Artisan tea company turning over a new leaf

At 5363 First Ave. N. in Woodlawn, dozens of Mason jars hang in a doorframe area reflecting sun. In less than a month, a living garden will greet Piper & Leaf Tea customers — in addition to a strong whiff of freshly picked fruit and new loose-leaf tea creations. Inside, co-owner Connor Knapp is excited to bring Birmingham a more permanent taste of his family’s local tea company.  

“We like to really embrace and appreciate the history of the place,” he said. 

Piper & Leaf is an artisan tea company that creates and sells gourmet blends and brews of herbal, black and green tea, usually in their signature reusable Mason jars.

When deciding to add a storefront in Birmingham, Knapp and his family co-owners said they knew they didn’t want to be another high-end coffee or tea shop. They wanted to provide opportunities locally and be part of embracing a bigger community development. For Piper & Leaf, Woodlawn is perfect. 

“We’ve run into people who moved away because there were no opportunities, but people are changing the face of what we see here in Woodlawn now,” he said.

Not only is it down the road from Jones Teaching Farm and Pepper Place Market, it’s also in a place that Knapp said people grew up in but had to leave because of the lack of job opportunities. 

Piper & Leaf opened their first storefront shop in Huntsville 2013, while continuing to host pop-ups and catering events. Knapp, who came from a military family and was used to moving around, wanted to explore the community that made Huntsville unique.

After a brief stint selling compost tea and homemade drinking tea there, the high demand for the family’s fresh Russian samovar-inspired drinking tea grew rapidly. Knapp and his family used fresh fruits and herbs from their family garden to blend the tea, with no chemical-based syrup. Soon, they quickly eliminated the compost component and started hauling a trailer with 1,500 gallons of tea a week to the Huntsville farmers market and other community events. 

Even from the beginning, Knapp said people were “all about the tea.”

“People were standing in line for two blocks, and we kept having to go 20 minutes away to bring each new hot tea container back by hand,” he said. “We kept noticing the people in line were happy; they would jump into the service and bar area and start helping us out. It was important to them; it was important to the community.”

Since then, they opened their first brick-and-mortar store at Lowe Mill in Huntsville. They now sell tea at seven local places around Birmingham, and for the past three years, Piper & Leaf has also traveled on Saturdays to sell tea at the Pepper Place Farmers Market. They’ve developed close ties with local farmers and ensured they are paid market rate. 

A big part of opening a store in Birmingham also includes reeducating people about their impression of Piper & Leaf. Even though their social media and website persona might allude to “corporate gleam,” as Knapp said, they are still a family-owned business that works hard and occasionally laughs at the fact that no one has any “real” experience in tea-making, photography or social media. 

Even last summer, they only broke even from farmers market sales.

He said they value relationships over profit, and although the company has had some opportunities to go big, that’s not really what the core values of Piper & Leaf are about.

“We’re a grass-roots movement,” he said. “We’re about bringing together the community.”

Piper & Leaf’s new Birmingham storefront should open around August. So far, it’s had two soft openings and will continue to be at Pepper Place Market for the farmers market. To learn more about the Piper & Leaf coming to Birmingham, go to piperandleaf.com.