Sydney Raquel McRoy

Heady Teddys Mad Honey Co works with remote honey hunters from the Himalayan mountains, primarily Nepal, to source and sell the rarest and most exotic honey in the world, high-altitude rhododendron honey, which contains grayanotoxins, and completely legal in the USA for consumption.

We solve a few problems at once. For consumers, there's no easy, safe way to access real, lab-tested Himalayan mad honey, a product that's existed for centuries but stayed nearly impossible to find or trust outside Nepal, and it offers a natural, legal alternative for people looking to feel good without alcohol or pharmaceuticals. On the sourcing side, the honey hunters and rural communities who harvest it often lack consistent market access and fair pay for incredibly dangerous, skilled work, made even harder by this year's flooding. We built a direct supply chain that gets people something rare they can't find anywhere else, while making sure the communities behind it actually benefit from it.

On the Heady Teddy's side, I secured a $35,000 investor to help launch the business, and honestly, the origin story alone is something I'm proud of, turning a trip delivering aid supplies and my involvement in highlining culture into an entire company most people have never even heard exists. Creatively, I've produced and sold out multiple fulldome art shows in Honolulu, was selected for Dome Fest West to showcase my dome art, and have an upcoming projection mapping show in San Francisco this December called Let's Glow, tied into refugee work I care deeply about. I also built and led a community immersive arts venue in Honolulu that grew organically to over 2,000 members with no outside investment, and saw firsthand the impact that kind of space can have on a community. I also helped build and manage itsr8.com, a disaster relief platform that fed 30,000 people a week in the wake of Hurricane Helene, experience that directly shapes how I run Heady Teddy's today, where a portion of every jar sold goes toward flood relief for the same Nepali communities we source from.