• Driving Growth Through Intent-Based Ads

    The tea industry has seen significant growth over the past few years. More consumers are looking for unique and high-quality tea products. 

    Tea business owners must create a customer-centric approach (Gascoyne, 2023). Such an approach requires understanding consumer intent (Bailey, 2023). Combining intent-based advertising and experiential retail can fuel growth for your tea brand.

    World Tea Conference + Expo opens with the Bar & Restaurant Expo, March 2023, in Las Vegas, NV. Photo by Ellen Kanner/Tea Journey

    We will delve into the following:

    • the importance of understanding consumer intent and matching content with intent and context (Bailey, 2023), 
    • creating an immersive customer experience through experiential retail (Gascoyne, 2023), and
    •  leveraging the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

    This article summarizes a few key insights from the 2023 World Tea Expo. By the end of this article, you will gain clarity into creating a successful tea business.

    The Customer is King

    The success of any business depends on its customers. 

    Kevin Gascoyne, Tea Buyer & Taster of Camellia Sinensis Teahouse, points out that the tea business is 90% selling and 10% buying (2023). So, a customer-centric approach is crucial to succeeding in the industry.

    This means: 

    • understanding your customers’ preferences, 
    • maximizing customer value, and 
    • creating a personalized experience that meets their needs.

    By focusing on the customer, tea brand owners can:

    • identify their target audience, 
    • create products that match their preferences, and 
    • tailor marketing strategies. 

    Understanding customer intent (Bailey, 2023) is critical to this approach. 

    This means understanding the motive behind a customer’s action, like scrolling on social media or doing a Google search.

    Mackenzie Bailey speaking on Internet-Based Marketing at the World Tea Conference + Expo.

    Identify whether customers are:

    • looking for something specific (search intent), or 
    • open to new content (discovery intent). 

    Identifying these intent signals allows your tea brands to create content matching customer needs and context (Bailey, 2023). Some of the content your tea brand may need to create include:

    • social media posts, 
    • blog posts, 
    • ads, 
    • product pages, and more

    Key Takeaway: A customer-centric approach is essential for tea brand owners looking to succeed in the industry. Tea brands can create personalized experiences that meet customer needs, driving growth. Creating these personalized experiences requires understanding customers’ preferences and identifying their intent.

    Narrow Definition of Excellence

    Focusing on a narrow definition of excellence is critical to creating a successful tea brand. 

    Kevin Gascoyne speaking on the transition of his tea business from restaurant to Experiential Retail at the World Tea Conference + Expo. Ellen Kanner photo

    Kevin Gascoyne (2023) suggests that claiming to sell ‘the best tea’ is not enough. Instead, tea brands must focus on delivering the best product for a specific type of tea and price point.

    “We focus on a narrow definition of excellence. For example, offering the best Chinese curl leaf tea that we can sell for $10.” – Kevin Gascoyne, Tea Buyer & Taster, Camellia Sinensis Teahouse

    Brands can differentiate themselves from others in the tea market by specializing in particular teas and segmenting the tea market.

    Specialization also allows tea brands to focus on delivering consistent quality. Customers can expect the same high-quality tea every time they buy from the brand. This expectation of quality within the customer base leads to loyalty and repeat business. 

    Focusing on a narrow definition of excellence allows tea brands to become thought leaders in their niche. They create a trickle-down marketing effect (Gascoyne, 2023).

    Key Takeaway: Tea brand owners must focus on a narrow definition of excellence to succeed in the industry. Tea brands can differentiate by specializing in a particular tea segment and delivering consistent quality.

    Intent-Based Advertising

    Understanding consumer intent is crucial to creating successful campaigns for tea brands. So, Mackenzie Bailey (2023), Founder of Steeped Content, suggests intent-based advertising and marketing.

    Intent-based marketing involves creating content that matches consumer intent and context. 

    She suggests:

    1. producing blog posts that align with keyword intent
    2. creating social media content and ads aligned with the platform’s intent
    3. using local SEO to capture the search intent of nearby customers 

    Matching content with intent and context allows tea brands to create personalized experiences. These experiences meet their customers’ needs. 

