What’s the tea? Meet the local influencer making blends with a dark and mysterious twist
Social media personality Joseph Zuzula, known as Hyde, wears many hats: photographer, musician, life coach, influencer and, now, tea maker.
Known as “the internet’s favorite glampire,” Modesto-based Zuzula has cultivated a fan base of over 500,000 followers across Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, where he shares fashion and makeup trends and advice, music, food reviews and lifestyle tips with a Gothic touch.
The path to tea maker was not linear. Zuzula said his primary work was photography and music, but jobs dried up during the pandemic in 2020 as weddings and other large events were canceled. “So I took to TikTok, and I just started creating content and building a fan base, and before you know it, 100,000 turned into 300,000, turned into 500,000 and just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” Zuzula said.
Sporting long, dark hair, moody hued makeup and nails and sometimes sinister contact lenses, his appearance may suggest he is into wild partying, but he has been sober his entire life. “I do a lot of live streaming and I am always sitting there drinking tea,” Zuzula said. “People would ask, ‘What are you drinking?’ So eventually I was like, well, it would be a good way to have my own thing to share that with them, so they’re watching me stream, and we’re drinking the same tea together. It’s kind of a way to connect.”
Working with a specialty tea company in Pennsylvania, Zuzula developed American-made and organic BloodThirsTea. “Our journey began with a passion for exceptional tea and hauntingly romantic imagery, Zuzula said about how the blends came to be. “As avid tea enthusiasts and admirers of the dark, we set out to blend the ancient culture of tea with an obscure twist.”
BloodThirsTea comes in four varieties. His first release, Hydebiscus, named after himself, features a caffeine-free blend of hibiscus flowers. Earl Graveyard is Ceylon tea with bergamot and orange peel. Dark Spell is a vanilla chai black tea made in collaboration with Curst Cosmetics. His most recent release, Geisha’s Ghost, is an Asian cherry blossom green tea inspired by a recent trip to Japan.
Zuzula also released a limited-edition blend called Vampire’s Velvet, exclusive to his Patreon subscribers.
“I was looking around for the highest quality, most expensive product that I could get my hands on because I wanted to make sure that I was providing the best quality,” Zuzula said.
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The artworks on his tins are dark and otherworldly. Each holds 12 tea sachets, which Zuzula said are engineered to provide the best brew and flavor.The pyramid-shaped, plant-based sachets allow the tea leaves to expand, ensuring exceptional taste, he said. Depending on the drinker’s flavor preference, each sachet is good for two to three brews. For cold brewing, he recommends steeping a few sachets for a few hours up to overnight to achieve the tastiest extraction.
Zuzula has sold hundreds of tins since launching in June. The canisters are $21.99 each and are sold locally at the Daydreams and Nightmares costume shop in Modesto. The majority of his sales come directly from his website, bloodthirstea.com, and through his various social media pages.
Zuzula said he is working to get into bigger retailers, especially as he develops new blends. He hopes to have two more flavors out by the end of the year, teasing a minty blend and an apple cinnamon variety.
“Social media is fun and has been a great business, but I wanted something more tangible,” Zuzula said. “I wanted to create something unique that people could get their hands on, rather than just digital content.”
BloodThirsTea is available at bloodthirstea.com, and for the latest news on new flavors and releases follow Zuzula, on Instagram and TikTok @bokuwahyde or on his website at bokuwahyde.com
