Heather McMillen first tasted chai in India. Last year she and her mother went into business in Portland, Ore., and now sell about 2,000 gallons of Oregon Chai concentrate a month, mostly in the West but increasingly to cafes in the East. This month Oregon Chai, like LiveChai, will become available in aseptic packaging-juice-box style, with a straw. Unlike some of the other chais, Oregon Chai has little tea flavor. “Our thai is really dessert-y,” says McMillen. She’s right: drinking it is a bit like sipping spice cookies. “That’s part of the appeal,” says Matt Kuhn of Someday Care in Somerville, Mass. “It’s a sweet drink that isn’t a soda pop or a Snappie.” If other brands follow suit, chai could take off. After all, it wasn’t coffee that made Starbucks a national mania – it was milk, sugar, cream and chocolate.
