It was love at first sip when we first encountered chai latte during a US holiday to join 2 million other people in Times Square to ring in the New Millennium.
We were hooked after the first taste of this frothy, sweet and spicy milk drink that looked like café latte, but was tea-based and tasted like liquid doughnuts.
The pack we brought home lasted only a few months and when we contacted the US manufacturers for more they told us there wouldn’t be any more... unless we wanted to sell it in Australia ourselves.
We had our own PR/marketing business at the time and didn't want to change direction, but the answer seemed simple... we just had to talk to a few foodie contacts and they'd surely jump at a ground floor opportunity to launch Australia's own chai phenomenon.
How hard could it be?
We soon found out.
Selling an unheard-of product with a weird name ("chai what!?") into an industry we didn't know – and that didn’t want to know us – was crazy hard and very frustrating.
We chipped away for about 3 years before we started to find some traction - right about the time our US supplier cashed out leaving us with no chai to sell and lots of angry customers!
It took us about 30 seconds to decide to create our own brand, but it took another 12 months of hard slog to get that new product/brand launched - most of that time being spent on developing our recipes.
With limited cash, no appetite for serious debt and no expertise in food manufacturing/storage or distribution, it made sense to outsource as many parts of the business as possible.
And being able to manage the whole business via telephone and the internet meant we could function anywhere there was mobile phone signal and internet access. So, armed with our "ideal lifestyle" list, we set off to road-test every city, town and hamlet between Newcastle and Noosa on Australia's east coast. We chose Port Stephens in NSW and in 2007 said goodbye to our home town of Launceston in Tasmania.
We set Bondi Chai's official birthday as May 5, 2005 (05/05/05), launching with 2 varieties: Vanilla Honey and Club Cinnamon and had to commit to one tonne of each for our first production batch. With our bridges in flames behind us, we set off with enthusiasm, hardly pausing to notice that after one month we'd sold just 17kg.
Only 1883kg to go!
In 2014 we moved into the retail world, winning national shelf-space with Woolworths, Coles and Costco.
We were also nominated for the Telstra Australian Business Awards eventually being honoured as the NSW Micro Business of The Year and a National Finalist.
That proved to be a watershed for Bondi Chai... in the next 12 months we were named the Asia-Pacific Food and Beverage Company of The Year in the Stevie Awards and within a few years our business had doubled in size.
The awards kept coming and in 2021 Bondi Chai Latte was named Best Chai Latte in the international LuxLife Food & Drink Awards. Two years later our Faces of Bondi Chai campaign was recognised for Marketing Excellence in the Australian Business ABA100 Awards.
And in 2024 we won another international award when our marketing project, the Faces of Bondi Chai, received a Bronze Stevie® Award for the Marketing Campaign of the Year in the 'Engaged Community of the Year' category.
Export was always a big part of our growth plans – it’s one of the key reasons we chose the name Bondi Chai. These days you can enjoy a Bondi Chai in places as far apart as Singapore and Sydney, Amsterdam and Albury, Roma and Rome or Taipei and Tamworth.
On our travels, we never tire of hearing Bondi Chai being ordered in different languages or listening to super-stars like Nicole Kidman and Alice Cooper singing the praises of Bondi Chai.
Our international expansion continues with efforts currently concentrated on Asia and Europe.
We’ve never lost sight of the fact that the product is the real hero in this story and product development is always front-of-mind.
Initiatives like our recently-launched dairy-free/vegan Ginger n Spice variety and Nespresso-compatible capsules help to continuously broaden Bondi Chai’s reach.
We’re grateful for all the people who help us to make, pack and distribute Bondi Chai to every corner of our country and many parts of the world.
But the people we’re most grateful for are the ever-growing band of raving Bondi Chai fans who have adopted our products as their favourite drink and help to keep Bondi Chai on a continuous growth curve.
Melissa Edyvean & Martin Buggy
Co-Founders
The Bondi Chai story attracts a lot of media attention, including these features on Foxtel's Industry Leaders series, Jules Brooke's She's The Boss podcast, and Kevin Bee's Life Changing Questions...