Dan Mezheritsky has built his organic tea business, Sacral Chai, around heart health—but not just the cardiovascular kind.
“It’s heart health, both physically and emotionally,” says Mezheritsky, a former junior national decathlete for Canada-turned-entrepreneur.
Sacral Chai sells supplement-infused chai, targeting couples want to get to know each other better through the daily ritual of drinking tea. Those who order the tea by monthly subscription receive text messages every day with questions designed to provoke conversations between couples, along the lines of “What is one thing you think I do better than anyone else?” and “What do you love most about yourself?”
Dan Mezheritsky, a former decathlete and founder of a personal training franchise, has branched out ... [+]
The tea industry is thriving, with the global team market valued at $49 billion in 2021 and projected to reach $93.2 billion by 2031, with a compound annual growth rate of 6.7%, according to Allied Market Research.
Meanwhile, conversation-starting card decks and games are a hot category—with the global market for card games projected to grow to $3.27 billion by 2027, up from $2.1 billion in 2018, according to market research firm Statista.
Helena Escalante, author of The Quickest Guide to Content Creation: How to Consistently Create Content that is Uniquely Yours, Engages Your Audience, and Aligns with your Goals, finds the combination of tea and conversation-starting cards highly engaging.
“My husband and I don’t drink coffee, so we love tea—I especially love chai!” she says. “One of the most fun activities that we always do on our date nights is asking each other questions that go beyond the ordinary. No matter how well we know each other, there is always something new to discover, learn, and cherish from each other.”
Mezheritsky, 40, fell in love with chai during a recent relationship. “She didn't drink coffee, I don't drink coffee and we both loved chai,” he says. “We would just add our own little things to it and make a concoction.”
Eventually, Mezheritsky found he enjoyed their morning chai-drinking ritual so much he wanted to build a business where he could share that passion with his customers. He found a source of the tea through on-the-ground research and, to stand out in the highly competitive tea category, met with a biochemist to get his unique formulation made, launching the product Dec. 5, 2023.
Mezheritsky differentiated the Chai by including six herbal supplements in it: clavo huasca, chuchuhuasi, muira puama, catuaba, damiana and blue lotus. The combination is designed to provide benefits such as improved circulation and to have aphrodisiac properties, according to Mezheritsky. The premium tea sells for $149.00 for a one-month subscription of 30 servings. A gift set is $239.00.
Mezheritsky says he believes the simple ritual of talking over tea—one that is practiced in many forms around the globe—can help build stronger relationships. “Relationships are the most important thing in our life,” he says. “I've seen how, when a relationship is wobbly, it completely derails your day, it derails your month, and it could dampen your year. Make sure that your relationship is as strong as possible because then you're going to feel very good.”
Mezheritsky previously founded Fitness-on-the-Go, a network of in-home personal trainers in Canada and the U.S. that he scaled to more than $1 million in revenue. He started the business after tearing a hamstring in the Olympic trials. He started Fitness-on-the-Go in Vancouver in 2005, using a franchising and licensing model. Currently, the network has close to 200 personal trainers.
In 2017, Mezheritsky began living as a digital nomad, in part to pursue his interest in cooking and healthy food, retaining his interest in Fitness-on-the-Go and relying on a trusted master franchisee to run day-to-day operations. During his journey, he worked in Michelin-starred restaurant, traveled to India with a top chef and chronicled his journey on Instagram. “The draw of cooking for me is giving somebody an amazing experience,” he says.
While his goal at Sacral Chai is to build another strong and sustainable business, that’s only one part of it, he says. “The bottom line of existence is to promote healthier relationships,” says Mezheritsky.