    For instance, a customer may be searching for a specific type of tea (e.g., hibiscus). A tea brand can create an ad or blog post highlighting that tea. Such content may highlight the tea’s benefits and features. 

    On the other hand, a customer is open to trying new teas without actively searching for something. In such cases, your tea brand can create content introducing new teas. Use social media posts or emails to encourage customers to explore novel products. 

    Identifying and meeting consumer intent is crucial for marketing tea. Intent-based marketing helps your tea brand to:

    • attract and retain customers, 
    • increase brand awareness, and
    • drive sales.

    “Intent-based advertising is not just about reaching more customers, it’s about reaching the right customers at the right time with the right message. By understanding and meeting consumer intent, tea brands can create personalized experiences that fuel their growth” – Mackenzie Bailey, Founder, Steeped Content

    “Building community through social media is one of the many ways entrepreneurs can use technology to build a successful teashop.” -Ellen Kanner, Teahouse Owner

    Key Takeaway: Intent-based marketing is critical to a successful tea brand’s marketing strategy. 

    The Power of Experiential Retail

    Experiential retail is a powerful tool for tea brands looking to create an immersive customer experience. Kevin Gascoyne (2023) suggests that creating an immersive experience is crucial to:

    • engage customers,
    • create loyalty, and 
    • driving sales.

    Experiential retail involves creating a physical space where customers interact with the brand and products. 

    For tea brands, this could mean creating a tea shop where customers can:

    • taste different teas,
    • attend tea ceremonies, or 
    • learn about the tea-making process. 

    Creating an immersive experience helps tea brands differentiate themselves from other brands. They create a personalized experience for customers and drive sales.

    Experiential retail experiences may be more likely to be shared by tea drinkers. This can help improve your brand awareness and lower customer acquisition costs (existing customers are promoting you to new potential customers for free).

    “Camellia Sinensis Teahouse has updated our tea shop to an experienced-based retail store. Since doing so, we have seen user-generated content double, helping our brand awareness.” – Francois Marchand, Marketing Director, Camellia Sinensis Teahouse.

    The role of storytelling in experiential retail is also crucial. It creates an emotional connection with customers and inspires them to engage with the brand.

    Such brand stories may include:

    • the history of the brand, 
    • the tea-making process, or 
    • the sourcing of tea leaves.

    Key Takeaway: Experiential retail can help tea brands drive industry growth. By creating an immersive customer experience, tea brands can differentiate themselves from others.

    Trickle-Down Marketing Effect

    The trickle-down marketing effect occurs in specialized, successful tea businesses. Kevin Gascoyne (2023) suggests that specialized tea businesses can create a ripple effect in the industry. They influence the market and drive demand for high-quality teas.

    Specialized tea businesses focus on the following:

    1. delivering a narrow definition of excellence,
    2. creating an immersive customer experience through experiential retail,
    3. offering exceptional products,
    4. Understanding and intentionally meeting customer needs

    By doing so, they create a loyal customer base that becomes a source of word-of-mouth marketing. This word-of-mouth can lead to an increase in demand for high-quality teas.

    Specialized tea businesses can become thought leaders in their niche. They can create a reputation for delivering high-quality tea. This reputation attracts customers looking for such products. This can help the tea market evolve by gradually growing demand for these premium teas.

    “We stock a range of special teas at different price points. For example, we carry twelve sencha teas. In some cases, some sencha differ on the cultivar level. Such granular differentiation helps tea drinkers gain rich product knowledge. It often builds a visceral connection to the product, tea.” Kevin Gascoyne, Tea Taster & Buyer, Camellia Sinensis Teahouse

    Key Takeaway: Specialized tea businesses can create a trickle-down marketing effect in the industry. They drive demand for high-quality teas.

    Driving Growth in the Tea Industry

    To drive growth in the tea industry, brands can combine intent-based advertising and experiential retail. This combination creates a personalized and immersive customer experience.

    By understanding consumer intent, (Bailey, 2023) and matching content with intent and context, tea brands can create personalized experiences. These experiences meet their customers’ needs and drive sales.

    Experiential retail allows tea brands to create an immersive customer experience that differentiates them from other brands in the market (Gascoyne, 2023). 

