• The Cost of Producing Specialty Tea

    Consumers who pay a premium at retail for specialty tea often leave growers to foot the bill. The costs of producing the distinctive taste of the authentic, transparent, eco-friendly, clean-label teas that are so popular with Millennial and Gen Z cohorts are significantly higher than what growers spend supplying conventional tea. A preference for chemical-free cultivation, third-party certifications, energy-efficient, carbon-neutral processing and transport, and recyclable and biodegradable packaging further erode margins along the length of the supply chain. This raises a fundamental question: Is anyone making money making specialty tea?


    Listen to the interview

    Will Battle discusses the additional expense of producing the best specialty teas
    Artisan teas require time and hands-on attention to detail
    Artisan teas require time and hands-on attention to detail that add significant costs. Photo courtesy Folklore Tea.

    An Investment in Quality

    In this post, Will Battle, author, consultant, and enthusiast for all things tea describes the additional costs to growers producing top-quality tea. Will trained as a taster in India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Malawi and has more than 20 years of experience sourcing tea. He is the author of “The World Tea Encyclopaedia” and founder and managing director of Fine Tea Merchants, Ltd., a wholesale tea importer and export venture that supplies tea merchants with mainstream offerings as well as rare teas and herbals. Will sees growers taking initiatives on quality at all levels of the cultivation and manufacture process and so regards the lines between the everyday and specialty sectors to be blurred, but here he focuses on the costs of creating the very best teas.

    Dan Bolton: Will, from a grower’s perspective, is manufacturing specialty tea worth the effort?

    Will Battle: I think frequently it probably isn’t. I look at some of the growers I deal with and the amount that they need to invest from a financial and human resources perspective and it’s so much greater in almost every area.

    Costs are higher at pretty much all stages of the chain. In my experience, Dan, whether it’s the approach to pruning, to leaf quality stipulated to pluckers, or to those buying leaf on the open market; the level of detail that the factory needs to apply to the processing of the leaf, right on through storage, shipping, all of those processes costs a lot more in the specialty tea industry.

    I struggle to see many instances where that’s appropriately rewarded.

    Dan: Let’s talk specifics, what costs are unique to producing specialty tea?

    Will: Let’s take Darjeeling for example, and their approach to the pruning cycle. A good case in point would be my experience with Jay Shree’s Darjeeling this year. They pruned more than they did in previous years, more than most other producers.

    That effectively writes off your first flush, but it might give you a better second flush, and then next year, you probably have an improved quality as well. But to write off your first flush is just an enormous financial handicap to impose on yourself and that’s your start point.

    Now consider the costs of for a kilo of fine plucked leaf. Let’s take the experiences of Tumoi in Nandi, Kenya.

    • In Part II Tea Biz will interview brands and category managers on costs they incur in bringing specialty tea to market.

    It might be seen in the wage pricing of seven to nine Kenyan shillings an hour for mainstream leaf, but around 25 [shillings] per hour for specialty leaf. You see, you’ve not even got the leaf to the factory yet and you’ve got an enormous margin to make up in the final product cost. And don’t forget, you’ve got 4.2 to 4.6 kilos of your green leaf for a kilo of made tea. So you’ve, got a big headway to make up on the final product cost and you haven’t even got the leaf  to the factory yet.

    Another example might be transport. The traditional way of getting green leaf to the factory might be to dump it in a pickup. But at Tumoi, in Nandi, they put it in some special aerated baskets to get it to the factory in optimal condition and that’s two or three pickup trucks getting the leaf there rather than one or a tractor adding fuel costs and wages. So again, another increment onto the final product cost.

    Packaging is a really, really good point. Let’s take Satemwa Tea Estate in Malawi. They are a great example because they make mainstream tea and they make some lovely specialty tea as well. The mainstream tea which I buy and use happily in my blends is lovely tea, but it’ll come in a paper sack and you get 60 kilos in a sack and more or less a ton on a pallet.

