Clevr Crafts Healthy, Hot, Instant Beverages in Santa Barbara

There’s plenty to appreciate about the ritual of visiting a coffee shop, ordering your favorite fancy drink, and watching with anticipation as skilled baristas work their hand-crafted magic. But that habit can get a bit pricey and, at least for my jammed schedule, tends to take more time than I usually have to quench my thirst for caffeine.

Clevr Blends can help. The Santa Barbara–based instant beverage company provides all you need to recreate that café experience in the convenience of your own kitchen.

“It brings that experience home in a way that’s approachable and more affordable than going to the coffee shop every day,” said Clevr’s founder Hannah Mendoza. “And it’s healthier.”

That’s because these powders aren’t just combinations of coffee, tea, spice, and cream. They’re dairy-free, relying instead on coconut and oat milk, and they’re packed with “functional” supplements like reishi and lion’s mane mushrooms, ashwagandha, and L-theanine.

Originally from London, Mendoza found UCSB after more than a gap year of globe-trotting, and then found work as the first employee of the superfood company Imlak’esh Organics. “It was my first proper job, so I was doing a lot of experimentation with how to maintain energy while working with a difficult and sometimes grueling schedule,” she explained. “Drinking regular coffee was not really working for my system. I felt like it was a crapshoot whether I was going to feel superhuman or overstimulated.”

She was able to play around in the Imlak’esh lab, working on combinations of herbs, mushrooms, and adaptogens to regulate her energy and attitude throughout the day. “Clevr was born out of using really amazing ingredients that we had access to and making something brand new that was kinder to the body and better for hormone balance and consistent energy,” said Mendoza, who cofounded the company with her friend Roger Coppola. “We just got really passionate about the potential to use these ancient ingredients that were just starting to be scientifically backed.”

They first took the show on the road, bringing a coffee pop-up bar to corporate events, festivals, and other gatherings as far away as Central America. “We would do anywhere there was a need for coffee and tea,” she said. “It was such an adventure.”

Coppola challenged her to come up with a packaged product that tasted as good as their coffee-bar favorites, so Mendoza crafted more than 200 different batches before settling on a choice few. That led to the launch of Clevr as a direct-to-consumer, subscription-based product in 2019, and it quickly attracted the attention of some big names.

Meghan Markle, the actor, Montecito resident, and wife to Prince Harry, was given the Golden SuperLatte blend by a friend, loved it, and reached out to support the brand as its first investor. “She’s been really incredible,” said Mendoza. “It’s been powerful to have such a strong female voice on our team.”

Then Meghan shared it with Oprah, who put Clevr on her influential list of favorite things for two years in a row. “That gave us some wonderful exposure to a really new market that may have never heard about us,” said Mendoza. “It’s every small business owner’s dream to end up on that list. We’re very grateful.”

This year, backed by an all-female co-packing company in Oxnard, but still packaging direct orders from a garage on Chapala Street, Clevr hit the shelves of 500 Target stores across the country. It’s the first, albeit very serious, foray into retail, which Mendoza was ready to take after nearly four years of talking directly to her subscribers.

“You have such easy access to chatting with customers and looking at the data,” she said of starting with the direct-to-consumer model. “That built the foundation of the brand to where we are now ready for retail.”

The brand sent me a full lineup of Clevr concoctions to try, and I’ll admit to being rather skeptical of how they might perform. Using the handy electric frother that came with the kit, I was instead very impressed, enjoying their takes on coffee, chai, and matcha lattes as well as spins on Earl Grey, turmeric, and hot chocolate.

I did, on occasion, use more than the suggested amount, and often spiked the Clevr versions with shots of espresso — the dirty chai was fire, as the kids say — or more matcha for an extra kick. But I really dug the quick, efficient process; consistently creamy, potent-enough sips; and generally positive, rather than crashing or over-agitated, feelings that lingered after each glass. I liked their new iced tea offerings too, though they occasionally went a little gloopy.

Echoing the mission of Imlak’esh, which is to use food as a tool for social change, Mendoza is launching a series of $5,000 microgrants this month through the Santa Barbara County Food Action Network that are focused on food justice issues. She hopes that will inspire bigger businesses to do the same, but is primarily just proud to get her product into more mouths.

“It’s meaningful being in people’s daily routine; it’s such a privilege,” she said. “We feel really lucky that we’ve been able to have the impact we have.”

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See clevrblends.com.