• Setšong African Tea Crafters is a small business that supplies indigenous teas made from leaves and roots found in Limpopo.
• The concept came about in 2014, when Nondumiso Phaahla went to Limpopo and found elderly women making the teas.
• The company was recently announced as the winner of the Food Lover’s Market Seeds of Change Supplier Development Partnership, and will supply the retailer soon.
• For more stories go to www.BusinessInsider.co.za.

Setšong African Tea Crafters, which offers eight different types of indigenous teas, has pitched its way into becoming a supplier for Food Lover’s Market.

It is the winner of the Food Lover’s Market Seeds of Change Supplier Development Partnership, after pitching against 270 other companies.

The story dates back to 2014, by way of the Siyaphila Youth Support Initiative, a community development organisation run by Nondumiso Phaahla, who is also the managing director of the business.

While doing community work in the village of Ga-Phaahla in Sikhukhune, Phaahla realised that there was a lot of indigenous knowledge of different foods, fruits and herbs that are beneficial and sustainable for a healthy lifestyle.

Liquid Gold  

According to Retang Phaahla, Nondumiso’s daughter and operational director of the company, her grandmother’s sister would always grind leaves on a rock in the evening, and they were curious to find out what she was making.

“One evening my mom asked her what she was grinding, [possibly] out of suspicion of the strange things people in some rural area do with muti.

“She told her that it’s tea that they drink since they couldn’t afford to buy tea at the shop. She didn’t want people seeing them grinding the leaves because they’d know that they can’t afford to buy tea,” Retang told Business Insider South Africa.

Nondumiso, who is a tea lover, asked for a cup, and was blown away by the taste of the tea.

Grinding the tea (Instagram)

She then brought a sample of the Tepane black bush tea for Retang in Gauteng. They drank it regularly at home, and Retang started to experiment with different recipes.

“I’d mix it with different herbs and in fact the very first time I came up with an infusion, I actually went to Food Lover’s Market, funny enough, to buy ginger, pepper and cinnamon, and other different herbs to use,” she said.

The same thing happened in a neighbouring village called G-Matlala, where Rating’s father had bought a farm.

The organisation started engaging with the community and found it had a tea of its own, the Diya Red Root tea.

Retang and her family continued experimenting with the different types of teas. The next step was to approach various companies and the Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA), an entity that helps develop small businesses.