    The specialty tea. In fact, I’ve got one here that four is kilos net, eight kilos, 8.2 kilos, gross. So you’re shipping more air than product. And it’s in an expensive cardboard carton. So you can probably get nine of those on a pallet that’s just 720 kg in a 40-foot container. That means that the freight alone is almost $5.

    So when you get a freight rate increase like we’ve had this year, you have to automatically add another dollar to the cost. So that’s another cost and, here again, you’re not even taking into account the tea cost yet.

    The product that everyone wants is whole leaf. But for every kilo of whole leaf there is perhaps 25% waste or broken leaf that people won’t pay up for. It’s not as if every kilo that goes out of the factory is getting rewarded at the top price, because there’ll be some by-product as well. I think that is another instance where these guys aren’t always appropriately remunerated.

    It’s easy sometimes to say, I include myself in this, that we were supporting the specialty industry, but supporting the specialty industry is also remembering those other grades that they’re making, the leaf grades where they’re not always recovering a high margin on.

    You can go on and on. I see higher costs right through the process, along every stage of the supply chain but particularly labor because of the attention to detail, and in packaging, because of the attention to quality.

    Dan: When consumers pay a premium for specialty tea, what is the value received?

    Will: I think you’re ultimately investing in quality and an approach to creating a product, that is the best it can be. It’s worth remembering that those people who are making good specialty tea are also improving their mainstream quality as well.

    A large proportion [of that investment] should end up back in the communities that have spent the time in trying to create it for you. So wherever that specialty tea comes from ? whether it’s Japan, Darjeeling, Assam, Dimbula, or Malawi ? that investment in the regions and the districts where the tea is made is something really worthwhile.

    Dan: Why is it good practice to pay farm gate prices that allow sustainable production not just for specialty tea, as you mentioned, but commodity tea as well?

    Will: It’s a good practice because ultimately, we have an obligation to make sure our industry survives and that is reliant upon the people who grow and pluck and process tea. If we don’t pay a sustainable price, they will do something else. Without an appropriate farmgate price we don’t have an industry in my view, and it’s our obligation to make sure that any producer is appropriately remunerated.

    Otherwise, why would you grow it?

    A. Tosh & Sons tea warehouse
    UK-based Fine Tea Merchants partners with India-based A. Tosh and Sons, enabling multiple formats of tea bag and caddy packing as well as bulk exports from internationally accredited manufacturing facilities.

    Fine Tea Merchants

    FTM is a business-to-business supplier of tearooms, tea merchants and small packers in the UK, Continental Europe and further afield. The company imports direct from origin and stores a broad assortment of teas and botanicals in its warehouse in Lincolnshire. FTM specializes in fine and rare teas as well as high quality, mainstream teas and a selection of flavored-, herbal-, and fruit-blends.

    Tea may be ordered in quantities from 1 kilo to multiple containers and shipped as straight-lines, blends formulated to perform well in your local water, or custom blended against your own recipe.

    The World Tea Enclopaedia

    The award-winning book The World Tea Encyclopaedia was published in January 2017, with a second edition in November 2020. It covers every tea-producing country and advises tea lovers on tea cultivation and manufacture, origin, seasonality and local ‘terroir’ and tries to de-bunk tea myths and snobbishness. ? Will Battle

    Publisher: Troubador Publishing
    Hardback | 400 pages | £22.96

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  • Mechanical Tea Harvesting

    Mechanical harvesting gets a bad rap. This is because poorly trained operators using poorly maintained equipment damage bushes, lowering yield and leaf quality. Simple routines such as level trimming in one direction, in a single long sweep over only half the plucking plain produces excellent leaf. Innovations like creating a seasonal calendar to regulate plucking rounds and paying workers for the area they shear instead of by the kilo keep yields high. Smallholders sharing equipment to save time can then use the many hours of labor saved for field maintenance and to complete agricultural chores like pruning, mulching, and weed abatement to deliver leaf of exceptional quality to factories.