    Creating a physical space where customers can interact with the brand and its products helps your tea company. By doing so, tea brands can create loyalty, generate word-of-mouth marketing, and drive sales.

    The trickle-down marketing effect (Gascoyne, 2023) can drive growth in the tea industry. It creates demand for high-quality teas. Specialized tea businesses can become thought leaders in their niche. They can create a reputation for delivering high-quality tea, drive word-of-mouth, and help the industry evolve.

    Driving growth in the tea industry requires tea brands to adopt a customer-focused approach. This approach necessitates understanding consumer intent (Bailey, 2023). 

    Combining intent-based advertising and experiential retail, tea brands can differentiate themselves from others.

    Key Takeaway: Tea brand owners must focus on creating a customer-centric approach (Gascoyne, 2023) and understanding consumer intent (Bailey, 2023) to drive growth.

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    Mackenzie Bailey

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  • How Technology Helps Build a Successful Teashop – Whether Starting Out or 5 Years In

    Alfonso Wright and Jamila Wright presenting on Technology of a Successful Teashop at the World Tea Conference + Expo in Nevada.

    Running a teahouse involves support systems that weren’t there even 10 years ago. Today, systems are better integrated to talk to each other or export reports to use in spreadsheets for analysis. Inventory in the point of sale (POS) system integrating with your online website is super helpful. There were several presentations at the World Tea Conference + Expo recently in Las Vegas, Nevada that brings these aspects together to make for efficient tools in this post-pandemic tea world.

    LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – MARCH 27: General atmosphere of the 2023 Bar & Restaurant Expo and World Tea Expo on March 27, 2023 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images for Nightclub & Bar Media Group)

    How’s your organizational and financial skills? How about marketing and social media? All of it can seem daunting those first several years, but there are tools and folks who have already walked the multitude of paths in all these areas. For example, some tea business owners are driving growth in the tea industry through intent-based advertising and experiential retail.

    Several Expo presentations covered the topic in detail. 

     “Operating Your Teashop with the Help of Technology”, a presentation given by Alfonso Wright and Jamila Wright of Brooklyn Tea covered many areas for efficiency – human resources management including payroll and scheduling, POS for sales reports and efficiency markers, website sales, inventory integration, delivery app authentication, and staff communication.

    Automated inventory systems, some of which are free, some with monthly service fees (with better deals on an annual package) are helpful. We’ll explore the possibilities of full-scale operations, and the alternative piecemeal approach of exporting sales data to spreadsheets and analyzing the details yourself.

    Across the board, you can spend hundreds of dollars per month on a system like Homebase that helps with payroll, scheduling and staff communication, with labor cost controls. Systems talk amongst themselves with inventories connecting, in the case for Brooklyn Tea Clover for the POS and Shopify for the website sales, which all provides you peace of mind, and performs details that you no longer need to do manually. The cream of the crop, we’d say, for a growing, profitable business. There’s the monthly fee on these systems, but there’s also the cost of the hardware (ipad, register, cash drawer, card readers) and depending on your budget, going with the full-scale operation out of the starting gates might be more than you need.

    LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – MARCH 29: Teas on display at the 2023 Bar & Restaurant Expo and World Tea Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center on March 29, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images for Nightclub & Bar Media Group)

    The Do-It-Yourself, cheaper alternative for those starting out (and for us even at year 10 during the pandemic) was Square as a POS and as our online webstore, with a percentage per transaction fee, no monthly fee, and we had a ticketing system that worked well enough as long as the Post-it Notes stuck to the tea brewer’s counter. There are systems now that print tickets in the kitchen for orders, making this somewhat easier. We had a spreadsheet that was loosely modified weekly on sales of specific tea inventories that we’d enter manually, and we had staff performing biweekly tea inventories by counting kilos and packets of each of our 100+ teas during slower times on the floor. A lot more involved for sure, but a monthly or bimonthly inventory still is something that needs to happen to help with future ordering of tea and supplies. With Shopventory, inventories are coordinated between your POS and website tool with less need for regular inventory by staff.

