Taiwanese-Filipino tea brand KACE builds bridges between AAPI social gatherings and creative expression

by Anushka Dakshit

Photography & Editing: Trinity White @starrgazerscreative
Graphics: Kim Chuang @kimstrash
Hair: Dominique Rose @__lynnrose
Styling, MUA, Nails: Sabrina Yeh @sab.yeh @nailsby_saby
Clothing: DAWANG @dawangnewyork
Models: Ashley Yao @yao.nation, Sabrina Yeh @sab.yeh, Kyle Gillaspy @kylegillaspy, Hubert “Hü” Gamit @hubertgambit, Airēs Taylor @bubbah_doo, Hanna Chen @taiwanesenoodles
Location Space: Moongate Lounge @moongatelounge

One weekend, during a family night with her best friends, Ashley Yao accidentally created the first product for what would become her own canned tea company. 

With jasmine tea, fresh apple juice, and a little bit of honey, she had created “Juicebox,” the first of three canned tea flavors that would become a part of KACE Tea. Launched in November 2023, the Bay Area-based company is co-founded and owned by Yao and her boyfriend, Kyle Gillaspy. 

Born and raised in Taiwan, the 25-year-old CEO and entrepreneur has always loved experimenting with different flavors, making homemade “drinkies” that allow her to connect back to her roots and express herself creatively. 

The inception of “Juicebox” that night in November 2022 planted a seed. Yao was an account executive at DocuSign at the time but had always wanted to be an entrepreneur. After the positive reception of “Juicebox” and her friends’ encouragement to start selling it, she began trying to pin down her top three recipes. Yao started in early January of 2023 and spent until the end of February experimenting with different flavors, large containers of tea sprawled over her kitchen counters. 

Around this time, Yao connected with her childhood friend Sabrina Yeh at a pregame and told Yeh about her plans for a ready-to-drink tea company. Yeh, who had just quit her PR job at an alcohol company, immediately offered to help with marketing and creative direction. 

“I showed her my mood board and she really quickly was like, ‘Alright, I already have ideas turning in my brain. I see the vision. And I love how you’re trying to revolutionize tea and connect the tea side with fashion and creativity and community,’” Yao recalled. “It felt like something that we all were yearning for.” 

When Yao was laid off from her job in March 2023, she took it as a sign to go all in on KACE. She, Gillaspy, and Yeh drove up to the Natural Products Expo, a food industry event, where they distributed prototypes and signed with their current manufacturer based in Taiwan. 

A few months after the Natural Products Expo, Yao joined the manufacturer in Taiwan for a few months, helping to source the tea, pick the right fruit juices, and ensure that everything tasted exactly to her liking. The result was three teas as a part of KACE’s current lineup. 

Juicebox is floral and tart, containing jasmine tea and Asian apple juice (which Yao herself always has on hand from the Nijiya Market in San Francisco). It’s the kind of juice that Yao missed from the 7/11 in Taiwan, not as sweet as the Martinelli’s she’s had in America. The name is emblematic of American nostalgia and is a way for KACE to connect with consumers in the U.S. 

The second tea, Passion Lychee, is an amalgamation of Yao and Gillaspy’s backgrounds. It incorporates tropical fruits and earthy black tea, flavors inspired by the co-founders’ and couple’s childhoods. Passion fruit and lychee were a big part of Yao’s upbringing, reminiscent of night markets and summers in Taiwan. They’re also fruits that bring Gillaspy’s family together, even though they live in different places. Passionfruit and lychee are common in Hawaii and Manila, where parts of Gillaspy’s family live, and northern Philippines, where Gillaspy is from. 

“A lot of my Filipino side, they definitely gravitate towards the Passion Lychee flavor,” Gillaspy said. “It felt like there was this divide but when we brought that flavor into the mix, there was more space for me to reconnect with a lot of my Filipino friends and relatives that are from other places in the Philippines.” 

The third tea, Peach Gummi, is a reminder of Yao’s first connection to American culture. A blend of peach juice and green tea, it’s described as “fresh” and “playful” by Yao. Yao grew up in the mountainous region of Taipei near Yangmingshan, where there wasn’t much to do. Sometimes, her mom would drive her to the Starbucks an hour away, where Yao would always order the peach gummy rings. “I feel like that was a really fun memory of my childhood that was kind of like my initial connection to American culture, so Peach Gummi is another flavor where I bridge the two cultures together,” Yao said. 