    Listen to the interview

    Harkirat “Harki” Sidhu discusses the quality advantage to mechanical harvesting
    Mechanical tea harvester
    Harki Sidhu instructs women equipment operators in Bhumipradha, Indonesia. Photo courtesy Harkirat Sidhu.

    How to Stay on Top of Plucking Rounds

    Harkirat (Harki) Sidhu, 72, Rainforest Alliance India’s Consulting Program Coordinator for Sustainable Landscapes & Livelihoods and owner of Technologies Outsourcing is an expert in mechanical tea harvesters. He makes a compelling argument for improving tea quality using labor hours gained on farms that invest in these time-saving machines.

    Machine Harvested Tea Leaves

    Dan Bolton: Let me begin by just asking why we need harvesters?

    Harkirat Sidhu: In most geographies where we are harvesting tea, we are running out of workers who will work on farms. As a result, what happens is fewer plucking rounds that lead to tea overgrowth, and with overgrowth, you’re not going to make quality tea. So, we need to make sure that we stay on top of the plucking rounds.

    The fear that people have is that if you bring in mechanical harvesting, you’re replacing labor. But that’s not the idea. The idea is to plug the gap. The labor shortage in some places will be 40%. Another place there’ll be 25% fewer workers than required, but whatever the gap is, mechanical harvesting will plug that gap. That’s the whole idea of mechanical harvesting. Without that, we cannot manage today. The more you look at Sri Lanka, at Indonesia, India, China everywhere, everywhere we got the issue of a shortage of skilled labor coming up.

    “Mechanical harvesting is required today because we cannot complete plucking rounds frequently enough by hand. We need mechanical harvesting in addition to hand plucking, not to replace hand plucking.”

    – Harki Sidhu

    Dan: How does harvesting by machine impact the tea bushes and processing?

    Harki: Mechanical harvesters are not the same as hand plucking. So, we need to reorient our processing techniques and re-evaluate the actual processing of tea. Let’s talk for a moment about that. See, the difference between a harvester and hand plucking is that when hand plucking the plucker can selectively leave fresh leaf and other [maintenance] leaves.

    Whenever a harvester is required, we go non-selective at a particular height. The idea is to maintain that height because you will have problems if you go up and down. That’s why we need to make sure that we change the whole way we look at harvesting.

    Because it’s non-selective, we need to ensure that we pluck at the predetermined level and that there is no maintenance foliage coming into the harvest. So, for that, we need to set the table straight. If we don’t adjust these techniques, we will lose crop. You see many videos of people using harvesters, and they keep sweeping over the bush — every time you do that, you’re double cutting. And also it’s very difficult to maintain a level plucking plain. So we don’t recommend that.

    Dan: Could you explain the economics of mechanical harvesters?

    Harki: You don’t need a discussion on it; it is so simple. There are three basic types of harvesting. One is hand plucking which we have been doing for ages. Then shears were introduced, they are like scissors. We call them semi-mechanical harvesters. The third is, of course, the mechanical harvesters which are bigger machines. Some are operated by a single man, and some require two or more operators.

    Now, if you look at the economics, the kilograms plucked per man-day by hand might give you 30 kilograms. Shear harvesting might give you 38 or 39 kilograms, but the mechanical harvester will give you 150-200 kilograms per man-day, depending on the field. So that’s the difference straight away.

    There is a 20% to 23% saving in man-days if you are shear harvesting; there is a 74% to 75% saving in man-days when doing mechanical harvesting.

    What is happening today is that many governments and many organizations realize the need, but a basic subsidy is required for the mechanical harvesters because they are much more expensive.

    • Editor’s Note: A small Kawasaki electric hand harvester sells for around $100, a more capable electric model costs $250-$350; a one-man, gas-powered version sells for $400-$600. A two-man harvester sells for $950-$1,200. A Williames Tea track mounted Selective Tea Plucker sells for $30,000 to $35,000 and the Magic Carpet model sells for $80,000 to $90,000.

    Now, the question comes, can a smallholder afford a mechanical harvester, which costs a lot of money, even if he’s getting a subsidy? The answer is yes.

