Blending Passion With Purpose: UAE-Based AVANTCHA Tea's Marina Rabei on Redefining the Luxury Tea Space Following the opening of a shiny new tea bar and shop in Dubai, and multiple collaborations with name brands like Netflix and Cartier, UAE-based AVANTCHA Tea's co-founder Marina Rabei talks about how the homegrown brand has established itself as a market leader (and why an insatiable thirst for knowledge has driven her entrepreneurial success!)

Marina Rabei has also been featured on Anchored Echoes, a new video series on Entrepreneur Middle East- watch the full episode HERE.

Asking an entrepreneur what their favourite subjects at school were can sometimes be an easy gateway to understanding their current line of work. "I loved math and physics but there was also a creativity aspect where I wanted to be a painter or an interior designer," says Marina Rabei, co-founder of UAE-based luxury tea brand AVANTCHA Tea. "I didn't really like history and literature. But math…it's a very precise science; very exact. It was funny because I was gravitating towards math with a bit of creativity. And that's what I think happens a lot [with me] even today!"

Indeed, as the rest of this feature will slowly reveal, Rabei's –as well as her co-founder Markus Zbinden's– eagerness to gain knowledge in different fields has been instrumental in AVANTCHA Tea's growth since its launch in the UAE in 2014. Rabei's curiosity to learn more, for one, led to her becoming one of the earliest individuals in the UAE to become a TAC Tea Sommelier™ —a professional certification conferred by the Tea & Herbal Association of Canada and delivered through accredited educational partners such as the Academy of Tea— in 2017. "For me, knowledge was more about understanding in depth about what I was doing," Rabei tells me. "So being an early certified tea sommelier was not about being 'the first.' It was about understanding my craft, and understanding its depth, so we could build something with lots of authenticity and substance."

The most successful outcome of that initial vision is the brand's new tea bar and shop in Dubai's Al Quoz area– a classy two-storey, greyish-black building with polished glass panes and a presence that is inviting even at first glance. I arrive there for my interview with Rabei on a sweltering summer afternoon, and am immediately met with a sense of tranquility upon entering the venue. Inside, the tea bar and shop –which was launched in May 2025– are shelves upon shelves of packages containing various organic-certified tea leaves and premium blends, tea accessories and gift boxes, as well as teaware for modern tea ceremonies. But the highlight of the space is its aroma wheel- a glass-made display of various blends and concoctions where customers can take their time to go through every jar's flavour and scent notes (all mentioned in neat little notes). "The customers can also taste any tea at the tea bar at the moment for free, before they buy," Rabei adds. "We finally have a space to play around with flavours, so we have tea mocktails now. We can just do much more with tea here, which is something we couldn't do at the older location. So it's a bigger space, it's a bigger playground, where we can bring all our tea dreams to come true."

The "older location" Rabei alludes to was, in fact, not too far from this new one. Although the brand launched in 2014, it initially only worked on a business-to-business (B2B) model, and later pivoted to becoming an e-commerce platform in 2015. It was only in 2018 that Rabei and her co-founder Zbinden decided to open a physical store. "So the first location was very close to where we are now; actually, on the same street," Rabei says. "Do you know those barrels that you store oil in? Well, I remember I found them on sale online for about AED50. So I bought those three barrels, a piece of marble and some IKEA shelves in the back– and that was pretty much our first tea bar in 2018! I think that the setup cost no more than AED20,000. It was such a small setup. We just wanted to have a location where people could come, and we could meet and talk to them to get some feedback on the products. We also did workshops there, and people enjoyed coming and talking to us. So the place became very popular over the years."

Here, Rabei notes that much of the growing interest in the brand has to be credited to the very essence of tea itself and the people who love the beverage in its many forms. "Tea is such a connecting drink," she says. "It's not like the case where people meet quickly for a cup of coffee, for instance. With tea, it's more about 'let's have a conversation about where is this tea from, and why did you make it?' I also feel like tea people can be shy, but once you pour that cup of tea…they're ready to open up and talk about it. So that was the beginning. Eventually everything became busy. Our team grew, everything grew, and finally we grew out of space. So we took another location very close by."

