Americans typically speak of ambitions as dreams, but Teeccino founder Caroline MacDougall’s business really began with a dream. In the mid-’90s, while working for the Republic of Tea, she dreamt about an herbal espresso named Teeccino. The idea shocked her awake, and a business was born.
Two decades later, Teeccino is the leading coffee alternative in the country, with an ever-expanding roster of health beverages and foods. The Carpinteria-based company is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, with a roster of products far beyond the seedling dream, like the gluten-free quinoa-amaranth-chia cereal TeeChia, or the new Dandelion Draft, which debuted this year. Run with son Galen MacDougall and husband CFO Jerry Isenberg, the family-owned Teeccino is now widely known, thanks to a slow, steady process of finding fans of its nutrition mission.
MacDougall hails from a long line of beverage entrepreneurs. On her paternal side, great-grandmother Alice Foote MacDougall opened successful coffee stands in early-19th-century New York at a time when female entrepreneurs were unheard of; on her maternal side nest the originators of Old Crow whiskey. MacDougall developed an interest in health-food and herbal remedies as a teen, scouring health food stores before they were in fashion and seeking cures to aid her ailing father.
