About Us

From Our Cup to Yours
Clipper Ship Tea Co is a woman-owned, independent tea company based on Long Island, New York. We opened our first shop in 2010 with just 60 teas, on a wing and a prayer, and a love of sharing incredible loose leaf teas inspired by travels around the world. Sixteen years later, our collection has grown to more than 200 teas sourced from around the globe.

We source everything from traditional single-origin and organic teas to innovative blends, seasonal favorites, small-batch teas, and limited-edition drops. We are constantly tasting, sourcing, and adding new teas, so there is always something new to discover. We also love staying creative by designing and launching Advent Calendars, literary teas, sampler collections, and custom tea packaging.

Every tea is hand-packed with love at our Long Island tea warehouse and shipped to tea drinkers nationwide.

From Ships to Tea Shops
Melissa, founder and owner of Clipper Ship Tea Co, spent more than a decade sailing around the world on sailboats and commercial ships in the Merchant Marine. Her travels brought her to tea-producing countries including India, Taiwan, Japan, and Sri Lanka, where she developed an appreciation for the incredible variety, history, and culture surrounding tea.

During her time off ships, Melissa studied at the Specialty Tea Institute, the educational arm of the Tea Association of the USA, and became a Certified Tea Specialist. In 2010, she retired from sailing, anchored herself back home on Long Island, and turned her love of tea into Clipper Ship Tea Co.

Our first tea shop opened on Main Street in the waterfront village of Northport in November 2010. In 2017, a fire in a neighboring business destroyed our Northport shop. After seven years in Northport, we decided it was time for a fresh start.

In 2018, Clipper Ship Tea Co opened on Main Street in nearby Huntington Village, where we spent another six years sharing tea with our local community. When our lease was not renewed in 2024, we decided it was time to become our own landlords.

Our Next Chapter
In May 2024, we purchased a 6,000-square-foot commercial building in Smithtown, just a few miles from our former storefronts. The larger facility gave us room to expand our warehouse, online operations, and wholesale business — and finally spread our wings.

Renovation plans for a future retail store inside the Smithtown building are currently on hold, and we do not have an opening date at this time. We plan to revisit those plans in 2027.

In the meantime, Clipper Ship Tea Co continues to grow online. Our curated tea collection ships nationwide from New York, and we are honored every time one of our packages lands on a doorstep somewhere across the country.

For those who would still like to shop with us in person, a rotating selection of Clipper Ship teas, sachets, and sampler boxes is available at our Pop-Up Shop inside The Nest on Main in downtown Northport Village.

Why Clipper Ship Tea Co?
We believe tea should never be boring. Some teas in our collection honor centuries of tradition. Others are playful, unexpected, seasonal, or available only for a short time. We love an exceptional single-origin tea just as much as we love creating an imaginative new blend.

Though we may not be the only tea you drink, we strive to be the best. We’re honored when Clipper Ship Tea Co becomes part of your daily life. We hope our tea comforts you, makes you happy, wakes you up, helps you sleep, inspires you, motivates you, and restores you.

From our cup to yours, thank you for discovering Clipper Ship Tea Co.