LEEVA Makes Functional Tea Feel Hot Again

Perhaps you think there's no shortage of wellness beverages promising to optimize your life right now. Powders packed with adaptogens. Energy drinks dressed up in clinical branding. Functional ingredients positioned like personality traits. Somewhere along the way, wellness beverages started to feel less like rituals and more like performance reviews. It's lame AF.

Which is why we love that LEEVA is approaching things differently.

Founded by Lauren Olds, the emerging wellness tea brand sits at the intersection of functionality, sensory experience, and emotional comfort. The concept is deceptively simple: a collagen protein tea designed to feel warm, nostalgic, approachable, and genuinely enjoyable to drink. But what makes LEEVA particularly intriguing is the world its founder is building around it.

At its core, LEEVA feels like a rejection of the overly optimized wellness era.

“I think true wellness comes from balance, listening to what your body and also what your soul needs,” Lauren tells The Beauty Brief.

That perspective shapes nearly every part of the brand.

LEEVA's Ginger Lemon Tea is caffeine-free, unsweetened, and formulated with collagen protein, ginger, and lemon, but the brand avoids the rigid, fear-based language that often dominates functional wellness marketing. Lauren isn’t interested in making consumers feel guilty for eating dessert or drinking wine. Instead, she’s focused on creating a product that fits naturally into everyday life.

“I want people to feel like they are truly taking care of themselves while enjoying the experience of doing so,” the founder shares.

That balance between functionality and emotional connection is what gives LEEVA its identity. Lauren describes the brand as embodying “your cool aunt who makes you eat your broccoli but will also give you a cookie,” which honestly feels like one of the most accurate descriptions of where wellness culture is headed next. Consumers are increasingly gravitating toward products that support them without making them feel like projects.

And visually, LEEVA understands that evolution, too.

In a category saturated with muted palettes and minimalist wellness branding, LEEVA immediately stands apart. The bold red packaging, retro-inspired coffee tin format, and playful typography feel intentionally loud in the best way. Lauren says she wanted the brand to feel familiar and new at the same time, pulling inspiration from nostalgic pantry staples while creating something consumers would proudly leave out on their counters.

“I think people want to feel something again,” Lauren says. “They want something they can display on their counters because it adds richness and whimsy.”

That emotional connection extends beyond aesthetics and directly into the sensory experience itself. Lauren spent significant time thinking about aroma, texture, packaging, and ritual while developing the brand. She wanted opening a can of LEEVA to feel like an experience rather than simply a supplement routine.

“When mixed with hot water, the aroma immediately melts your nerves,” she explains. “And when you sip it, the ginger gives you a slight tingle that keeps you coming back.”

It’s a smart positioning move in today’s beverage landscape, especially as consumers continue shifting away from overstimulation and hyper-caffeinated routines. Lauren believes the future of functional beverages will lean more heavily into products that nourish rather than energize.

“Our lives are overstimulating as is,” Lauren says. “People aren’t craving more of it.”

At the same time, LEEVA doesn’t take itself too seriously, which may ultimately be one of the brand’s biggest strengths. There’s a warmth and self-awareness to the brand's approach that makes it feel human instead of manufactured. Even while discussing formulation challenges, production setbacks, and the realities of entrepreneurship, Lauren speaks with an honesty that feels increasingly rare in founder culture online.

“There is so much self discipline that goes into being an entrepreneur,” she shares. “There’s no shutting your laptop and forgetting about work until tomorrow. It’s constant.”

Still, the momentum around LEEVA continues to build.

Lauren recently shared that one of the brand’s biggest breakthrough moments came during a community event at Vuori headquarters, where she served LEEVA iced for the first time and saw firsthand how deeply consumers connected with the experience and the product positioning.

And now, that momentum is extending beyond the brand itself.

Lauren is currently in the running for 60 Day Hustle, a competitive entrepreneurship series spotlighting rising founders and emerging businesses. She’s already made it into the Top 30 entrepreneurs in the running for a spot on the show, and community engagement plays a major role in determining who advances.

If you’d like to support Lauren and LEEVA's journey, we highly encourage watching and engaging with her submission video here. We’re always excited to spotlight fellow women founders building thoughtful, emotionally intelligent brands in the wellness space, and LEEVA is 100% one to keep on your radar.

Watch, share, support, and show Lauren some love.