla Chai, Moroccan Mint, Casablanca Street, and Italian Cream Earl Grey have done well.

La Rue 1680 blends
Pictured: La Rue 1680 blends | Photo credit: La Rue 1680
Future Growth

While that growth is welcome, it has brought its unique set of challenges. “When you snowball, people don’t understand you are still a small business,” says Synclair. With the flurry of media mentions, orders skyrocketed. “It created a lot of stress because I had not built out my team. Initially, it was me and my two friends, and then I had to hire five people.”

With COVID restrictions in place, there couldn’t be that many people in one space. The space here being Synclair’s home office and garage, which is where the company was operating from up until this April.

Issues with storing inventory, order fulfillment and shipping products were par for the course. “It will shock you how automatically many people assume that you are stealing from them,” she shares, having had to deal with a few not-so-nice customer service situations.

Synclair takes to social media often to address these issues and share her thoughts on business. Now she is hiring more people for her team and, as a single mom to her now 14-year-old son, has decided to give priority to single parents for work-from-home positions in social media and customer service so they can enjoy flexible schedules to care for family as she plans for the future of her business.

  • Wellness Advocate Quentin Vennie Helps Create Anxiety-Free Homes with New Line of Blended TeasQuentin Vennie, owner of Greenhouse Tea Company
  • ZABICOLife Brews Health in a Teacup, Making Herbalism a LifestyleZABICOLife founder Gladstone St. Auburn Etienne

“What I see is this new wave, thanks to the pandemic, of people who will appreciate time to slow down during tea,” Synclair shares. Tea is also healthier, providing a steady caffeine flow to the body rather than the coffee crash, and loose leaf tea gives three to four infusions compared to the one-time use of teabags.

“The more I am in this, the more I realize people crave experiences, so the goal is to start opening La Rue experience stores by summer 2022, so when you come in, you feel like you have walked into an English garden, not a sit-down café, smell different blends, have tasting stations, purchase your tea and enjoy a full experience.”

Learn more about luxury loose leaf tea at www.larue1680.com and follow along for updates on Instagram and Facebook.

  • under Food & Drink Rhonda McCullough-Gilmore: Memories of Bernie Mac & Cooking with Love
  • LaTocha Scott-Bivens - Xcape’s and vegan enthusiast
    under Food & Drink Why Xcape’s LaTocha Scott-Bivens Wants to “Veganize” Your Menu
  • Celebrity chef and The Great Soul Food Cook-Off Champion Razia Sabour
    under Black Chefs , Food & Drink Celebrity Chef Razia Sabour Honors Soul Food’s History with Competition Win
  • Soul Food Restaurants by Felicia owners Joselino Neto Lima de Barros, Feliciana de Ceita Neto de Lima and Jose Feliciano Lima de Barros
    under Black Chefs , Food & Drink A Mother’s Dream Inspires Soul Food Restaurant by Felicia in Lisbon
Share this article
Ruksana Hussain

Ruksana is an award-winning editor and writer, foodie and travel enthusiast who revels in eclectic cultural and culinary experiences near and far. She is the recipient of the inaugural Richard S Holden Diversity Fellowship from ACES: The Society of Copyediting, the inaugural diversity fellowship from The American Society of Business Publication Editors, and has received Los Angeles Press Club awards for her journalistic work. Born in India, raised in Oman and now calling the United States home, she shares the stories of people she meets and places she visits as a travel journalist and features writer, some of which you can also read on her digital magazine: TravelerandTourist.com.

Related Articles

Loading...
R&B singer Bobby Brown with Bobby Brown Foods products
Featured Food & Drink

Singer Bobby Brown is Spicing Up New Edition’s The Legacy Tour

Kitchen designer Caren Rideau
Food & Drink Lifestyle

Kitchen Designer Caren Rideau Creates Spaces Inspired by Food, Culture and Wine

Célébrez en Rosé festival attendees
Black Winemakers Food & Drink

Célébrez en Rosé Wine & Music Festival Announces 2023 Spring Dates

Be the first to know about the latest online, industry updates, world news, events and promotions that connect the African diaspora through food, drink and travel.

    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertising
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertising

    #IAmCuisineNoir

    This site participates in affiliate programs. See our full disclosure for more information.

    Copyright© 2023 Cuisine Noir and The Global Food and Drink Initiative. Privacy
    Site by ACS Digital

    Any unauthorized duplication, download or reprint of images or content from this website for promotional or commercial use is strictly prohibited without written permission from The Global Food and Drink Initiative. Violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Trademark pending.

    YES!  We’re excited you are signing up too!  

    Get ready to receive our weekly newsletter about:

    • New articles online
    • World news and industry happenings throughout the African Diaspora
    • Mouthwatering recipes
    • Promotions and giveaways

    Right in your inbox!