When you buy a product, it’s typical business practice for the company to pocket all of the profit. That’s just intuitive, but one entrepreneur is hoping it won’t be that way for much longer. Stephen Wesley, the founder of generosiTEA, donates a portion of every sale to a worthy charitable cause and hopes that his company’s success will inspire other companies to do the same.

Wesley is a country music recording artist, signed to Black Sheep Label. Though he has found success on the Billboard charts with songs that feature Slash (Guns N Roses), Smash Mouth, T-Pain and more, his love for helping others has always been the “end goal”.

Wesley launched generosiTEA in 2020, a tea company that donates a portion of every sale to a cause that Wesley cares about. Each flavor of generosiTEA is dedicated to a different charity and whenever someone buys a 20 oz bottle, they will donate 10 cents to that charity. Buying a bottle of Sweet tea gives a donation to the Humane Society of the United States, Raspberry tea gives a donation to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and Green tea gives to Operation Homefront, an organization dedicated to helping veterans meet their urgent needs. If you can’t remember all those when you get to the store, don’t despair as the charities are on the labels of their respective flavors.

Ten cents may not seem like a lot, but it really adds up when you think about how every bottle of tea sold is another donation. Wesley is hoping that they will be able to donate $2,000,000 this year, which would mean selling 200,000 bottles of tea. The largest impact would come if other companies began donating as well.

“My hope is that more companies in consumer packaged goods see how easy it is to integrate charity and giving into their everyday products and donating to good causes becomes a part of everything we buy,” says Wesley.

Finding a way to give back was always Wesley’s ultimate goal. He first got the idea for generosiTEA back in 2010 when he signed his first record deal but didn’t have the funds to make it a reality. It wasn’t until 10 years later when he was able to launch the company, but starting a business during a pandemic came with challenges both personal and professional.

“We had to change manufacturing facilities, we went from a 16 ounce aluminum can to 20 ounce plastic bottles due to timeline constraints and availability because of Covid. I was hospitalized for a few weeks and on oxygen at home for another few weeks. My mom passed away from Covid,” says Wesley. Despite the challenges in production and personal loss that Wesley experienced, he was determined to make sure his dream was realized. He was determined that “generosiTEA was always going to happen.”

Wesley envisions a future where it is commonplace for producers of everyday products to donate a portion of their sales to charities. The truth is that most of the large food and drink manufacturers can afford to do so. They’re not spending every last penny to cover expenses. If companies like generosiTEA become more popular, it could put more pressure on larger manufacturers to do more to give back.

Beyond that, Wesley wants to inspire people to pursue their dreams through perseverance. His company took 10 years to get off the ground and immediately saw incredible adversity once it was launched, but he knew that it would be a success if he just kept working at it.