New Zealand · Est. 2025

Extending the
life of every
bottle.

Ice tea for everyone.
Bottled with intention. Returned with purpose.

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1M+ glass bottles discarded
by hospitality every year in NZ
867g of CO₂ produced to
make a single glass bottle
40% less energy used when
glass is recycled & reused
∞ times glass can be
recycled without losing quality
Our Mission

Glass has an
infinite lifespan.
We're here to
honour that.

The hospitality industry is built on craft, care, and attention to detail. Single-use glass bottles are simply a natural by-product of that world — wine, water, spirits — moving through venues every day. That's not a flaw in the industry. It's just an opportunity nobody had picked up yet.

Glass can be cleaned, refilled, and reused indefinitely without any loss in quality. Unlike almost any other material, it has a theoretically infinite lifespan. We just needed a product worth putting back into it.

MAUI is that product. We work with restaurants and hospitality venues across New Zealand to give their spent bottles a second life — brewing small-batch ice tea for anyone who wants something good to drink.

Our goal is to link the little guys together. Independent venues, small producers, local growers. A quiet network doing great work — and getting closer to carbon-zero as a result.

"The industry we love already has everything it needs.
We just want to close the loop inside it."
Fresh Citrus Ice Tea — MAUI
The Product

Fresh Citrus
Ice Tea.

Bright, clean, and built around the ingredients. Cold-brewed tea with fresh citrus — nothing added that doesn't need to be there.

Bottled in a reclaimed 1907 sparkling water bottle. 750ml of something worth returning.

Reclaimed 1907 glass · 750ml
The Recipe

No secret knowledge.
Here's exactly
how we do it.

We believe knowledge should be free. This is our full process — nothing held back.

01

The Citrus

We source lemons from farms across Auckland — good ones, from growers who care. We zest them fresh and infuse the zest into a sugar concentrate. That's where the citrus hit comes from: the oil in the skin, not the juice. Brighter, more aromatic, and it holds better in the bottle.

02

The Tea

Our black tea comes from Refill Nation in Titirangi Village. We cold infuse it for around 30 hours before straining. No heat, no shortcuts. The long cold brew gives us just the right depth of tannin — enough to hold its own against the citrus, not so much that it overpowers it.

03

The Blend

We bring the two together and season with a little citric acid. That's it. No preservatives, no flavour compounds, nothing you couldn't find in a kitchen. The citric acid sharpens the citrus and keeps everything in balance — it's the same thing that makes lemons taste like lemons.

04

Into the Bottle

We pasteurise by bringing the liquid above 80°C, then fill straight into our reclaimed 1907 bottles and cap immediately. The heat does the preservation work — no additives needed. Once the cap goes on, it's done. Clean, simple, shelf-stable.

The Loop

A cycle that
rewards return.

WE GET THE BOTTLES Reclaimed from hospitality venues WE FILL THE BOTTLES Fresh citrus ice tea WE SELL THE BOTTLES Markets, popups, venues & direct WE GET THEM BACK Return for a discount THE LOOP

Every bottle returned saves approximately 867g of CO₂ that would have been emitted producing a new one.

Find Us

We come to you.
Bring your appetite.

We set up, pour cold ice tea, and eat good food with good people. Markets, laneways, courtyards — wherever there's a table and a crowd worth feeding.

Upcoming
TBC 2025

City Market

Auckland, NZ

Fresh citrus ice tea + food at the market. Come say hi, grab a bottle, return an empty for a discount.

Ice Tea Food Market
Past
08 Mar

Grilled Cheese Popup

Auckland, NZ

Where it all started. Grilled cheese sandwiches, excess lemonade, and the moment the bottle idea was born.

Food Sandwiches

More dates dropping soon.

Follow along to stay in the loop.

Want MAUI at your market, event, or venue?

Get in touch
Founder at work At work, New Zealand
The Story

It started with
a grilled cheese
sandwich.

I'm a chef. Food has been my world for as long as I can remember — I've had the privilege of working in some of New Zealand's best kitchens and I love this industry deeply.

MAUI didn't start as a grand vision. It started with excess lemonade from our grilled cheese sandwich business. We had too much of it and I wanted to sell it — creatively, properly, in a way that felt worth buying. I needed a vessel that could hold a concentrate and look the part.

I got my hands on some glass bottles for free. And that's when it clicked — these things are everywhere in our industry. Thousands of them moving through restaurants every week and going nowhere useful after that.

So the lemonade became ice tea. And the ice tea became MAUI.

We saw excess glass going to waste and decided to fill it with something good. That's it. The loop is a bonus that comes with doing it right.

— The Founder
Stock MAUI

Want MAUI
near you?

Whether you want to stock us, host a popup, or just find out where to get a bottle — get in touch. We're building something open and we'd love you to be part of it.

Get in touch