DIRTEA

My biggest takeaway from this conversation: the best businesses should make the people building them better too. At Ideas Fest I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Michael Acton Smith and Simon Salter about how to build businesses that make you better. What I loved most was hearing where Calm and DIRTEA actually came from. Both businesses started with something deeply personal: stress, burnout, curiosity and a search for something that genuinely helped. Michael Acton Smith talked about building Calm when investors thought paying for meditation sounded ridiculous. Simon Salter shared how his own experience of burnout brought him back to functional mushrooms and the ideas that became DIRTEA. Different journeys, but a similar lesson: Some of the best businesses are built by solving something you have lived yourself. We also talked a lot about the founder behind the business. Simon spoke brilliantly about community, and the importance of having a few really good people around you when things get hard. Michael talked about learning to respond rather than react, and something brilliantly simple that I loved: leaving his phone on airplane mode until he is out of the house and has a coffee in hand. Create before you consume. That went right to the heart of why we created the JD&Co Founder Recovery Zone at IdeasFest. We spend our lives helping founders build better teams and stronger businesses, but I care just as much about what happens to the person building them. More capacity. More support. More space to think. More time doing the things only they can do. We finished by talking about AI and the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is everywhere. Wisdom, judgement, lived experience, relationships and being deeply human are becoming even more valuable. I have huge admiration for both of these founders and what they have built. They were open, funny, thoughtful and incredibly generous with what they shared, and I’m very proud to call them friends. Thank you both Michael Acton Smith Simon Salter

Our new official measurement of brand awareness is now hugs per hour... 🫂 Because this weekend, it outperformed every other metric. Yes… you heard that right. We went to the Health Optimisation Summit to see what’s happening across wellness, beauty, longevity and health optimisation ⚡ DIRTEA didn’t have a stand. We weren’t trading. There was no crazy truck, no music and no drinks (very unlike us). Because the plan was to be there to listen, learn, meet the people shaping the space and come home with a better understanding of what people genuinely care about right now in the wellness space. But somehow, people kept finding us and recognising DIRTEA 🍄🟫 If you were there, there’s a good chance we hugged you, and every hug seemed to come with a story. People told us that they were more focused. That their energy felt better. That they were finally sleeping properly. Others simply stopped us to say thank you for creating DIRTEA and tell us that it had become part of their everyday routine. Those conversations showed us something no dashboard ever will or could: the real faces behind the numbers and the difference DIRTEA is making in their lives. We spend so much time working on DIRTEA that we don’t always get to see how far it has travelled beyond our own four walls. This weekend, we did 🫂 That meant more to us than we can really put into a single LinkedIn post. Sooo… if you stopped us, hugged us or shared your DIRTEA story, thank you. Let us know who you are below, you truly made our weekend. 🤍 Simon Salter Andrew Salter Jessica Salmanpour

Well, our new kids are doing alright... DIRTEA Collagen and Creatine have officially picked up a Tatler Beauty Award 2026, winning in the Supplements category. That makes it two years running for DIRTEA, after our Matcha took home a Tatler Award last year (not a bad little streak if you ask us…😉) Which is a little crazy considering Pure Essentials is one of the newest chapters of DIRTEA, having only launched in February. We’ve spent years becoming known for functional mushrooms 🍄🟫 Then we decided to take what we’d learned about daily wellness rituals and have a go at two of the most talked-about supplements going: collagen and creatine. Who do we think we are? 😬 Well… turns out the world of wellness quite likes what we’ve done… and Tatler is picking up what we’re putting down (and is publishing it!!!) Collagen and creatine hardly need an introduction. With Pure Essentials, our job was to take two ingredients with a serious amount of evidence and attention behind them, and make them hard NOT to bring into your everyday routine. And now? Well, now they’ve got a shiny Tatler badge to go with them. Pure Essentials. Award winners already? They grow up so fast 🥲 Do you use collagen or creatine in your day-to-day? Let us know👇

