Text by Shelby Duffy • Photography Courtesy of Rhonda Smith
A Veteran’s mission to give back, one cup of tea at a time
Rhonda Smith, U.S. Air Force Veteran and CEO of The Skirted Soldier, did not grow up with much exposure to tea. “I remember my mother making a cup of Sleepytime tea from a box,” she recalls, but that was the extent of Rhonda’s tea knowledge for most of her childhood and young adulthood. Years later, upon arriving in Germany for a deployment, Rhonda began to feel sick. Her landlord at the time used fresh herbs and spices from her garden to make a home-brewed tea, which she served Rhonda while describing the array of herbs she grew and how each one served a specific purpose. “I really liked the idea that tea could offer so many medicinal health benefits. I think that was what interested me the most,” Rhonda shares. She was captivated by the array of healing properties that various teas offered, which fueled her interest in trying an assortment of blends while traveling through Europe with the Air Force.
After returning home from her deployment and leaving the service, Rhonda suddenly found herself sharing a common struggle of veterans of transitioning back into the civilian world. Adjusting from a life of strict regimen and rules to one with suddenly “no instructions or direction whatsoever” was a challenge for her. However, she also returned home with a specific mission in mind: to give back.
Finding a way to help other female veterans became a main objective for Rhonda, and she soon developed a plan to start a business so that she could work toward helping veterans fund and learn how to launch their own businesses. She began by brainstorming as much as possible, writing down as many buzz words and criteria as she could think of that would be essential in developing a business strategy. She knew that she wanted to highlight her connection with the military but wanted to stray away from the hard and rough persona she so commonly saw while also appealing more to a female-based audience. She had a plan, but there was just one thing missing. She could not decide on a product.
After much deliberation, the idea of selling tea came out of pure chance. One day while driving with her daughter, the two passed a local tearoom they used to frequent that had recently closed after the owner retired. They reminisced about their fond memories of visiting the tearoom together, and her daughter joked about Rhonda’s penchant for ordering a coffee-based tea blend, even at a tearoom! Rhonda thought about how much she enjoyed that blend, so she went home, and with the help of her daughter, experimented with various concoctions until they found the perfect balance of ingredients to match Rhonda’s favorite blend. At that moment, she immediately knew that she wanted to make this her new business, and The Skirted Soldier was born.
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I love this tea. I have several blends a nd like them all. My sister-in-law found this as she is an Air Force veteran herself and we both love tea. Wonderful product, Ma’am.