Business Maverick

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How to brew a cup of South African business inspiration — with rooibos, espresso and a splash of hope

Pete Ethelston of Red Espresso and farmer Bertu van der Merwe with bundles of harvested rooibos in the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa.

By Nick Dall

5 May 2025

What do you get when you grind rooibos tea and put it through an espresso machine? Red Espresso, a proudly South African company that’s been making a splash in markets locally and internationally.

Twenty years ago, Nic Reid sold his first bag of Red Espresso. Still in the final year of a marketing degree, he’d been roped in by his sister and her husband, Monique and Pete Ethelston, to market their rooibos espresso to cafés and delis.

“People barely knew what good coffee was back then, let alone caffeine-free alternatives,” Reid laughs. “So I had my work cut out.”

Undaunted, he drove around the Western Cape with a commercial espresso machine (all 75kg of it) in the boot of his car and a bag of reddish powder on the passenger seat. “I knew I couldn’t get people to imagine a rooibos cappuccino,” he explains. “But what if I made them one?”

Reid’s ploy worked and the owner of Giovanni’s, the beloved Sea Point deli, agreed to buy a few bags in October 2005. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, the company has more than 100 product lines that extend well beyond rooibos, and a footprint in 12 countries. The business is doubling in size every two to three years and it’s still 100% family owned. But the best part, says chief executive Pete, is that “the growth is coming across the board, in both local and export markets, in both food service and retail industries, and in both our own brand and our private label work for other brands”.

Pete and Monique Ethelston of Red Espresso in rooibos plantations in the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa. (Photo: Supplied)

rooibos Red Espresso Nic Reid, business development director. (Photo: Supplied)

You’ve got mail

The seed for Red Espresso was sown in a Kathmandu internet café. Pete and Monique were honeymooning in Nepal when they received an email from friend and business partner Carl Pretorius, who explained how one morning he’d torn open a bag of rooibos and put the leaves through his countertop espresso maker.

It didn’t taste half bad, so he tried grinding the tea in his home grinder – even better. A few months later he could produce something that mimicked real espresso – right down to the frothy crema on top – but without the caffeine.

Pretorius knew that the Ethelstons were the people to take it to market: Pete had worked in finance and logistics for brands like Coca-Cola, and Monique had decades of marketing experience in the food and beverage sector. Throw in Reid and his car-boot espresso machine and they had all they needed to brew a successful business.

A donkey cart used for transporting the harvested rooibos plants in the Cederberg mountains. (Photo: Supplied)

Subsistence farmer Barend ‘Ghal’ Ockhuis with harvested rooibos on a donkey cart in the Cederberg mountains. (Photo: Supplied)

A bundle of harvested rooibos being weighed in the fields in the Cederberg mountains. (Photo: Supplied)

Before proving there was a market for Red Espresso, the company invested heavily in intellectual property rights, securing worldwide trademarks for names like Red Espresso and Red Cappuccino, as well as international patents. At Monique’s insistence, a top-tier designer was hired for its logo and branding.

Red Espresso’s first big break came in 2006 when Woolworths added Red Cappuccino to its café menu. (Woolworths is still one of its most important customers.) International acclaim followed in 2008 when the Specialty Coffee Association of America voted Red Espresso the best new product, a first for a tea-based beverage and a South African company.

Seeds of Hope

The makers of Red Espresso realised early on that high-altitude, organically grown and hand-harvested rooibos just tasted better – and they were willing to pay a premium for it. Working directly with the farmers was important to the Ethelstons.

Once they’d settled on their preferred suppliers in the Cederberg, they all sat down and agreed on a pricing structure based on fair trade principles. “It was all sorted around the braai and sealed with a handshake,” remembers Pete. “Now, 20 years later, we’re still braaiing together.”

Farmhand Gertjie with a bundle of harvested rooibos in the Cederberg mountains. (Photo: Supplied)

As the company grew, so did the demand for high-quality tea. In 2015, working closely with their primary farmer, it established Seeds of Hope, a support and upliftment programme for subsistence farmers in the Moravian mission town of Heuningvlei, population 75.

The people of Heuningvlei have always cultivated some of the most intensely flavoured rooibos in South Africa. But in recent decades the low prices offered by big co-ops, and the challenges posed by Heuningvlei’s remote location, led to stagnation. Youngsters moved to the city while their parents got older and poorer.

The project started with a handful of farmers producing less than 10 tonnes in the first season. But as the rest of the community saw the livelihoods of their neighbours improving, more and more farmers signed on. These days, Red Espresso buys about 40 tonnes of high-quality rooibos from 20 subsistence farmers every year – about 15% of its annual needs.

“Everything has changed since Red Espresso started to give me seedlings and plough my land,” says farmer Barend “Ghal” Ockhuis. “I am a businessman. I can look after a family.”

Selling about two tonnes of rooibos every year has enabled Ockhuis to replace his donkey cart with a Toyota Hilux, fix the leaks in his roof and, for the first time in his life, start saving money in a bank account.

Beyond rooibos

After focusing purely on producing rooibos espresso for most of its first decade, the company felt ready to branch out. The first step was to develop Nespresso-compatible rooibos espresso capsules and instant Red Cappuccino sachets, which would enable customers to bring the same premium taste to their homes.

This was easier said than done, recalls Reid, who’s been heading up product development for the company since 2015. “Getting our rich Red Espresso rooibos taste from just 5g of tea and in a very short extraction time was a real challenge,” he says.

The first non-rooibos product the company developed was a matcha latte in 2016, and dozens of others – including chais, hot chocolates and superfood lattes – have followed. Red Espresso was also the first to launch a range of vegan drinks in South Africa. White-labelling products for retailers and café chains has been another important element in its growth.

The business, which employs 70 people at its head office in Paarl, provides an income to a further 20 workers on the tealands. Factor in the many other suppliers who help to get drinks on shelves and in cups, and it’s a significant boost to the local economy.

Sustainability is taken seriously, and the cocoa in the hot chocolate range is all Rainforest Alliance certified. All the rooibos is farmed without any herbicides, pesticides or even irrigation. “It takes much longer to grow, but it tastes much better,” says Reid.

Red Espresso’s head office and factory in Paarl. (Photo: Supplied)

Pete Ethelston of Red Espresso and farmer Bertu van der Merwe with bundles of harvested rooibos in the Cederberg mountains. (Photo: Supplied)

There are also proteas in the tea fields to encourage bees to cross-pollinate. Red Espresso’s eco-friendly factory relies on rainwater for a third of its water needs and 75% of the electricity used comes from rooftop solar. Investing in local carbon offset projects means the entire supply chain is carbon neutral.

For the Ethelstons, this all goes back to their reasons for starting the company: “In our corporate lives we had this nagging feeling that we weren’t doing people or the planet much good,” says Pete. “We wanted to build a business that was a force for good.”

It goes without saying that operating in South Africa has not always been easy. Almost running out of water in 2018 was nerve-racking. More recently, port delays and load shedding (hence the investment in solar) wreaked havoc on their supply chain.

And food inflation reached near-crippling highs in 2023. Just when it seemed like that was getting under control, US President Donald Trump came along.

“I’m expecting the Trump tariff war to disrupt supply chains and bring inflation right back up,” says Pete, who admits that “it makes for challenging times, especially in a high-growth phase”.

But he adds: “It’s nothing we haven’t faced before. We have a resilient culture and a team that thrives on a challenge.” DM

Nick Dall is a journalist and author.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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