Yerba mate is a staple drink throughout much of South America, said Adam Lilley, co-owner of San Marcos-based beverage company Busy Bee Yerba Mate. However, it has not found widespread adoption in the U.S., he said.
Busy Bee is hoping to change that.
The company started in January 2013, after years of Lilley’s consistent reminders to friends and business partners Kyle Mylius, Ian Lee and Nathan Todd that the yerba mate drink known as the Busy Bee sold at their business, Tantra Coffeehouse, would be a great success if they could ever figure out a way to bottle it.
In early 2013, the trio was approached by their friend Jayme Starrak with an offer to finance a business venture. Lilley, Starrak, Mylius, Todd and Ian Lee began working to find a commercial bottler who could bottle the Busy Bee drink while they worked to expand their product’s distribution one grocery store at a time.
“We pretty quickly found out that that’s not really something you do,” Lilley said. “The beverage industry is—there’s not a lot of open doors for mom and pop ideas. It’s not really a thing.
“You’re fighting against Coca-Cola. You’re fighting against Pepsi. You’re fighting against these big corporations, and they don’t want that little mom and pop product on the shelf.”
Eventually, the group decided to rent a commercial kitchen in Wimberley to brew and bottle the drink themselves.
For a year and a half the group made the do-it-yourself operation work, one 50-gallon batch at a time.
In 2014, the group moved its operation to a facility in San Antonio that grew their production capability
fivefold, and in February, Busy Bee Yerba Mate formed a partnership with DB Miller, an Austin-based distribution company.
These days, the group is brewing yerba mate on a 1,500-gallon system and have landed their product on shelves at Central Market, Whole Foods Market and Royal Blue Grocery, among other retailers.
“The operation changed overnight [after forming the partnership with DB Miller],” Lilley said. “Having that distribution channel and the people who have been in the beverage industry in Central Texas for 30-45 years allowed us to go to that next level.”
Within weeks of partnering with DB Miller, Busy Bee’s account portfolio of stores selling the drink went from 15-20 to about 100, Lilley said.
The company makes three flavors of yerba mate; orange blossom, ginger limeade and lavender lemonade. Before the end of 2016 there will likely be a new flavor added, Lilley said.
The caffeine in yerba mate is different from that of coffee, he said. Those who drink yerba mate experience all the caffeine of coffee—a 16-ounce Busy Bee contains about 160 milligrams of caffeine, similar to a similar-size cup of coffee—without the crash that coffee drinkers might sometimes experience.
That led the founding partners to give the drink the tagline, “All the buzz without the crash,” Lilley said.
Busy Bee uses honey and pure cane sugar—the only two sweeteners in the drink—to make it appealing to a mass audience, Lilley said.
“It’s mate for the mate lover, but it’s also just a tasty drink for people who want a good drink,” he said. “They may not be a person who sought out mate or who is necessarily a mate person, but I think we’re converting people. We’re turning people into mate people.”
