Sajani Amarasiri’s Sri Lankan milk tea launches in Whole Foods
In 2016, when the super green latte was the food wellness fad of the moment, Sajani Amarasiri thought to herself; “oh my god, we used to have Kola Kanda in Sri Lanka, which was so much better than this celery juice thing, and that was my breakfast every day.”
“When we think about wellness in South Asia, it’s not like, I wake up and I’m like, how am I going to be well today? It’s just a lifestyle.”
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An entrepreneur at her core, this thought was one Amarasiri could not get out of her head. “I think the first idea I wrote down was in 2016 or 17 for a super green latte,” but it took till August 2021 to launch her company Kola Goodies.
The superpower of being a US immigrant
Amarasiri came to the US as a student at the age of 18. Upon graduating, she started working in the Tech industry here. Though she loved her job, she wanted more. So she quit her corporate job to open the first female-founded co-working space in Sri Lanka.
This venture took her back and forth a lot to Sri Lanka.
As an immigrant, Amarasiri says, “I see there’s so much value that the US has given me but at the same time, there’s so much value my home country has given me. I think the beauty of being an immigrant in America is like you can bring both of that to the table.”
She realizes “It’s your superpower because you get to see the world through such a different lens.”
Living in Seatle, Amarasiri was seeing a rising interest in ancient South Asian rituals. The obsession with turmeric lattes led her to think about cultural appropriation of adaptogens which are natural substances like plants and mushrooms that help the body maintain balance and respond to stress. Amarasiri recognized that it was “just an opportunity for me to bring these South Asian wellness rituals here, but with a different narrative of telling.”
Upon reflection, Amarasiri realized that paying tribute to the origins of these ancient rituals would allow her to “create more equity in the supply chain and source differently.”
Thus began Amarasiri’s journey – inspired by her Sri Lankan heritage and her Amma (mother) to bridge cultures and provide equity from seed to shelf with delicious teas and superfood lattes in America.
What is Kola Kanda?
Kola Kanda is a classic Sri Lankan dish, a rice porridge that Amarasiri’s Amma used to make for breakfast every day. The rice is cooked in coconut milk with the juices from Gotu kola leaves, which have healing properties. This turns Kola Kanda into a deep, grassy green. This herbal porridge often comes with a piece of palm sugar to balance the bitterness of the herbs. For Buddhist monks, Kola Kanda is said to be a restorative meal in the morning after a period of fasting in the evening.
Amarasiri craved this healing breakfast while working long hours at her Tech job but she had no easy way to make it herself. Using her Amma’s recipe as inspiration, she transformed the labor intensive process into one to fit our frenetic, modern lifestyle.
Her Super Green Latte embodies all the goodness of Kola Kanda “like sustained energy, mental reinvigoration, and a digestive boost” that can be made instantly. This newly developed recipe also contains moringa as well as Ceylon cinnamon and oat milk for a surprisingly modern twist.
Sri Lankan milk tea ritual
“Don’t tell my mom but I love your mom’s tea.”
Not many South Asian children would admit this but Amarasiri’s husband loved her Amma’s tea and tried to replicate it without any success. No two South Asian moms make their tea the same way and so he encouraged her to develop it into a product.
“No one knows Sri Lanka here, no one’s gonna buy this,” said a skeptical Amarasiri initially but much to her surprise, the Sri Lankan Milk Tea is the product that launched her company into prominence.
“With every product, what we have done is – how do I make it foolproof? And we call this a lot – lazy girl approved as possible.”
Recognizing that most people don’t have the time to make tea from scratch, she realized that “we have to modernize these rituals – like having all the steps that go into super green or milk tea and making it foolproof so that anyone can make it.”
Breaking the traditional supply chain
Kola Goodies partners with farmers to source their ingredients directly. By eliminating the middleman, they get fresh ingredients and support farmers by paying them a better price. Prioritizing quality control and traceability is a core tenant of Kola Goodies’ business plan.