In the years that have passed between AVANTCHA Tea's first tea bar launch in 2018 to its latest one in 2025, the homegrown brand has bagged some impressive collaborations with fashion houses Cartier, Gucci, Bvlgari, and Fendi. In early 2024, in collaboration with Netflix series 'The Gentlemen' (a spin off series from British director Guy Ritchie's acclaimed film) AVANTCHA Tea launched two limited edition black tea blends –Majestic Earl Grey and Chocolate Chilli– inspired by the show's main characters. Notably, the brand – which has "very proudly bootstrapped right from day one"– also supplies premium tea blends to a number of luxury hospitality giants in the UAE such as Four Seasons, Waldorf Astoria, Atlantis The Royal, Mandarin Oriental Jumeira, One&Only, Banyan Tree, and The Lana Dorchester.

Spurred by the momentum created by such initiatives, AVANTCHA Tea also opened its first location outside the UAE– this time in the tea-loving nation of Thailand. Situated in the capital city of Bangkok, the tea bar which opened in early 2025, marks the possibility of a greater expansion plan for the brand. "With our offices today in Switzerland, UK and Thailand, we're trying to reach more people around those countries," Rabei says. "Perhaps [we'll expand into] the US sometime soon too. Maybe Japan! Ultimately, we want to build a brand that stays relevant, but is elegant through time. So it's not something that passes; one that is not necessarily a trend maker or just following trends. We just want to be a brand that in 10-15 years, our team is proud to work for. We want to be a household brand that stays true to its organic sourcing, continues to look after the farmers we work with, and just…stays true to our values. We want to be a boutique brand with a global reach."

Much of Rabei's staunch stance to not forego any of AVANTCHA Tea's core foundations as a boutique business lies in the fact that this business started out because of a common interest she and Zbinden shared and hoped to nurture together. "Marcus and I, we both had this passion for fine food, and for experiences that are more refined," Rabei shares. "But we observed that the tea space felt very, very overlooked and very dated. So we didn't really have a grand idea or a big vision for AVANTCHA originally. We just knew that it was a passion project, and that we wanted to have something organic, something clean, high quality and really good looking in terms of packaging and presentation. Along the way, Chris Lehmann joined our team as Managing Partner. He came from an even bigger corporate world, and brought a lot of knowledge about operations, scaling, and the basics of what a big business needs. But we still want to maintain our boutique feeling, where we treat every customer with care and invest our time properly into projects that we do. So, yes, we want to be available to all the tea lovers around the world but without giving up the boutique feel of our business."

The AVANTCHA Tea team's collective decision to maintain exclusivity and attention to detail throughout operations actually begins from the very first step of the process: the sourcing of the tea leaves. "Sourcing was always something that we've done internally," Rabei shares. "And offering organic products has always been important for us because we believe that organic is not only good for the consumers, but also for the people that grow those crops. A lot of tea companies mostly outsource this step– so they would buy from wholesalers, and they don't really travel to the tea gardens. For us, Marcus [Zbinden] is responsible for sourcing. He loves spending time in China, India and Japan– even now he's out somewhere in the Far East. By doing this, with time, you build relationships with tea growers, and in return they always surprise you with new flavours. Because tea is something that grows out of soil. Every season, you have something new in terms of flavor profile. They experiment with manufacturing, with processing of the tea leaves. So there's always something new. All of that comes from our beloved tea farmers."

And apart from the farmers they source their leaves from, AVANTCHA Tea has also found that their customers themselves can offer inspiration in coming up with new blends. "Sometimes clients come to us and say 'can you match this perfume with a tea flavor?'" reveals Rabei. "And that happens more and more today. So we break it down because perfumes are very much like teas– you have flowers and fruits and spices. So we break those elements down and we mix it. We also now have a lab here at the new tea bar, where we can play around more. And so we just experiment, experiment, experiment!"

AVANTCHA Tea's mission to experiment and innovate with tea is, in fact, embedded within the brand's very name. "It stands for 'avant-garde cha,'" explains Rabei. "'Avant-garde' is French for something new and innovative, whereas 'Cha' means tea in Mandarin. So it just made sense!"

