Super Lattes

Health Booster Blends by Clevr

WORDS Michelle Drown

A pop-up coffee bar with a twist was how it started. Five years later Hannah Mendoza and Rodger Coppola are the co-founders of Clevr Blends, a Goleta-based company that marries coffees and teas with herbs, adaptogens, and other health boosters in the form of powdered, just-add-water SuperLattes. “We really wanted to bridge the gap between this world of superfoods and drinks that people were familiar with,” said Coppola.

Clevr Blends officially launched in January 2019, but its gestation began years before with the aforementioned coffee and tonic bar. Mendoza and Coppola would set up at events, making their magical elixirs for attendees. “We would do healthier, more upgraded takes on traditional coffee shop drinks,” said Mendoza. “We made fresh cashew milk and we would put in 15 different ingredients. We were making these [drinks] live with a queue of people.”

Creating each unique libation was a time-consuming process, but the payoff was worth it. “We made these incredible drinks and people absolutely loved them,’ said Mendoza. “They would come back to us and say, ‘Wow, I feel amazing. What did you put in here?’ We’d have [an ingredients] list as long as our arms, which made it impractical for people to recreate the drinks at home."

That got Mendoza and Coppola thinking about how to translate their on-the-spot concoctions — and the corresponding wellness contributions — to a format people could easily use. “How can we take all the benefits of these drinks and also the quality of ingredients that we were using, like sourcing the best chai, the best matcha," Mendoza explained, “and make it so no matter how crazy busy your life is, you can make this drink in 10 seconds."

Drawing on their knowledge of western medicine and eastern herbs — Coppola took the MCATs and was working for an orthopedist in town; U.K. native Mendoza majored in global studies at UCSB and “started on with this superfood startup and just got really deep into the health food world” — the duo hit the kitchen, experimenting with combinations. 

After various trials, they came up with four Clevr formulas — coffee, matcha, chai, and turmeric (which they call Golden). All of them share organic base elements such as oat milk, coconut cream, ashwagandha, Lion’s Mane, reishi, and probiotics. From there, ingredients only differ due to flavor choice, i.e, chai tea, turmeric, matcha, and coffee are the variables.

The result? Four delicious, simple-to- make lattes. You can either have them as they are, or play around with adding other ingredients — a dirty chai anyone? Perhaps the biggest draw, aside from simplicity, is the taste. Thanks to the added fats, the drinks are creamy and full of flavor.

In addition to infusing the Clevr blends with healthy elements such as antioxidants, mood boosts, and immune support, Mendoza and Coppola were  also keen to ameliorate the rollercoaster impact of caffeine. “Different elements of caffeine will give you different effects,” explained Coppola. “For example, coffee caffeine is a really big rush at first, and then it drops and you crash. Matcha green tea actually has the compound L-theanine, which works with caffeine for more steady energy.”

Healthy fats also help dampen the caffeine shakes. “Coconut cream and oat milk slow the release of the caffeine, so you’re not getting jittery, but you also don’t get a crazy crash,” said Mendoza. “You have more consistent energy. We hear a lot of people saying they feel energized throughout their day.”

With Clevr Blends now on the market, what’s next for the company? “We’ve spent the past year essentially getting proof of concept and knowing that this is a product that people absolutely love and can really benefit people’s day-to-day rituals and routines and their health,” said Mendoza. “Now it’s about taking it from a small, intimate company and just trying to reach more people.”​​​