“Cargo & James is committed to providing our customers with a stimulating tea drinking experience that helps support a healthy lifestyle.”

Whether your visiting our site to learn more about our company, to purchase the finest quality loose leaf tea, or just browsing for Tea related information, we hope you enjoy

Cargo & James Tea began as an idea in January 2001 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in response to rapidly growing demand for specialty tea products in an environment that appealed to everyone. Tim Grover, founder and President, realized that the specialty tea category had been growing at a very fast pace, and Cargo & James has taken a leadership position in the development of the Specialty Tea category in North America.

Over the course of the next five years, Cargo & James Tea would open four corporate stores in Edmonton & area beginning with the Whyte Avenue location in September 2001 as a sit down café with a relaxing atmosphere. A year later a second location was opened in the City Centre to cater to busy office workers in hopes that they would begin to convert from coffee to tea and to help with attaining a healthy lifestyle while on the go. This is where the Cargo & James Tea to go cup was born. In July of 2004 Cargo & James opened in downtown St. Albert, a suburb community north of Edmonton and is our largest location at 2100 square feet. The last of the corporate stores opened in January 2006 in the Sherwood Park Mall. This 500 square foot store proved that we were able to operate a small, compact store in a regional shopping mall in a relatively small town.

Recently, Cargo & James has acquired an Edmonton based business, Riddles Sweet Impressions, an old fashioned candy and chocolate factory. This facility will not only enable us to be able to produce our teas on a larger scale to support the growing franchise system, but also enables us to blend and flavour all of our proprietary teas, adding unique blends using the various candies available.

Our Mission

“To provide our customers with a stimulating drink that helps support their healthy lifestyle.” Cargo & James is committed to providing our customer with an enriched tea drinking experience. We insist on nothing but the finest and most exotic tea leaves available to ensure the perfect Tea drink.

Legend of Cargo and James

This is the legend of Cargo and James and how two totally opposite characters ended up in the tea business. Please note that we call it the “legend” so as not to confuse it with the truth. We prefer terms such as “literary license” and “embellishment” while some of our detractors have used far more boorish terms with references to scatology to describe the adventures of our illustrious founders….we’ll let you decide for yourself.

Our story begins with two families, the Cargo’s and the Jame’s in London, England in the 1890’s. The two ladies of these families were sisters, lived in the same neighbourhood and gave birth to two bouncing baby boys at the same time….Christopher Cargo and Jonathan James. It was apparent from an early age that the only thing these boys had in common was that they were cousins. While Christopher was a strapping young lad, Jonathan was by far the smaller of the two. Christopher was athletic and daring, Jonathan was frail and studious. Most who knew them predicted that Christopher would end in jail or on the wrong end of gun and that Jonathan would find his way to the clergy or the cleric…. they were almost right. Despite their differences, the boys developed a bond between them. Christopher would get into trouble and Jonathan would bail him out.

By the time Christopher was nineteen, a growing number of fathers and husbands, who failed to appreciate his lust for life and why it had to involve their daughters and wives, made it impractical for Christopher to remain in England. With money borrowed from Jonathan, he high-tailed it to the high seas with a promise to repay every cent as soon as he had made his fortune in some far off land and was living the life of luxury, which he so richly deserved.

Jonathan remained in London and became the neighbourhood grocer. Despite his acute business sense, he struggled to earn a decent living and waited patiently for Christopher to send the money he owed so that he could enlarge his business. He knew that he’d have to be better in order to compete with the wealthier businesses but he’d be fine as soon as Christopher sent the money.

Several months passed and one day four large crates arrived with a letter from Christopher postmarked Ceylon (we now call it Sri Lanka). Never very good with the words (except with the ladies), Christopher had written: Jonathan, sorry. Ran out of money for now but was able to barter for this tea. Can’t carry it with me. Hope you like it. The locals here live on the stuff. Off to India on the next ship. The local chief has twenty wives and doesn’t like to share, so it seems. Will write soon. This was hardly what Jonathan was hoping for but he had no alternative but to try to sell the tea. He loved it and slowly but surely his customers grew to love it as much. As customers lined up to purchase this luxury from the Orient, Jonathan realized that he had a good thing going. It didn’t matter any more about his competitors, as he was the only one who had the tea. He sent a message to Christopher saying only “Send more tea.” A few months later, four more crates arrived from somewhere in India called Darjeeling along with another letter detailing Christopher’s adventures. These letters were so full of adventure and details of far away exotic places that Jonathan began reading them to his customers. Soon his business was flourishing and each shipment was greatly anticipated…. not only for the tea, but also for the stories that accompanied them. The adventures continue, as do the teas from all parts of the world.

As long as Christopher Cargo has an eye for the ladies and an obvious palate for tea, Jonathan James will continue to ensure that his customers receive only the fines teas from around the world…and some pretty interesting stories, although not always suitable for children.