“Everyone deserves to be well.”

That slogan tops the Our Story page on the website for Equitea, the blockbuster brand of canned, healthy tea beverages sold in about 600 locations nationwide and championed by no less a wellness luminary than Gwyneth Paltrow.

For founder and West Baltimore native Quentin Vennie, that declaration is about more than just accessing premium products. It’s a statement of the right of everyone, regardless of what you look like and what neighborhood you live in, to seek any opportunity possible to be whole and healthy.

“The world can make you feel like things on the other side are not for us,” said Vennie, one of Black Enterprise’s 100 Men of Distinction in 2017. “That it’s not possible or that we don’t deserve to see or get there.”

The author, meditation and yoga aficionado, who founded Equitea in Baltimore in 2022, moved his company and family to Los Angeles in 2023 but returned home late last year. On Saturday, he opened a pop-up matcha shop in Remington, running now through March 22, that he hopes will become a permanent fixture “if it proves to be something the community wants.”

“This pop-up for us is a homecoming,” Vennie said. “The plan was always to come home. Matcha, for me, is one of the healthiest ingredients you can consume. Taken in moderation, it’s a great alternative to coffee.”

Equitea was founded after Vennie’s son was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Vennie and his wife sought a natural way to help. After they relocated to California, the business eventually attracted the attention of Oscar winner Paltrow, who now sits on the board as an adviser. Don’t expect a celebrity sighting in Remington, though. “Gwyneth is still actively involved, but she won’t be flying into Baltimore,” Vennie said of the “hands-on” star.

Vennie and his family came back to the East Coast three months before the devastating L.A. fires that killed more than 25 people and displaced about 50,000.

“We were right over the canyon from Malibu,” Vennie said. The family knows people who lost homes, and a playground their kids used to visit “doesn’t exist anymore.”

Even though he left his hometown for a while, Vennie sees parallels between Baltimore and L.A. neighborhoods such as Watts and Compton. “You know the saying ‘Real recognize real?’” he asked. “Every time I tell someone I’m from Baltimore, they’re like, ‘My sister’s cousin’s girlfriend is from Baltimore! You good then!‘”

When you grow up Black, there is a tightrope you walk of being either too Black or not Black enough, depending on the setting. “I grew up in the thick of it,” Vennie said, with connections to Walbrook Junction, Edmondson Village and Sandtown-Winchester. However, he went to school in the county. “Where I was educated, I never felt I fit in.”

It wasn’t until much later, when he moved out of state and discovered concepts like yoga, that Vennie understood there was nothing off limits to Black people from West Baltimore. It’s all just stuff that might be right for you that you haven’t discovered yet.

“There was no yoga studio in my neighborhood, even though in world history there were Egyptians doing yoga,” he said. “But I struggled with prescription drug addiction and yoga was the modality that saved my life.”

Vennie discovered yoga after moving to New Jersey, leading to his certification in the practice and eventual creation of programs in local schools, including a meditation and yoga program at Franklin Square Elementary/Middle School.

Vennie is pleased to be back in Baltimore for this pop-up in the old JBGB building at 2600 N. Howard St.

Now that he’s home, Vennie sees this as a full-circle moment.

“I was always this person with an entrepreneurial spirit, chasing whatever dream. That prepared me for what I’m doing now,” he said. “I am a living, breathing example of what Black people, specifically, are capable of when they have the privilege to step outside of the confines of their neighborhood and see that the world is so much bigger.”