West El Paso is getting its own drive-thru tea stop this weekend, as HTeaO opens the doors to a new location at 1626 N. Resler Drive with a grand-opening celebration running from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday. The first 250 customers through the door will walk away with a free HTeaO T-shirt, and the deals don't stop there — buy-one-get-one-free cups of tea will run all day, alongside half-priced gallons of tea for the entire week.
The Resler Drive shop marks HTeaO's second location in El Paso, joining its existing Eastside store at 12655 Rojas Drive, according to El Paso Times. The Rojas Drive shop had previously been the chain's only outlet in the city, per Maptons. State licensing records filed under project number TABS2025023342 list Sandra Gutierrez Vasquez as the tenant representative for the new West El Paso facility, according to Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation filings.
Gutierrez Vasquez told the El Paso Times that she and her business partner do not come from traditional business backgrounds — both earned their degrees from Texas Tech University before taking on the HTeaO franchise. The store operates in partnership with Tea Time Ventures LLC and will serve customers both in-store and via drive-thru.
More Than 20 Flavors, Brewed On-Site
Each HTeaO location features more than 20 crafted tea flavors, made with what the chain describes as 100% natural ingredients, the station's report notes. Popular options include Georgia Peach, watermelon, coconut, black mint, and blueberry, served in both sweetened and unsweetened varieties. The tea, water, and coffee served at every store are brewed using HTeaO's proprietary water filtration system — a built-in water treatment plant that runs double-pass reverse osmosis filtration to keep the brew consistent no matter the local water supply, according to Crux Capital.
Beyond tea, HTeaO stores double as licensed retail dealers for Yeti drinkware, selling branded tumblers and coolers alongside home-brew kits and snacks — a merchandising push that helps boost average ticket sizes across the chain, per the same account. Regulars can also lean on the chain's daily happy hour, which offers buy-one-get-one-free tea of any size every day from 2 to 4 p.m., and a rotating weekly deal that brings back buy-one-get-one-free brewhouse coffee the following Saturday, Aug. 22.
A Panhandle Side Hustle Turned National Chain
HTeaO's roots go back to 2009, when founders Gary and Kim Hutchens started selling drive-thru iced tea out of their Amarillo burger restaurant under the name Texas Tea, noticing that tea sales spiked during the 2008 recession, according to QSR Web. The concept was officially rebranded and launched as a franchise in Midland in 2018, and it has since grown into one of the fastest-expanding names in the drive-thru beverage space.
That growth has accelerated sharply in recent years. HTeaO generated $147 million in systemwide sales in 2025 — a 26.7% year-over-year jump — and now operates more than 180 locations across 11 states, as reported by Nation's Restaurant News. The brand also landed on the 2026 Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private companies.
New Leadership, Private Equity Behind the Push
Earlier this month, on Aug. 4, HTeaO named former Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers COO Brian Wise as its new Chief Executive Officer to steer national expansion, while co-founder and former CEO Justin Howe shifted into the role of Executive Chairman of the Board. Wise brings more than two decades of franchise management and operations experience to the job, according to Business Wire. The leadership change followed a growth investment completed in April 2026 that gave Dallas-based private equity firms Crux Capital and Trive Capital majority ownership of the company; the two firms had first taken a minority stake back in January 2023.
The institutional backing helps explain why HTeaO storefronts keep popping up across Texas. Hoodline previously reported on the chain's push into South Texas's Rio Grande Valley, where four locations were planned, including a $1.15 million, 1,705-square-foot Brownsville site with a single-lane drive-thru. Similar expansion has landed in Prosper, Georgetown, and Conroe over the past several months, part of a broader pattern of specialty drive-thru drink concepts spreading across Texas and the Sun Belt as customers look for customizable, non-coffee caffeinated options, according to World Tea News.
For West El Paso residents, Saturday's opening means a shorter drive for a BOGO cup and a free T-shirt — while for HTeaO's new corporate leadership, it's one more storefront in a fast-growing chain betting big on Texas's thirst for fresh-brewed tea.
