This story is featured in the Jan. 2025 print edition.
Kaylie Wang is a English freshman and Mustang News opinion columnist. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Mustang Media Group.
I never heard of Yerba Mates before coming to Cal Poly. Once school started, the yellow cans surrounded me everywhere: in students’ hands, stacked on shelves in the Market at Grand Avenue and overflowing out of recycling bins. With its ubiquitous presence on campus, I needed to know: What attracts so many students to these drinks?
Mate drinks originate from Indigenous communities in South American countries, and it is mostly enjoyed in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. The drink is a stimulant, like coffee or tea, made from water and the leaves of yerba mate tree. The company Guayaki creates the yellow cans of yerba mate-based drinks. It was founded by Cal Poly alums, who started selling the drinks as part of a senior project.
The craze over Guayaki’s Yerba Mate drinks extends beyond Cal Poly, as these drinks are popular at the Claremont Colleges, UC San Diego, UC Davis and Occidental College.
Athletes enjoy Guayaki Yerba Mates because the drinks provide an energy boost.
“I need energy to keep me through the day,” said Quincy Winkler, a pitcher on the baseball team and a Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Administration freshman. “I don’t really want to fill my body with harmful things. I feel like Yerba Mate is a good in-between.”
Winker’s father introduced him to the drink when he was 13. Now, he drinks a Yerba Mate every morning after lifting weights with his team, and keeps his baseball clubhouse stocked with cans.
“We get up really early, so it’s easy to want to go back to bed,” Winkler said. “But I have 8 a.m. classes, so the drink helps me push through and get to all my classes.”
He also explained that drinking Yerba Mates with his teammates after practice is a way he bonds with his team.
Winkler isn’t alone in coming together with his community to enjoy the drink. Author of Yerba Mate: The Drink That Shaped a Nation, Julia Sarreal found that in South America, drinking mates are considered a social practice that brings people together.
“The idea of sharing Mate is really important,” Sarreal said. “In South America, a gourd is typically filled with yerba mate, and there’s the bombabilla, or special straw. Then you pass it around; it’s a shared drink.”
Similar to Winkler, other students also started drinking Yerba Mates before they came to Cal Poly.
Faith Seddon, an industrial engineering freshman, started drinking them when she was 14 and wanted more energy when in high school. She found Yerba Mates at a store and was drawn in by the “organic” label on the can.
Yerba Mates are generally seen as a healthy caffeine alternative, Argentinian dietitian and nutritionist Eva De Angelis told National Geographic, but consuming too much of the tea can cause problems such as heartburn and anxiety.
“I started drinking it during quarantine, during 2020, and that was a really transitional time in my life,” Seddon said. “I was going through a lot of big changes. It reminds me of that.”
She even tried all the different flavors during quarantine for fun.
Seddon moved from Washington, where she felt few people knew about Yerba Mates. She was surprised that many people enjoy the drink here at Cal Poly. Now, she often visits the Vista Grande or Poly Canyon Village market to pick up a can for the nostalgia.
While Yerba Mate has been a historical herb used in South America, the Guayaki beverage has quickly cemented its place in Cal Poly’s culture.