Lauryn and I recently attended a talk featuring Seth Goldman, founder and CEO of Honest Tea, at a stop on his tour for his new book, Mission in a Bottle. The interviewer asked Seth some questions to tease out the company’s story from its founding all the way to the present day.

A major milestone for Honest Tea was its acquisition by Coca-Cola in 2011, which provided Honest Tea access to the largest beverage distribution system in the world and a significant capital infusion. With tons of resources available as a result of the deal, Honest Tea was able to scale up its distribution and headcount.

Experienced entrepreneurs commonly say that the most difficult thing to scale in any company is its culture. The difficulty in scaling Honest Tea’s culture should have been compounded by the ‘elephant in the room,’ namely the seemingly incongruous partnership between the small, healthy and fair trade beverage producer with a giant company that sells sugary, processed drinks. You would expect that Honest Tea’s culture would be especially vulnerable to contamination in such a partnership.

It appears from the outside that — at least up until this point — Honest Tea has preserved its culture in the face of difficult odds. Here are three takeaways that appear to have helped Honest Tea:

1. Frame the Company’s Mission in a Tangible Way

Seth clarified that the title of his new book is not just a cute name. Instead, Seth and his partner, Barry Nalebuff, have instilled in Honest Tea employees a belief that the contents of every single bottle that Honest Tea sells actually embodies the company’s mission, which says that “Honest Tea seeks to create and promote great-tasting, truly healthy, organic beverages…”

Seth and Barry framed Honest Tea’s mission in a tangible way. With literally millions of tangible reminders of its mission passing through the company and its employees daily, it’s no surprise that Honest Tea has been successful scaling its culture up to this point.

2. Choose the Right Acquirer/Strategic Partner

Prior to the deal, Seth tried to make sure as best he could that Coca-Cola would allow Honest Tea to maintain autonomy if the acquisition went through. It turned out that Coca-Cola has held true to its word; Honest Tea enjoys (almost) complete autonomy. In fact, Seth noted that there were no employees from Coca-Cola’s Atlanta headquarters embedded into Honest Tea’s Bethesda, Maryland headquarters.

Of course, at the time, Seth couldn’t know for sure whether Coca-Cola would preserve Honest Tea’s autonomy once Coca-Cola owned a controlling share. But it is evident that Seth did plenty of due diligence in making sure that his acquirers’ vision was genuine and that they bought into Honest Tea’s mission. When shopping around for a strategic partner or acquirer, be very careful to only choose those who are aligned with your vision and mission.

3. Don’t Compromise on your Product and Mission

While Coca-Cola has done a great job of maintaining Honest Tea’s autonomy, there have been a few instances—as expected—where the elephant in the room that we discussed earlier made its presence known.

In one such example, Honest Tea included the phrase “No High Fructose Corn Syrup” on its packaging for its Honest Kids beverage line. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola products are full of high fructose corn syrup, so Coke asked Honest Tea if they would remove the phrase from the packaging. Seth replied that, while he understood Coca-Cola’s concern, he would not remove the label, because health was an important part of the company’s mission and who they are. At the time, Coca-Cola did not have a controlling stake in Honest Tea, so they backed down on their request. Now, Coca-Cola does have a controlling stake in Honest Tea, yet they have not removed the phrase from the packaging.

—

Honest Tea is a great role model for running a mission-driven business. Conversations about mission within a business tend to be lofty at times, but hopefully this article showed that there are specific, concrete ways to use mission to grow.