To keep her expertise on the subject matter precise, Rabei shares that she makes it a point to learn more about the different factors that define the industry she operates in. But the key to studying the right topics, in a world that is inundated with endless information, is to "go deep not wide," says the co-founder. "I think that knowledge is now much more accessible than ever before," she continues. "In the past you had to go to the library or borrow a book. Now everything is online. But that comes with a lot of challenges. Do you know what's true? And how do you know what to prioritize? How do you know what is actually relevant to read for a specific purpose? So understanding what aligns with your values and goals is what will help decide what you're going to focus on. Today it's understanding the world around us and having that curiosity of studying. So I would often study design because I'm curious, but also because it is relevant to my business. There's also hospitality, trends and what's going on in e-commerce because, again, that's relevant. I also study topics related to psychology, just to understand consumer needs and why certain things are happening. As a business owner you have to be aware of many aspects of the business, but I think most people burn out because they're trying to do everything at the same time. I used to do the same. Now I prioritize. You have to focus on what's going to have the highest impact at the moment. Of course, there's other things that I want to learn, but it's going to be later. So it's about prioritization and understanding what the current demand is and where we focus now, and then going deep into that one subject."

Now, Rabei's insatiable hunger for knowledge, she says, is something that was deeply instilled in her much before entrepreneurship became her chosen path in life. Her passion for learning began during her childhood in the Republic of Moldova, where, even as a child, she'd been taught to value education above all else. Later, while being a university student at the Academy of Economic Studies of Moldova, Rabei was introduced to the possibility of becoming a cabin crew member. It was that first dream that brought her to the sandy terrains of Dubai in 2006. But when that plan fizzled out, she quickly pivoted and found herself land a job at real estate giant Nakheel. "I worked there as a real estate agent within the marketing and sales team which was really cool," she says. "I was also one of the first non-Arabs in the team at the time. But then came the economic meltdown of 2008/09, and soon after my next job was working for commercial shipping. It was an agency that was doing ship repairs, oil tankers, liquefied gas tankers. That was an…interesting part of my life, working with primarily men."

So what did working in a primarily male-dominated space teach Rabei about the business world? "I know what I didn't want to have," she says with a smile. "So while building Avantcha, as our team grew, I knew that we had to allow for diversity, we had to allow for inclusion. We have to lead and build a company that encourages and empowers that diversity. And the merits are rewarded by ideas and not by egos, right? So we allow everybody to speak up and say, you know, in conflict, say their side of stories. And we reward big ideas rather than gender or egos."

As someone who has worked across a variety of industries before eventually taking the plunge into entrepreneurship, Rabei has a straightforward piece of advice for entrepreneurs and startup founders when it comes to navigating uncertainties. "You have to adapt," she says. "If plan A doesn't happen, you have to work on plan B. You have to be able to make things work, even if it's not as you calculated. So being adaptable, flexible, resilient is super important. Starting a business honestly tests a lot of your qualities. I think I didn't know how strong I could be when I started this journey. But with time, it shows you what you can, and what you cannot do. And you learn…you learn to do it. I didn't know what it meant to fire the first person that doesn't perform, but you learn. And you know you're doing it for the best. I was not very confident in certain environments before but you learn to do it, because you have to. It's a case of either you do it or somebody else will do it before you."

It is this mindset that Rabei hopes to continue applying to AVANTCHA Tea's future plans too now. "We are currently working on a 100% biodegradable tea bag," she reveals. "This is something some of our other tea brands have already kind of introduced but they are not shelf stable– they tend to expire in six months or so. So we want to introduce a 100% biodegradable tea bag that looks exactly as sleek as our current one. We are also excited about working to establish a bigger presence in Europe– and the starting point for that is currently Switzerland, because there's been a lot of nice response there. But along the way, I think we're going to make it a point to start celebrating our wins more often. When you work on a project day in and day out, every single day, very often you forget to stop and celebrate. But as we move forward now, we will definitely try to do that more often!"

Watch Marina Rabei's Anchored Echoes interview by clicking the link below:

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