    What we do is we get two of them to purchase a harvester. Now the requirement for the owner of the harvester might be only a day, and he can cover his area. So, he can then charge the rest of the farmers to do the harvesting for them, and charge them per area, whatever area they’ve got; so, the other farmers don’t need to employ workers, their cost comes down. And the one who’s bought the harvester makes money and recovers his cost. In plantations, the return on investment is seven to eight months, with smallholders it’s a little more.

    That’s why we encourage people to go in for mechanical harvesting. We consider the life of a harvester to be two years. So after two years, they cannibalize a few harvesters to make a new one and buy a new one.

    Smallholders always have an issue with money. As soon as you tell him it costs so much, he says, “Oh my God.” So, then they go in for cheap harvesters, which are half the price, but create double the damage. Your quality goes down, your crop yields go down, the life of the harvester is shorter, so you’re soon buying a new one. So, we encourage them to follow certain principles on maintenance and to buy good equipment, pay for it, and it’ll pay for itself.

    Dan: Quality has often been questioned when the use of mechanical harvesters is involved. Talk to us about why quality does not suffer when one uses a mechanical harvesting strategy.

    Harki: The quality improves. I’ll tell you why. One is you are getting good leaf and you can get a very fine leaf. You decide on the target of your leaf. Most of the time, in hand plucking, by default, the leaf is becoming longer because you can’t harvest on time. So everything is based on the target shoot. You know I might say that in the second flush in Assam, you can do it in ten days, or nine days in October — every place is different. We tell them, you take your target shoot and record the time and date. As it reaches the target again record that time and date and when it reaches again, harvest and keep recording the interval. This becomes your calendar for next year. Once you’ve done it for a year, you got an obvious calendar that lets you plan the plucking schedule. I’m going to be nine days here, ten days here, 12 days at this time, and 13 days round of the season. Right? So it’s so much easier.

    When calculating these plucking intervals, you include in this gap all other agricultural practices that you should be doing during that period. Otherwise, everyone is on harvesting. No other job is being done.

    The harvester buys you all that labor time (75%) so that you can invest all that labor from the savings.

     If you do mechanical harvesting, your quality will suffer by just putting a harvester in place to remove the leaf, which is on top of a bush.

    You must alter many things, as I talked about, unidirectional harvesting, making sure that you’re not taking any maintenance foliage in your harvest, keeping the level not basing pay on kilograms per harvest worker.

    The biggest problem is that growers, once they put the machines in, continue paying that man per kilogram. So, he takes it a little deep, and then the leaf doesn’t come back for another three weeks because he’s done a light skiff, it’s chaos. In three months, the man’s machine goes down broken because he wasn’t taught maintenance. So, adjustment of blades, oiling of blades, If you don’t do that, they overheat and they damage your bush and the stock left behind.

    If you overcome these, which just requires training to understand what these machines can do, you alter your operations based on these machines. It will give you a fantastic quality.

    • Harki has contributed to his Tea Chai blog about tea technology since 2005.
    Single sweep in one direction harvest pattern at Namchic Tea Estate in Arunachal Pradesh. Photo courtesy Harkirat Sidhu.

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  • A Gastronomic Tea Contest

    Philippe Juglar is president of Paris-based AVPA (Agence pour la Valorisation des Produits Agricoles) a non-governmental, non-profit organization that judges wine, chocolate, coffee, and teas best suited to local preferences. He joins Tea Biz to discuss what it takes to be a winner in the only “gastronomic” tea competition in a major consuming country that evaluates tea solely to promote the good practices of production and trade. The deadline to enter the 4th Teas of the World International Contest is Sept. 15, 2021.

    AVPA President Philippe Juglar (Agence pour la Valorisation des Produits Agricoles)

    A Gastronomic Tea Contest

    Dan Bolton: Welcome back to the Tea Biz podcast. Will you share with listeners details about AVPA’s upcoming Teas of the World competition?

