With her own business on ice after seven years of operations, entrepreneur Tracy Bell is able to bring a lot of empathy to her new role as executive director of the Wallace McCain Institute, which aims to help business owners and entrepreneurial leaders throughout Atlantic Canada grow bigger, faster. 

Bell, a co-founder of Saint John-based Millennia TEA, a startup that imported frozen tea from Sri Lanka, Colombia and Kenya then sold it in nutrient-dense form to big retailers such as Sobeys and Whole Foods,  suspended its operations at the start of this year.

She cites the difficult economic climate, escalating supply chain costs, and the challenge of getting consumers to rethink their ideas around the world’s most popular beverage.

“With Millennia TEA we had a big vision, a product that delivered, and all kinds of external validation in the form of patents, awards etc. But I have lived some of the hardest things business owners face,” Bell told Entrevestor.

“We established an international supply chain with Fairtrade organic farmers. We created our own import category because the trade framework did not exist for frozen tea. We raised capital. We secured national distribution. And then we closed operations. These are hard things. And I think they serve me in my work with founders, and by extension, the Wallace McCain Institute.”

Bell said raising investment in Canada, and Atlantic Canada in particular, is increasingly tough. And costs are high: “With Millennia TEA, our supply chain costs went up 300 percent during Covid.”

Getting traction for an innovative product also proved hard in the mass grocery business, she said, especially when many consumers struggle to afford the basics.   

She said tea is the most consumed beverage in the world, after water, and that Millennia TEA asked consumers to re-think the familiar drink.

“We asked the consumer to treat tea as a plant, not as dried fragments. Tea is one of the most powerful medicinal plants. Heat, light and air degrade the health benefits. We reduced or eliminated exposure to those, washed the leaves in a patented process that helped the antioxidants better absorb in the gut. And we asked consumers to consume the plant in full.

“Our tea was stored in the freezer, alongside the frozen fruits and berries. We asked people to throw our tea in smoothies, as well as drink it in the conventional way.

“It was my first business. We didn’t anticipate fully what a challenge it would be to change consumer behaviour and get them to use raw, frozen tea cubes. There was no reference point although when people did actually try it, the re-purchase rate was very high.”

For now, the company is continuing to file corporate taxes, but they have ceased operations and have laid off the team.

“Our investors would have kept us afloat, but it didn’t make sense,” Bell said. “There may be a time down the road when it would make good sense to spin it back up…We may find a buyer, someone who can educate the marketplace in a way we couldn’t as a startup with a limited budget, but right now the company is in the freezer.”

Her new role at the Wallace McCain Institute is a homecoming of sorts for Bell who first joined the institute in 2019 as a member of its Entrepreneurial Leaders Program. For the past seven months she has served as CEO of the Saint John Region Chamber of Commerce. 

“When I was running Millennia TEA, I was very focused on our business objectives. Now, I’ve got this wider lens on the economy, thanks to my experience leading the chamber for the last seven months,” she said.

“I better understand the importance of trade. It’s the work of helping to grow businesses that have the potential to strengthen the economy, that’s what lights me up.

“When Wallace McCain himself created the institute, he saw our collective strength as central to the region’s future prosperity. I can’t wait to continue the good work done over the past 15 years, and to grow the impact exponentially over the next 15.”