Davidson's Organics

Davidson’s Organics was founded in 1976 as the first exclusively organic tea company in the United States — three years before the United States Department of Agriculture had a definition for the term and twenty-six years before it had a certification programme. The firm operates as a single, deliberately compact family supply chain: members of the Mohan family grow organic tea on estates in northern India and ship the leaves, by the half-million pounds a year, to other members of the family in northern Nevada, who blend, package, and distribute them. Three generations into that arrangement, Davidson’s is still owned by the same family on both sides of the Pacific.

The firm imports, blends, packages, and distributes organic teas, herbal infusions, cocoas, and spice blends from a manufacturing facility in Sparks, Nevada — the Reno-area site at which the firm has produced since the 1970s — and ships into the natural-foods retail channel, the food-service channel, and an extensive private-label and contract-manufacturing trade. The catalogue runs to more than five hundred products and includes the bulk and bagged tea lines that supply specialty grocers, restaurants, and specialist tearooms across North America.

What distinguishes Davidson’s Organics in its sector is the combination of categorical priority and family supply chain. American specialty-tea brands typically buy from intermediaries, blend in third-party facilities, and have no direct line to the agriculture; Davidson’s grows what it sells, on estates owned and operated by family members, and processes it at a single American manufacturing site owned by the rest of the family. The 2007 strategic alliance with one of the largest organic tea producers in India extended the firm’s supply rather than displacing the family’s own.

The practice has worked with Davidson’s Organics at the Sparks, Nevada manufacturing facility on Lean process implementation across operations.