Our Story
We are lovers of tea and people. We wanted to bring fast, friendly, fun, and delicious tea options to our city and beyond. We hope that when you stop by The Tea Crate, you leave with a drink you love and an experience that can only improve your day. We care about what goes in each cup just as much as we care about the person ordering it.
Crates make The Tea Crate!
We wanted to create a place to make great memories. Everyone loves the building…it is a little unexpected and a whole lot of fun!
We are Nathan & Shaelyn Ellyson. We moved to Batesville in 2014. We love the community here and have enjoyed being part of it. In 2018, God started planting seeds in our hearts to do something more to contribute to and impact our community.
Nathan (the handsome bearded guy in the pic up top) had been begging to open a tea place for years. We are originally from New Mexico, so when we moved to the south Nathan was looking forward to being able to get some sweet tea. He was shocked to discover that tea places weren’t on every corner like he imagined.
I (Shaelyn) grew up drinking iced tea for dinner of course, but my mom and grannies had hot tea every morning. I don’t ever remember a pot of coffee brewing in my house, but I have many fond memories of sharing a hot cup of tea with my granny and stealing a sip of my mom’s out of her white mug in the mornings. These days, hot tea is what I drink when I miss home, or I want to relax in the evenings. It is my comfort.
We decided to take our love for tea and create a place in our community where we would like to hang out, create a place where we would like to work, and put our hearts out there to love on the people inside and outside the walls of The Tea Crate. The road was long, but January 2020 we opened the windows, and let the tea and love begin to flow.