    Philippe Juglar: Last year, we received more than 200 teas from more than 20 countries all over the world and we are very happy with that result for such a young contest. We hope this year to get 300 teas from 25 countries.

    The most important participant in our competition are newcomers in the tea industry. This year, for instance, we have a tea from the UK. Great Britain is now a country producing tea in its Highlands.

    We have a lot of teas from Taiwan, from Asia, from Africa, Eastern Africa, Western Africa. What is missing up to now is China, China is a bit shy, but I suppose it will come one way or the other. Japan is now very present in our competition.

    In France, tea is a very new and dynamic industry we have very, very good tea amateurs. We are not great, great tea drinkers, but we are sharp tea drinkers. And we have very good teas in France now.

    Dan: Which teas have been most successful in previous contests?

    Philippe: Any type of tea is welcome our contest. We have categories for monocultural teas  ? Camellia sinensis and Camellia assamica  ?  and we have categories for herbal teas, blended teas, perfumed [scented] teas.

    In each category we judge aromas, taste and texture. What we are looking for is harmony, balance, and originality. We rather prefer controversial teas, a tea which may have scored 10 over 10 with three judges, yet scored maybe only a three or four over ten with two other judges. We are looking for teas with distinctive character rather than a standard tea. We prefer teas that are different from the average.

    Dan: How does the tea industry benefit from AVPA’s annual contest?

    Philippe: Agricultural product competitions are a part of the food industry. In Europe we have had contests for years, I would say for centuries, with wine, with olive oil, with cheese, and so on. When producers compete they share information and compare their own production against that of their friends and neighbors which are always different. Obviously, each producer is sure to be the best producer in the world, but it’s good to check it in front of other products. So, I will say the first point is that competitors can compare the quality of their products with other products.

    A second, interesting point from the tester’s vantage, is the opportunity to see what the industry is offering to the world. Each year, we have very important buyers – when I say very important buyers – not only for the turnover they can do [earnings] but also for the level of quality they are seeking. The competition lets them compare what they are normally buying, with what they could buy from other countries or other producers, or from gardens that are new.

    Once the judgments are returned, we try to help the happy growers that have received a medal in our competition to inform their final client [customers] of the quality of their offering to the market.

    Contest winners are announced in October at a virtual award ceremony. Winning brands may display their award on their packaging.

    Agency for the Valorization of Agricultural Products

    2020 Winners (Camellia Sinensis)
    2020 Winners (Herbal Infusions)

    Monovarietal teas are evaluated by a jury chaired by Lydia Gautier.
    Infusions (other than Camellia Sinensis) are evaluated by a jury chaired by Carine Baudry.

    ATTENTION: AVPA makes everything to valorize the producers, many of them asked to extend the deadlines to have enough time to send their teas and herbal teas as in some areas the producers are just finishing their harvest. The August deadline has been extended samples must be in Paris before the 15th of September – Ksenia Hleap

    How AVPA Elevates Origins

    Recognition, professional education programs, and contests build self-esteem and economic success that directs a larger share of the value chain to the country of origin. “This is why we cling to local transformation of agricultural products so that producers benefit from the pursuit of excellence,” says AVPA President Philippe Juglar. Read more…

    Juglar poses with winners of the 2018 contest.

    Competition Tea

    Tea competitions that “speak” for their respective markets are great for the industry. In the tea lands, skilled growers and tea makers can infinitely adjust their pluck, style, grade, and sort for export – but first, they must understand market preferences. In France AVPA judges companies from around the world for excellence “based on gastronomic rather than standardized refereeing.”
    Read more…

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  • Q|A Amy Dubin-Nath

    Amy Dubin-Nath sees a bright future for specialty teas originating in India, “but I don’t think it is going to be a quick flip where people are only after high end teas.” Instead, the process will be gradual, following a path similar to fine wine. “Do I want to see the spectacular teas of India keep selling at a high price?” she asks, “Yes, definitely, as that elevates the perceived value, making it something precious. I believe that message should be spread throughout the world — including in India.”

