A sweet tea brand born in Bay Minette just scored its biggest retail win yet. Cane Brew announced that its sweet and unsweetened teas are now being carried in 618 Walmart stores, a milestone the company is calling a major breakthrough for an Alabama-founded brand.
Cane Brew was founded in Bay Minette, Alabama, according to Alabama Political Reporter, and the Walmart placement adds to a retail footprint that already includes Piggly Wiggly, Rural King, Schnucks, Rouses Markets, Lowes Foods and Greer’s Markets, along with online sales. Piggly Wiggly alone carries the product in 221 Alabama stores. Cane Brew described the Walmart rollout as its biggest retail milestone yet.
The company framed the news in bigger terms than just shelf space, saying the Walmart placement marks a significant step from an Alabama startup to a growing regional consumer brand. Cane Brew also said the rollout is a vote of confidence for an Alabama-founded and headquartered company bringing a Gulf Coast-developed product to Southeast consumers.
No Boiling, No Measuring — Just Cool Water
What sets Cane Brew apart, according to the company, is a tea bag that lets people skip the stovetop entirely. Consumers can place the bag in cool water, with no boiling and no measuring sugar required. One bag makes a half-gallon pitcher, while two bags can make a full gallon.
Cane Brew calls its product the first tea bag to have pure cane sugar built directly into the bag, though that claim is the company's own characterization. The product is made with pure cane sugar, Pekoe cut black tea and tea extract selected specifically for cool brewing, and the company says it contains no artificial ingredients, colors, sweeteners or preservatives, with manufacturing based in the United States.
Co-founder Adam Stewart, who developed the process of incorporating pure cane sugar directly into the bag, said the idea grew out of a simple frustration. “We knew there had to be a better way to make sweet tea at the house,” he said, describing the goal as making homemade sweet tea easier and more fun.
Flavors And Customer Feedback
Beyond the original sweet and unsweetened lines, Cane Brew's product lineup includes Peach, Strawberry, Watermelon, Triple Berry and Decaf varieties, along with a Lemongrass Lemonade line. The company has also reported more than 3,400 customer reviews with an average rating of 4.8 stars.
Cane Brew's expansion didn't happen overnight. The brand had already expanded into retailers across more than 17 states since launching its consumer sweet tea product in 2023, according to Yellowhammer News. Information provided by the company to that outlet also indicated its website logged nearly 800,000 visitor sessions over the prior year, an 80% increase from the year before.
Roots In Baldwin County's Tea Industry
Cane Brew's Bay Minette roots sit inside a broader Baldwin County tea-manufacturing story. Southern Visions, the company behind the separate Sweet Brew Tea brand, began as a small, family-run business in 2003 in Loxley, Alabama, and has since grown into a company with two manufacturing facilities totaling more than 200,000 square feet, including a 160,000-square-foot expansion completed in Bay Minette, per Yellowhammer News.
That Southern Visions report put the company's investment in Baldwin County at more than $24 million, with over 80 full-time employees and plans to surpass 100 within the next year. Adam Stewart is identified in that same report as a partner with Southern Visions. The broader regional growth has coincided with Baldwin County adding more than 14,000 new jobs since 2010, according to the outlet's reporting.