Remember when mushrooms in your morning coffee sounded a little… weird? We do. We’ve spent six years explaining them 🍄🟫 So seeing DIRTEA in The Grocer’s deep dive into what’s happening across the UK hot drinks category feels pretty special. Because there’s a much bigger shift happening... 👀 Matcha is booming (obviously). Oatly, Alpro, Kenco (JDE Professional UK) and others are moving into the space. And naturally, what people expect from their morning drink is changing. People want their daily rituals to do more for them so It’s no longer just about a caffeine kick. And somewhere amongst all of that is us… Two brothers (Simon Salter, Andrew Salter and Jessica Salmanpour) a brilliant team (a lot of mushrooms 🍄🟫 ), and an idea that sounded pretty strange to a lot of people when we started. When DIRTEA launched into Tesco earlier this year, it was the first time the supermarket had listed coffee, matcha and cacao containing functional mushrooms. But more importantly, DIRTEA didn’t go into the supplement aisle, we went straight into coffee and tea. As Andrew Salter told The Grocer: “You don’t wake up craving supplementation, but you wake up craving a coffee.” That sentence pretty much sums up what we’ve been trying to do from the beginning. We’re not asking people to create another wellness habit, but we are taking something they already love doing every morning and making it better. For any founders building a new category, that’s been one of our biggest lessons: 💡Meet people where they already are💡 Six years ago, mushrooms in coffee required a lot of explaining. Today, they’re sitting in the coffee aisle at Tesco and being discussed in The Grocer as part of where the hot drinks category could be heading next. We’re still figuring a lot of it out 🫣 But watching something go from “that sounds weird” to “this could be a category” feels like progress we’re proud to be a part of 🫶 What do you think about functional drinks? ☕👇

Calling all collagen lovers. You’ll want to read this one! 👀 DIRTEA Pure Essentials Collagen has been named Best Collagen Supplement Overall by The Independent’s IndyBest. Yep. No.1 Collagen. But that's not even the best part... Because in all of this, we had absolutely no idea we were even being tested. IndyBest’ Sarah Finley had been working hard putting a whole range of collagen supplements through testing; looking at taste, texture, smell, ingredients, how well they actually dissolve, and whether they’re truly worth your hard-earned money. After several weeks of trials and tribulations the results were finally in… 🥁 And there it was. DIRTEA Collagen, sitting at the top. Turns out being judged is quite nice when you have no idea it’s actually happening. And this final judgement really does mean a lot to us. Collagen is still a fresh new chapter for DIRTEA, so to have the quality of the product recognised like this, completely independently of us, is something we’re incredibly proud of and grateful for! 🎉 Somehow, we’ve gone from No.1 in mushroom drinks to No.1 in collagen. Quite a sentence to be able to write. So be sure to know that the DIRTEA team will be taking a moment to celebrate this one! 🥳 But as always, not for too long as there are plenty more categories we want the DIRTEA name at the top of - which you might be seeing soon 👀 A huge thank you to The Independent IndyBest and Sarah Finley for the recognition. And an even bigger one to the DIRTEA community 🫶 For choosing us, backing us, sharing us with your friends, sending us your feedback and showing up for our brand and community day in, day out. The awards and No.1s are lovely. But we wouldn't be here without you 🤍 Have you tried the DIRTEA collagen?🥤 Simon Salter Andrew Salter Jessica Salmanpour

I feel I know the whole team at SheerLuxe when I go on their TikTok! It's like a reality TV SHOW! Happy DIRTEA made the cut in show and Top buys!