    Listen to the interview:

    Amy Dubin-Nath
    Amy Dubin-Nath

    India’s Spectacular Specialty Teas

    Amy Dubin-Nath established Janam Tea in 2004 to showcase the rich array of teas produced in India, which she experienced firsthand during her self-guided travels. She began developing her palate as a teenager and came to tea appreciation by way of wine and whiskey. In 2005, she opened a tea shop specifically for single-origin Indian teas and in 2016 a tearoom in New York City.

    Dan Bolton: Are single-origin whole and broken leaf teas the future?

    Amy Dubin-Nath: Oh, that is that is such a fantastic question. I love talking about the future of tea. Because everything is possible in the future, right? When it comes to the future of tea, I see a broader range.

    We have tea at every level, the challenge is that we have been exposed as a society to teas of a certain style of a certain grade of a certain color. It creates a certain expectation.  If you like Lipton tea, great, drink it, I’m happy for anybody to drink tea, but there are other styles, there are other places that tea comes from, there’s other experiences that you can have.

    I think the near term future of Indian tea is in the excitement and curiosity around exploring India’s most spectacular teas. I foresee in the next 15 to 20 years, that people will have more facility with the language of tea and clarity around what they’re buying and be intentional about buying and be able to better discern what they want in the grocery store.

    I personally, in my professional experience, do not believe we’re there yet. It’ll take a little bit of time to expand people’s horizons, giving them more choices and some more opportunities to taste fine and specialty teas.

    Dan: The new president of packaged tea at Tata Consumer Products in April introduced a premium tea sold exclusively online and marketed exclusively to India’s domestic consumers. Tata’s 1968 tea in 50g tins sells for between 500 and 1500 rupees ($20 US). The company reports that sales grew by 59.6% in value and 23% in volume from January this year.

    Amy: The thought that one person has only one tea, and they only drink one tea 10 cups a day their whole life definitely does happen, but more and more people want different flavors, just like preferring to wear red one day or yellow another day. You just want novelty.

    However, I don’t know that you can attribute all of that to the desire for tea itself. Sometimes people want the best of the best just because it’s the best. And it doesn’t matter what it is. And sometimes people want something that looks posh, because it’s a really special gift.

    You can have the best, most gorgeous packaging in the world, and the best tea in the world, but that tea and the experience of tea are inextricable.

    Indians know what tea is, they already have a flavor expectation, they already understand what it is, but when it comes to long leaf, loose leaf tea, and whole leaf tea, most of that has been exported to Western countries.

    It’s hard to project success, but 1500 rupees for 50 grams in a handmade, beautiful, gorgeous wrapping, is still a tough sell, even in the highest end retail shopping centres in Delhi and Kolkata.

    Do I want them to keep selling at a high price? Yes, definitely because what it does is it elevates the value the perceived value of Indian tea as something that is precious, and it is and I believe that message should be spread throughout the world and including in India.

    The sustainability of our industry depends on getting consumers to wake up to the fact that tea is precious. The value should come up, the prices should come up so that our industry, as a whole, can come up.

    Dan: Will you discuss the pivot to online by tea retailers and the popularity of suppliers selling direct to consumers and share your expertise in marketing tea.

    Amy: So, to share with you a little bit about what’s happening in India in Assam alone there is something like 100,000 small leaf producers.

    Now there are also several smaller areas, gardens, where people are making tea and making experimental tea and some fantastic stuff.

    Amy Dubin-Nath
    Amy Dubin-Nath sampling a selection of Indian tea.

    People who are producing tea are aware that specialty tea is growing as a concept and that organic tea is growing as a concept. But expecting small growers and small producers to be attuned to the whim and whimsy of Americans in particular, is a pretty big ask.

    I would be very surprised to find producers who are rushing to meet the style demands of Americans. They make what they make and they know that their skill and their craftsmanship go into designing the best flavor, the best style for the leaf at that time, and they are trying to get the best prices for it.

