Dona Chai

Brooklyn, New York

I'm from Michigan, Detroit area. I moved to NYC 3 years ago for grad school at NYU in Food Studies. The year before, I spent in Boulder Colorado working on a non-profit, educational, organic farm called Growing Gardens. We worked with kids, taught them about growing food and cooking, and worked the farmers market. Before that, I was exploring other areas of food -- I worked in restaurants, bakeries, with a food policy nonprofit, etc. Anyway, while in the NYU program, I decided to start a chai company. I saw a gap in the market (& needed a job!) --- there seemed to be no local chai company to provide all these locally driven coffee shops and markets with a chai concentrate. I then began making chai and planning the company.
I launched in 2014, while in my last semester of grad school. Just after the launch, my brother Peter moved to NYC to be my partner. He had just graduated Kalamazoo College with an undergraduate business degree.