Sourcing the tea started with just driving around Sri Lanka and “my parents calling a friend that they know and then figuring it out from there.” There were many learning moments including being vigilant to price gouging because when the growers learned that it was going to America, the price went up.
Knowing where the product is grown and can be traced is something that Amarasiri takes a lot of pride in. This is not true with tea bought from large conglomerates.
“The ones we source from actually own their land.”
The products are then manufactured in the US to maintain quality control as well as ease the process of adhering to FDA and other regulatory bodies.
The Whole Foods Launch
Amarasiri sent her first email to Whole Foods in December 2020.
It was a long and arduous process, but finally, in August 2024, Kola Goodies arrived on the shelves of 40 Whole Foods stores in the Bay Area. They sell three products – “Sri Lankan milk tea, and we have oat milk version of the Sri Lankan milk tea, and we have the masala chai.”
Like any startup, Amarasiri learned on the fly – whether it was sourcing, manufacturing or now the bureaucracy that is the American grocery store. The application process, product substantiation, and then the review of the packaging, manufacturing, and supply chain process.
“I do think Whole Foods has higher standards than the other ones. When I look around, I understand why there are not many small brands on retail shelves in America – because the process is just so much to even get your foot in.”
Do South Asian products have to be cheap?
Being first to market with milk tea is great but it also means “you are educating and taking that brand with you,” admits Amarasiri leading to the pricing conundrum.
As a bootstrapped company, it took Amarasiri a long time just to find a good manufacturing partner who could actually accommodate smaller minimum order quantities. Because of expensive ingredients and manufacturing processes, the price point of their products is higher.
“We expect a lot of Asian or South Asian things to be so cheap. You are willing to go to a coffee shop and pay $7 to $9 now in the Bay Area to get a cup of coffee. But have you seen the process of making tea? It takes five years at least to get some first crop out of it. Why do our products need to be so cheap?”
The secret to the Kola Goodies’ success
While Kola Goodies is still a young company, Amarasiri has realized that for growth, the product has to be consistently good. While she is proud of her sourcing story, her customer research shows that it does not play out the same way for the end user. “The reason they come back for it is because it tastes good.”
Amarasiri initially relied on the community she built to grow her business. Storytelling and social media amplified her product adoption. South Asian Influencers like Hetal Vasavada, Arshia Moorjani, and Poorna Jaganathan among others helped spread the word.
Vasavada, an influential chef and author, and Amarasiri worked on a product collaboration to develop Cardamom and Fennel Chai, which has been a roaring success.
My friends call me ‘delulu‘
“I think there’s just such beauty and naiveness of Sajani waking up and being like, of course, I’ll sell Sri Lankan milk tea in America. Like, who thinks that?”
That insanity obviously has to exist to be an entrepreneur, admits Amarasiri. Her friends call her delulu.
“I didn’t know about how grocery stores work. And I feel like I’m still learning. You think – you pitch a store and it gets on there. It doesn’t work like that. You have to, actually, in most cases, pay them to put the product in. There’s something called slotting fees.”
But the biggest issue is access. “I don’t think I have faced any challenges per se because of my race or skin color,” explains Amarasiri. “Being an immigrant, your access is basically what you make of your career and your journey so far.”
If you were born and raised here, you have different layers of access, adds Amarasiri. Building networks takes a lot of energy, and immigrant founders have to do that along with building a company.
Amarasiri also believes that the US is one of the best places to start companies because of the infrastructure and grants available for founders.
The cost and barrier to entry is much less, says Amarasiri. “I remember even registering my company was so easy compared to registering my company in Sri Lanka. It was night and day. It took so much paperwork, so much red tape to do this in Sri Lanka, and here it was, like, online, done.”
Taking it to the next level
Amarasiri is proud of the growth of her company. They have “about a 40% repeat purchase rate on our milk teas and chais. We already surpassed last year’s entire revenue by June. We are probably going to double last year’s revenue this year.”
And all this is before the Whole Foods launch.
And in the near future, Amarasiri says “There is something really cool coming for holiday and it’s a collaboration with another awesome creative and it is going to be a limited edition drop, and it’s going to be delicious.”