    Aside from Janam Tea, TEAORB is the only outlet that I am aware of for small Indian growers. Their online marketplace and website is called TEAORB Marketplace. The site guarantees their teas to be fresh, and they get it to consumers, as close to direct to the from the producers as possible. It was established in 2016. There really isn’t anything that is perfect, pervasive, government backed, or the work of large organizations willing to step up to promote the teas from small producers.

    So far as I know, in India, TEAORB is ground-breaking. I don’t know of any other marketplace for small growers where you can find hand-rolled teas, dheki (mortar and pestle) teas and phalap (tea of Singphos).

    Tea Orb

    TEAORB Marketplace is a social entrepreneurship startup, working closely with small tea farmers and estates of India by providing a virtual platform in an effort to ensure a fair price for their high quality produce and to uphold the essence of sustainability by addressing real issues affecting people and the environment. ? Founder Jayanta Kakati, former secretary, Guwahati Tea Auction Centre.

    Dan: Tell me about your talk next week at World Tea Expo.

    Amy: This is going to be a very interesting week for me because I’m speaking at the World Tea Expo and the Global Summit for All Things Food, a completely separate show at the MGM Grand a couple days later.

    The World Tea Expo talk is all the things I love about Indian tea Indian tea, I feel has been a little bit underrepresented at World tea Expo, so my goal in going is to share with people how I got into it, how I developed my love for Indian tea over 20 years ago, how and why I changed my life to basically be a de facto brand ambassador for Indian tea in North America.

    People don’t realize they’ve been drinking Indian tea. They think of Indian tea as Masala Chai and are unaware that India produces so many different styles and types and varieties.

    Amy’s talk at World Tea Expo, Las Vegas, is titled: The Wild Expanse of Indian Tea: Hang on to your Tastebuds! at 1 pm Tuesday, June 29. Two days later at the Global Summit for All Things Food, Amy will accept an award as one of the 100 most influential food and beverage professionals.

    This interview has been edited and condensed.

    Bespoke Event Planning
    Janam offers bespoke event planning featuring specialty teas.

    Janam Tea

    Amy is now making plans to open her third business selling Indian tea, a tasting lounge and gift salon in Columbus, Ohio. Amy is a tea curator, host of afternoon tea and a tea educator. She offers staff training and consulting services, introduces fine Indian teas to both corporate and private clients through bespoke events (both social and outcome-driven), and creates custom gifts.

    ? Dan Bolton

    Janam Tea
    Janam Tea
    Meet with Amy

    [email protected]
    800-556-2806

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  • Q|A Steve Schwartz

    Tea is a powerful conduit for health and wellness, says Steve Schwartz, founder of Art of Tea in Los Angeles and a graduate of the Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico. In this segment, he discusses the challenging role for tea retailers amid the pandemic. Retailers are wise to offer counsel on the comfort and health benefits of tea, educating themselves in both the traditional and science-based properties and then sharing that knowledge with customers.

    A Conduit for Health and Wellness

    By Dan Bolton

    Steve Schwartz, founder of Art of Tea in Los Angeles and a graduate of the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, discusses the challenging role for tea retailers amid the pandemic. They are wise to counsel comfort and prevention and the science-based benefits of tea, often to consumers seeking a cure or at least boost their immunity to ward off the virus.

    Steve Schwartz: As soon as COVID hit, we found people wanted to learn more about tea.

    So we created a “Become a Tea Expert” series. It’s on our website and it’s 25 videos all on how to taste, and understand tea at a deeper level. Right now we’re working on content for level 2.

    That’s a responsibility of a tea shop owner, right? If you know that someone coming into the store with typical supermarket teabag experience, retailers can explain tea on a much deeper level, describe that blissful state, that “tea mind”, that elevated consciousness. I think that is the ultimate responsibility of a tea shop owner, when they know that you can reach those levels and to be able to pass it on.

    If we can explain some of the biological, the biofeedback effects with tea and help unlock that journey for them that’s a beautiful process.

    Our mission is to create a delicious experience and we want to impact as many lives as we can through tea. We believe that tea is a powerful conduit for health and wellness and also for internal connection and connection with loved ones.

