A trip to India can be eye-opening and for Bromley entrepreneur Amanda Hamilton, it certainly was, inspiring her to set up Farnborough-based Drink Me Chai. With the business now ten years old, Josh Barrie caught up with Amanda to find out more about how her local pop-up went international.

Chai is a staple drink in India. The sweet, milky blend of spiced tea provides a warming boost and is sold by ‘chai wallahs’ at train stations, on dusty slum corners, and in posh hotels in abundance.

Amanda, born and bred in the London borough, found a niche in the market about 12 years ago after returning from a tour of the country. She began selling it at pop-up street stalls across south-east London train stations, from Lewisham to West Wickham.

"It was so popular," she explains, "chai wasn’t very well known and people really liked it.

"I loved having chai in India and saw what was happening in the US. But there wasn’t much of it over here. I wanted to mirror what I saw in India.

"I started off experimenting with recipes at home in my kitchen and it took a while to get right. It was all a bit cliché at first - I operated from a little shed in the garden, but it took off really quickly.

"I ended up having five tea bars, we had one at Charing Cross for a while."

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Amanda, 40, who had previously worked in marketing, says she soon found a manufacturer to start producing small batches and after two years of trade saw lots of opportunities to grow.

She sent a sample to a well-known supermarket, and her instant 'Chai Latte' went mainstream.

"They (retailer) really liked my product. That’s when it really started to take off," says Amanda. "Turning from a local business into an international one was a massive learning curve."

Drink Me Chai now supplies 20 countries and is continuing to expand, selling in supermarkets, independent coffee shops, as well as larger chains.

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But Amanda, who divides her time between her chai enterprise and bringing up her two children, six and two, says she remains locally-minded.

"I was born and bred here and everyone who works with me is from around here. I’ve got a strong team.

"In the last three years it’s really grown - but we make sure we’re still a part of the community. We’ve got a van and go to events."

But busy as she is, with more products in development, such as her ‘Skinny Chai’, Amanda says juggling work with her children is the "biggest challenge".

It’s hard to think she ever has time for a cup of tea...