Growing up in Taiwan, Yao was used to getting fresh fruit tea. Tea was the centerpiece of community and connection, a way for kids to connect after school and hang out with friends. 

“That’s not the same energy as getting coffee, right? Because coffee is kind of serious. Coffee hypes you up, but tea calms you down,” Yao explained. 

With the popularity of social media, there’s been a loss of third places, Yeh explains. Third places refer to informal gathering locations other than work or home, where people engage in conversation with their community. 

Yeh and Yao met in Taiwan when Yeh attended high school with Yao for a year; Yeh also grew up in Hong Kong, then suburban Northern California. “Three very different places, but a place that was always a constant was going to the tea shop after school,” Yeh said. “It was a place for us just to hang out because we didn’t want to go home yet.” Even in America, where tea doesn’t have a major historical or cultural significance, tea shops are a way for people to congregate, Yeh said. 

KACE’s first campaign, KACE Academy, was a way to represent the nostalgia of drinking tea during and after school. The campaign was shot in July 2023 and launched the last week of October 2023. 

Creative directed by Yeh, the models were photographed in classrooms wearing plaid skirts and frilly white blouses under smart blazers. It’s the accessories that stood out, with the models clad in bright loafers, Sandy Liang-esque bows, and, most importantly, KACE tea cans in hand.

“We really wanted to represent that nostalgia in a whimsical and fun way….and establish ourselves as a fashion-forward community-based tea brand,” Yao said. 

A big part of KACE’s marketing strategy was to start with a strong campaign that solidified its image and story. Every campaign is a collaboration between models, photographers, and graphic designers that are in the Bay Area creative community— a big part of KACE’s creative strategy is collaboration that can help everyone involved uplift each other, Yeh said.

KACE isn’t just bringing Asian American perspectives to the food and beverage industry through its products; the team at KACE Tea also wants to use community, fashion, and music to uniquely represent Asian American culture.

“Part of the whole AAPI experience is, we are carving our own path, we are choosing how we want to be represented,” Yeh said. “I think that's a big part of why we focus so much on visuals.”

The Lunar New Year campaign, which launched February 9 and is KACE’s biggest campaign to date, illustrates this. Lunar New Year was the biggest holiday Yao and Yeh celebrated growing up.

The campaign captures the KACE Tea trio and friends gathered in a bar, sitting at a marble table behind red velvet panels. Along with a video, the campaign includes images meant to represent different Chinese idioms traditionally recited during the Lunar New Year. 

“I haven't really seen a Lunar New Year campaign that I love that felt like it truly represented what the essence of Lunar New Year is, which is being unapologetically yourself and ushering in that new energy,” Yao said. 

Pictured are KACE tea cans placed around mandarin oranges, noodles, and dumplings, along with graphics of red calligraphy and dragons weaving through each element of the photos. In the campaign, every prop is representative of the luck, prosperity, and good health families wish for when they recite Chinese idioms.

“I wanted to share it [Lunar New Year] in a way that was artistic and creative and interesting because I think that's kind of a way our generation consumes media the best,” Yao said. 

KACE won’t launch any new flavors until next year, but the company is focusing on outreach and community in 2024. Since its launch, KACE has attended pop-ups and festivals and has held events in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York City. Even though it's been less than a year, Yao has already noticed repeat attendees and KACE regulars. 

“We're connecting people all around the country,” Yeh said. “It's kind of crazy to think about, but that's really the power of KACE and the impact that I know it has.” 

Many of these events, including the POC Food & Wine Festival the company will be at in May, have been a way for the AAPI community to congregate. KACE will also be doing six weekends at the 626 Night Market, the largest Asia-inspired night market in the U.S.

When Yao and Gillaspy were brainstorming in November 2022, they asked themselves what more they wanted KACE to bring than just tea. A vision of a “gateway” was on their mood board. Purposeful about getting there, the trio has finally watched it come to fruition, Gillaspy said. 

At KACE events, people are pushed to think about and talk about cultural expression and their own experiences as Asian Americans.

“The conversation topics for me have shifted a lot,” Gillaspy said. “A lot of what I've noticed through our events is that people are finding themselves again, to a certain extent.” 

The canned teas that Yao had formulated in her kitchen are now a vehicle for strangers to become friends and for the AAPI community to find a place for expression and belonging. 

KACE Tea can be found at 50 store locations in the U.S.