Nomsa Dlamini
Blend development
Spent nine years buying rooibos and honeybush at farm level in the Cederberg and Langkloof. She sets the ratios, tastes every new lot before it goes on the shelf, and is the reason our chamomile does not taste dusty.
Smiley Time Herbal grew out of a packing room in Cape Town and a stubborn habit of writing down every harvest. This page is about the people who weigh, label and seal each pouch, and the few rules we refuse to bend.
Four of us work out of the packing room off Voortrekker Road, and between us we have spent a long time around dried leaf. Nobody here came from a marketing desk. We came from kitchens, farms and tea counters, which is why the harvest notes on each listing read like notes and not like copy.
Blend development
Spent nine years buying rooibos and honeybush at farm level in the Cederberg and Langkloof. She sets the ratios, tastes every new lot before it goes on the shelf, and is the reason our chamomile does not taste dusty.
Packing and dispatch
Runs the scales and the courier desk. If your note asks for a finer grind or a Friday afternoon slot, Pieter is the one reading it at 06:40 and adjusting the run before the cutoff.
Guesthouse accounts
Looks after the tearooms and guesthouses that reorder on standing trays. She keeps track of which houses run iced infusions in summer and which want the spice mix in bulk for winter breakfasts.
Jars, labels and refills
Hand-labels every glass jar and sampler tin, and manages the refill pouch stock so regulars can top up without buying new glass. He also tests strainers before we list them.
Small team, small runs. That is deliberate: it means we can tell you which farm a lot came from, when it was dried, and why a blend tastes different this month than it did in March.
A short record of the years, the moves and the blends that shaped how we work now.
2016
It started with plain Cederberg rooibos, honeybush and a dried mint mix, packed by hand on a kitchen table and sold to two neighbourhood tearooms. Labels were written with a marker because a printer felt like a bigger step than it was.
2018
We moved into a rented space in Cape Town with a proper scale, a sealing machine and enough counter to keep jars and pouches apart. Chamomile joined the range that winter, and guesthouses started asking for evening trays rather than single tins.
2020
Buying by weight meant customers kept asking which lot they were drinking. We began writing picking month, drying method and brewing ratios onto each listing page, and the five-tin tasting set came out of the same conversation with new buyers.
2022
Refill pouches replaced a good share of jar sales, sized to top up a 500 ml container. Same-day packing before the courier cutoff became the rule rather than the exception, and the cart note field grew out of delivery-window requests we kept getting by phone.
Now
Seasonal lots still sell out and come back in short runs, which suits the way we buy. Three blends carry most of the reorders, the spice mixes sit alongside them on the same shelf, and every tin is still labelled by hand.
Smiley Time Herbal started because a guesthouse in Cape Town could not find a rooibos blend that tasted the same from one order to the next. We began packing single lots by hand, writing the harvest month on the tin, and the habit stuck. Everything still leaves the same room in New Dineobury, weighed on the same scale.
Small runs mean we can taste every batch before it goes out. When a seasonal lot of honeybush or chamomile runs thin, we let it sell out and wait for the next harvest instead of padding it with filler leaf. That is the trade-off we chose, and it is why the shelf changes week to week.
Every listing names the farm, the picking month and the drying method. If we cannot trace a batch back to a single source, it does not go into a tin.
Grams per cup, water temperature and steep time sit on the tin and on the page. A blend you cannot repeat at home is not much use, especially on a guesthouse tray.
Pouches are sized to top up the jars we sell, and the tasting tins are built to be reused. Regulars reorder the same three blends; the packaging should not pile up in the process.
The effect we are after is simple: a kitchen, tearoom or guesthouse that can pour the same cup in March as in September, and know exactly where it came from. Caffeine free, packed the same day before the courier cutoff, and honest about what is in season.