Coffee shop looking for bulk tea leaves

[eldub]

Greetings,

We are opening a coffee roasting shop in a couple of months. Just received a line of credit late last week. We will be offering coffee by the cup in our shop as well as fair trade/organic beans for the retail and wholesale customer.

We also want to offer a limited selection of teas by the cup. I've been looking at the Toddy system for brewing iced coffee and tea. However, I've had limited success in finding bulk tea for sale at reasonable prices. I'm having a tough time with the concept of spending the amount of money I'm seeing for bulk tea by the pound. (A Toddy commercial tea maker uses two pounds of tea for each batch.) I'm finding bulk tea at a minimum of $8 to 12$/lb and that's not even fair trade or organic sources.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

scott

 

[John P]

... Not much suggestion here, but a little info.

Good tea retail is $120+ per pound, and that's not the top top stuff,
so do the backwards math and you will understand the range that wholesale tea should be. Also type of tea, region, etc. will determine price. I would say a fair price will run a pretty wide range $18-$60 will cover most full leaf teas.

Tea has 8 grades. 1 (top) to 8 (bottom). Bottom rung are teabag teas are grade 1 or 2. Republic of Tea is about a grade 5, 4 tops.

You get what you pay for. But the closer you can get to the source, the better pricing you will find.

You can't nickel and dime your way into a loyal customer base. When in doubt, buy the better product and treat it right, your business will fare much better in the end.

 

[eldub]

After doing some research, we are going to evaluate the loose tea offerings from The Art of Tea. They have a wholesale program which includes the ability to sample up to 10 teas every 60 days for the cost of shipping, which is deducted from any subsequent order. Tyler has been a pleasure to work with.

Btw, thanks for the info, John.

lw

 

[John P]

If you're looking for suppliers, there's Rishi... and there's everyone else. Otherwise, source direct.

Best of Luck in your venture.

 

[eldub]

John: Thanks for the tip. I began the process of setting up a wholesale account with Rishi this morning. We should be comparing flavor profiles from sample offerings from The Art of Tea and Rishi sometime next week.

lw

 

[eldub]

update: No pricing info from Rishi as of today. I'm guessing they won't do business with us due to another retail dealer doing business about 15 miles away.

lw

 

[MerryMug]

Hello,
I'm not too sure about tea, sorry. But, I own a coffee mug company & I'm looking for small coffee shops around the country who would be interested in retailing some in their shop, I'd love to send you pictures of some! E-Mail me sales@MerryMug.com