Jinx Tea Bar began selling canned versions of its beverages in the early days of the pandemic as a way to get additional business. Now, it will become the company’s sole focus.

On Sunday, the tea company shuttered its retail store at 4503 France Ave. S. in Minneapolis to focus exclusively on its line of ready-to-drink canned teas. Jinx Tea Bar first opened in June 2019 after a successful run as a food truck.

Chris Eilers, a former Dunn Brothers Coffee leader who co-founded Jinx Tea with his wife Jennifer Wills and son Sam Eilers, said the Linden Hills tea shop was a “great asset.” But he said it was time to make some tough decisions about the store to help bring the company’s products to “a much broader audience.”

“We think it’s a good time to go more aggressively to the market with a ready-to-drink tea beverage that’s so unique,” Eilers said in a Tuesday morning interview. “We didn’t want to miss that opportunity. The growth of the [non-alcoholic drink] market was certainly a factor as well.”

Eilers and Wills think Jinx Tea’s beverages fill a void in the existing NA market. Since they introduced the 12-ounce ready-to-drink cans in May of this year, they’ve seen “significant demand” for them, Eilers said.

Jinx Tea first ventured into the canned beverage market in November of 2020. At the time, the company began selling 25.5-ounce “crowlers” of tea that were hand-made at the Linden Hills shop. Eilers described the crowlers as a “stepping stone” to the shelf-stable 12-ounce cans sold in grocery stores around the Twin Cities today.

Minneapolis-based Sociable Cider Werks is serving as co-packer for Jinx Tea’s line of beverages, Eilers said. “Being a local company and having it co-packed with a local company was part of the story we wanted to tell,” he noted. “It’s been a really great partnership.” Verdant Tea, another local entity, sources teas from small farms in China for Jinx Tea’s products.

Jinx Tea’s partnership with Folly Coffee, however, has ended for now. A year ago, Jinx Tea revamped its space in Linden Hills to make space to sell Folly Coffee’s products. Folly Coffee would go on to become acquired by FairWave, a Kansas City-based holding company that also bought Up Coffee Roasters and Spyhouse Coffee.

In the meantime, Eilers is focused on growing brand awareness in the Twin Cities, though a wider national expansion is still on the table, eventually. “We don’t want to get ahead of brand development,” he said. “Our focus is to penetrate the Twin Cities first … and then start to expand beyond in an intentional way. Long term, yes, we’d love to become a national brand, but we just want to do it in a thoughtful way.”

Jinx Tea’s cans are currently available at Lunds & Byerlys stores, Kowalski’s, most coops around town, and in several bars and taprooms around the metro.

Eilers, who describes himself as a “behind-the-scenes person,” credits his wife Jennifer Wills as the “front-facing visionary” of the brand. “Being women-owned is something that we’re proud of,” he added.