    Dan Bolton: Long before you founded Art of Tea in 2004, you traveled widely to see firsthand how herbs are grown and processed. You then spent a few years experimenting, blending botanicals in your living room. Today as a master blender you are known for utilizing a diverse range of inclusions. You latest blend is a Chaga Chai Mushroom Tea. The chai is a fusion of organic Assam tea that is hand blended together with ashwagandha, Chaga mushroom, and fragrant spices. It is featured in your wellness collection. You mentioned blending goji and Chaga seven years ago and then abandoning the experiment after concluding “no one is going to drink mushroom tea.“

    Chaga Chai

    So I’m not a huge mushroom expert. Ayurveda tends to see mushrooms as tamasic, meaning it’s sort of low energy, but if you look at it from the root level, there are certain parts of the mushroom, when combined with other spices and botanicals they can unlock deep immune boosting properties, Chaga being one of them.

    We created a beautiful Chaga Chai with cardamom, a good lung opener, and cinnamon, good blood cleanser, and chaga, a wonderful thyroid-stimulating and mood boosting botanical.

    Dan: Consumers tell market researchers that tea was immensely helpful during lockdowns, calming and comforting amid the stress of home schooling and work. In the US, packaged tea sales were up more than 12% during 2020 and online sales reached new highs. There were big gains in sales of botanicals.

    Steve: There’s a story where the master said to his student, go within a one-mile radius and find a single botanical that doesn’t have medicinal properties. The student very confidently says OK, I’m up for the task but comes back 24 hours later, sobbing. “Master I failed. I couldn’t find a single botanical that doesn’t have medicinal properties,” he said. The master replied “no, in fact, you’ve passed. Every botanical has medicinal properties.”

    When it comes to blending, sourcing, I want to know where the botanicals come from, know where the leaves, the fruits, the roots come from, how they’re grown, how they started.

    I really want to understand the soil conditions, even the environmental impact on the community and the people around it and how that is helping to create better, better quality products. If it’s not something that I want to give to my children my community, then it’s not something that we want to be able to showcase in this world.

    Dan: Tea consumption has declined in foodservice, making business more difficult for importers and wholesalers like the Art of Tea.

    Steve: There’s a lot of pain and a lot of suffering, that unfortunately could take one or two years until we fully get through this. I think that there’s hidden blessings in all this, I, I think that the future is incredibly bright.

    We saw hotels and other hospitality venues being successful and so we asked them for permission. We asked, could we share best practices to some other properties? We ended up becoming a conduit for improvement in best practices. It changed that sales process to much more of a consultative relationship, with much more handholding, a “we’re all in this together process.”

    I think the hotels and the restaurants and cafes that we work with really benefited from that.

    I’m not a doctor, I’m not here to make any medical claims, but one of my observations is that if we believe that the universe has produced us for a short window in time to be able to live out our fullest potential as part of a longer story, right? Then we have to show up fully and intentionally with the best life, the best care, and the best responsibility that we can for our family, ourselves, for our community, for our world.

    It really does start with a daily simple ritual, just leaves in water. What that can do in terms of the health effects ? you can compound that powerful effect day by day.

    It’s incredible.

    The Art of Tea Academy

    The Art of Tea Academy

    At Art of Tea, we are passionate about sharing our knowledge and understanding of the depths of the drink that has been enjoyed for centuries. Art of Tea Academy is here to help educate you on tea types, tea recipes, and how to make the perfect cup of tea (hot or iced!) The biggest investment you have to make to become a tea expert is your time. 

    Art of Tea Academy has more than 25 modules of in-depth content and videos about the history of tea, the how-tos of tea, and so much more. We are so excited to offer this as a way to connect with our communiTEA.

    Our mission is to create a delicious experience and to impact as many lives as we can through tea. Thank you for being a loyal Art of Tea customer. We couldn’t do what we do without your amazing support.

    ? Steve Schwartz

    Join Art of Tea Academy

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