Tea

[lifeline]

I know this is a coffee forum, but it seems that many wholesalers and retailers also sell tea.

I am trying to determine how big of an opportunity tea is. My formate would basically be selling to individual consumers from the internet and other direct marketing avenues.

General Questions (for wholesalers or retailers)
1) What percentage of your sales are tea?
2) Do you advertise about your tea or is more of an after thought in case people want it?
3) Any other considerations like we sell 80% Black Tea or we have found that loose tea sells better than bagged.
4) Overall do you think tea could sell as much as coffee?

 

[John P]

I'm game.

1) What percentage of your sales are tea? 25-40% depending on time of year.
2) Do you advertise about your tea or is more of an after thought in case people want it? We have a balanced approach to espresso/coffee and tea. Our teas are as phenomenal as our coffee. Even though we are a coffee place first, our teas are not an afterthought. We market quality, so it's a given that all of our offerings are excellent. Mood dictates choice.
3) Any other considerations like we sell 80% Black Tea or we have found that loose tea sells better than bagged. If you want ANY significant focus on tea, you should never sell bagged tea. The majority of teas we sell we source farm direct from Japan and Taiwan. We also source some amazing teas from Rishi.
4) Overall do you think tea could sell as much as coffee? If you REALLY want to sell a lot of tea, that should be your sole focus. A tea only shop can fit nicely in many markets.
If you have an educated and balanced approach with great offerings in both, you can expect the same kind of return in sales.

 

[SunriseCoffeeLasVegas]

I completely agree with John on this. we didn’t know much about tea when preparing to open our shop but after research and lots of sampling and education we decided to have a limited tea menu but all of the best ones we could find. in this town there is pretty much no place to get great tea and I honestly think we carry the best quality stuff in town (maybe some of the higher end sushi joints can be on par but definitely not better)

we don’t sell a huge amount of the stuff but we have a good number of regular tea drinkers who are certainly worth keeping it in stock. its sales we would normally just not have.