Our Story
Not prim. Not proper. Just really, really passionate about tea and people.
Where it started
We are Nathan and Shaelyn Ellyson — a couple of tea-obsessed people from New Mexico who somehow ended up in Batesville, Arkansas, and decided to do something about the fact that there wasn't a proper tea shop in town.
Nathan had been begging to open a tea place for years. When we moved south, he assumed sweet tea would be on every corner. He was wrong about that. What he wasn't wrong about was that people here would love it if someone did it right.
For Shaelyn, tea was never a trend — it was home. Growing up, there was never a pot of coffee brewing in the house, but there was always tea. Hot tea every morning with her mom and grannies, a white mug on the counter, the ritual of it. To this day, hot tea is what she reaches for when she misses home, when she wants to slow down, when she needs a minute of comfort in a busy day.
In 2018, after years of planting roots in Batesville and falling in love with this community, we felt a pull toward something more. Something that would let us pour into people the way people had poured into us. A place where we could share what we love and love on the people who walked through the door.
Our Boys
The Tea Crate has never just been a business. It's been a family project from day one.
Our sons Wyatt and Sawyer have grown up inside these walls — learning what it means to work hard for something you believe in, to show up even when it's not convenient, and to treat every customer like they matter. Because they do.
They've hauled inventory, worked events, watched us make decisions in real time, and seen what it looks like when two people bet on themselves and their community. We couldn't be more proud of the young men Wyatt and Sawyer are becoming — and we're grateful every day that this place gave us something to build together.
The Tea Crate isn't just our livelihood. It's one of the best things we've ever done for our family.
A Second Family
We set out to build a business. We didn’t expect to build a family.
The people who showed up to work at The Tea Crate weren’t just employees. They were kids who helped us grow something from nothing, who poured their hearts and souls out right alongside us every single day. They showed up through a pandemic — when everything was uncertain and the world felt impossible — and they kept showing up. That kind of loyalty isn’t something you can train. It’s something you earn together.
We cried on the floor together on the hard days. We sang along to whoever was winning the playlist battle that shift. We celebrated the wins, cleaned up the spills — literal gallons of tea, more times than we can count — and held each other up when life outside the walls got heavy. Because The Tea Crate became the place people came when they needed a safe place to land. For our team, and for us, it was exactly that.
The culture we built inside those walls was never accidental. We cared about flavor and quality and doing things right. We believed in leaving things better than you found them, showing up for each other always, doing your best even when no one is watching, and going the extra mile because that’s just who you are. That’s what we asked of our team. And that’s what they gave us, every day.
And the customers felt it. They felt every bit of it.
We knew people by name and by drink. They knew us. They became part of “Tea Crate things” — the inside jokes, the nicknames, the chaos, the joy. We were invited to kids’ birthday parties. Birthdays were celebrated on the rooftop because The Tea Crate was everyone’s favorite place to be. Customers loved the team. The team loved them back. And we loved all of them.
That was what The Tea Crate was built on. Not just tea. People. Always people first.
Everyone loves the building.
It was a little unexpected and a whole lot of fun — which is exactly what we were going for. We wanted a space that felt like us: not fussy, not formal, just genuinely welcoming and a little bit surprising. A place where people would walk in and immediately feel like they could relax and be themselves.
We opened the windows in January 2020 and let the tea and love begin to flow. What followed was five years of drinks, conversations, regulars who became friends, and a community that showed up for us in ways we never expected.
The Building
What Changed?
In April 2025, we made one of the biggest decisions of our business lives: we closed our drive-through and went all in on shipping.
It wasn't an easy call. The drive-through was where we knew our regulars by name, where we watched seasons change from behind the window, where so much of the heart of The Tea Crate lived. But we could see what was happening — people all over the country were finding us online, ordering our iced tea packs and loose leaf teas, and coming back again and again because the quality was real and the story resonated.
Batesville will always be home. We still have our booth at The Treehouse for our local people. But our future is nationwide — and we are so excited about what that means.
Read our original story as featured on OnlyInArk.com →
What We’re About Now
Six years in, the mission hasn't changed.
We care about what goes in every cup just as much as we care about the person ordering it. We want you to find something you love — something that becomes part of your morning routine, your afternoon ritual, your quiet evening wind-down. Tea that feels like it was made for you.
We are not a big corporation. We are two people from New Mexico who moved to Arkansas, fell in love with a community, raised our boys in a small business, and decided that bold, flavorful, approachable tea was worth betting everything on.
Proper tea for the not-so-prim-and-proper. That's us. That's always been us. We're glad you're here.
Ready to find your favorite?
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