SheerLuxe, we’re picking up what you’re putting down… 👀 You seem to have a bit of a thing for our Lion’s Mane. And just so we’re clear, we’re equally as obsessed with you! Our Lion’s Mane Gummies have been picked as one of SheerLuxe’s Favourite Wellness Buys Under £50, chosen by their Style Director, Emma Bigger, who said they’ve earned a “permanent spot” in her routine. A permanent spot?? Emma! 🥹 We’ll be thinking about that one for a while... And if that wasn’t enough love, we’ve now caught the SheerLuxe ladies talking Lion’s Mane over on TikTok too - feeling locked in and getting things DONE! (rawr 🦁) And to top it off, when someone in the comments said they desperately needed lions mane it in their life… Guess who they sent them to. Us. 💅 SheerLuxe pls, people are going to start talking! A spot in your wellness edit, a permanent place in the routine, and now you’re recommending us in the comments too? At what point do we admit this is more than a little crush? 🤭 🎀 Jokes aside, being picked as a wellness product genuinely worth spending your money on means a lot to us. Even more so when we then see that love spilling out of the article and into the real conversations happening around Lion’s Mane in daily lives. Truly, we couldn't be more grateful. Anyway SheerLuxe, same time next week? x

The future of wellness no longer lives in inaccessible boutique stores or clubs any more - It can now be found in your weekly shop.  How do we know? Well, we’re leading it 😉 DIRTEA is now sitting in the coffee aisle at Tesco alongside some of the biggest names in the category (Nescafe Hub meet DIRTEA 👋) And while seeing a smaller brand like ours sitting amongst some very big players is a pretty surreal moment, our prediction is that there’s something so much bigger brewing here 🍵 (psst… this is where you start taking notes) Wellness is becoming less of an unreachable ✨future state✨we all seem to constantly chase and more of an accessible everyday choice you stop thinking twice about. Increasingly disguised in the products you’ll reach for every morning - and it turns out, Tesco sees that oncoming shift too. After occupying the Tesco shelves for only 6 months, earlier this year we were selected to be a part of the Tesco Accelerator Programme. As part of the programme, this month we were invited to Tesco HQ to meet the wider Tesco team, the other accelerator brands we also fell in love with like MOTHER ROOT ✸ Humantra, AMA'S, SURREAL, ALL THINGS, Symprove and many more - and got to showcase the energy we're bringing to the caffeine and wellness world ⚡ Thank you Helena Dennis, Maheen Piracha, Jenna Shah & the wider Tesco team for such an amazing event! But the best part of the day wasn't actually talking about mushrooms (although we can’t stop, and we won’t stop) 🍄 It was seeing the impact that's created when a retailer decides to bet on smaller brands with big ideas. Sixteen brands. Hundreds of conversations. And amazing people, genuinely excited about building better products that customers actually crave! As for us at DIRTEA, making wellness more accessible was never just about getting our products onto shelves but more so about maximising accessibility 🫶 🍄🟫 The mission is to not be hidden away in an isolated specialist store, but placed right next to the coffee naturally grab - thank you Tesco for supporting us on that mission. We’d love to know your thoughts on the accessibility of wellness products 👇👇👇

Longevity isn’t built on trends. It’s built on the small things we do consistently, every day. Strength, mobility, skin health, recovery, and cognitive performance are all connected. When we think about ageing well, the goal isn’t just how we look, it’s how well we move, think, and perform over time. That’s why the most effective daily rituals are often the simplest. At DIRTEA, we focus on clean, functional essentials that support the body long-term: • Pure Essential Collagen with hydrolysed Type I & III bovine collagen from Peptan® to support skin, hair, nails, joints, and connective tissue. • Pure Essential Creatine with micronised creatine monohydrate to support strength, steady energy, mental performance, and resilience. No fillers. No unnecessary extras. Just simple daily support for how your body evolves over time.

Trust isn’t a marketing tactic in wellness, it’s the product. In a category flooded with noise, exaggerated claims, and short-term optimisation, the brands that will endure are those willing to trade speed for credibility. What resonates most here is the distinction between industry standard vs. integrity standard. One maximises margin. The other maximises lifetime trust. Consumers are becoming far more sophisticated. Proof, transparency, and consistency now matter more than hype, and the brands that recognise this shift early will define the next decade of wellness. Long-term brands aren’t built on trends. They’re built on trust. Wise words from our CEO Jessica Salmanpour