    Staff communications and scheduling come together in Homebase as it integrates sales data, staffing, payroll, and data from credit cards on whether they are repeat customers and where they are coming from based on their credit card’s zip code. Homebase takes the emotions out of labor tracking and whether someone is clocking in on time or not, and can lead to reports where merit based incentives are determined by those reports.  Using Clover for staff to clock in and Homebase to connect with payroll data you’ll get a nice projection of what payroll will be and scheduling suggestions. 

    We used a simpler, cheaper method with MyTimeStation for staff to clock in with biweekly exportable report on staff hours, exporting to a Google spreadsheet set up with predetermined automatic calculations. The MyTimeStation and Google Spreadsheet makes this a fairly simple process, and MyTimeStation is available as an ipad as well as iphone app that staff running errands can clock-in on remotely, and it’s free for 10 staff or less. Using GroupME for group texting for call-outs and shift swaps, we had a communication tool for immediate action requests.

    On-boarding, which Homebase provides as part of their system at their highest monthly rate, includes employment forms and introductory processes and videos. Alfonso mentioned setting up Google Forms for onboarding processes, with integrated videos – a great solution that just takes time to produce, but so easy to update and share with staff through Google Drive. 

    Once you have those figures from your POS – what’s popular and selling, what has the highest or lowest profit margin – then you can turn to what to market to your customers. “Intent-Based Marketing” a presentation by Mackenzie Bailey of Steeped Content takes the information from our POS reports as top sellers – what customers are buying – and takes the effort behind the daily sales into what our marketing decisions on social media and web advertising should look like, with the data on zip codes from credit card payments showing where customers live allows you to focus your marketing in these areas on Google, Facebook, or your local weekly newspaper. A blog post focused on SEO search results for your site, and the product customers are buying through your POS, creates repeat interest and follow-up purchases. 

    Free or per-transaction system like Square, Google Workspace and Calendar, and MyTimeStation, are a good place to start, then move to the fee-based systems as budgets allow like Shopify, Clover, Homebase and Shopventory is a sure way grow a business smart and within budget when starting out, or even a few years in. 

    Ellen Kanner owned and operated a traditional true-to-origin teahouse in Portland, Maine with her husband for 12 years before moving the operation online while continuing to offer their longtime customers loose leaf tea and teaware, their Tea Tasting in a Box®, and tea tasting events and trips, while setting up tea programs at restaurants and cafés. She has traveled to origin for tea to South Korea, Japan, India, Taiwan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, as well as to Portugal. You can see more at www.dobrateame.com.

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    Ellen Kanner

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  • Unpacking the Future of Tea

    After a five-year hiatus, the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre is hosting its biennial Global Tea Forum on April 25-27 at The Address Dubai Marina Hotel, with discounted tickets now available. Saeed Al Suwaidi, Director of Agri Commodities at DMCC and a respected executive and technologist, shares his perspective on some of the issues to be addressed during the DMCC Global Tea Forum in April.

    Purchase Tickets to attend the 8th Global Dubai Tea Forum
    • Caption: Saeed Al Suwaidi, Director of Agri Commodities at DMCC
    Saeed Al Suwaidi | Unpacking the Future of Tea
    Saeed Al Suwaidi
    Saeed Al Suwaidi | Director Agri Commodities

    Exploring Consumer Trends and New Market Opportunities

    By Dan Bolton

    The Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, founded in 2002, is the world’s largest and most successful free trade zone, now supporting 18,000 companies from a wide range of industries and sectors.

    DMCC’s Tea Center, founded in 2005, is a global hub for value addition and the top tea re-exporter in the world. Tea is one of the most widely traded commodities worth nearly $50 billion, expected to grow by more than 40% this decade.

    Dan Bolton: This year’s theme, Unpacking the Future of Tea: From Consumer Trends to New Market Opportunities, is compelling, given the upheaval the tea industry has experienced since the forum last convened in 2018. Will you share with listeners your perspective and describe some of the issues to be addressed during the DMCC Global Tea Forum?

    Saeed Al Suwaidi: It’s amazing how everything in this industry is restarting, almost a reset. People are looking at it with fresh eyes. I mean, one of the things about this year is that it’s not an exceptional year. The past five years for us have been very different with COVID lockdowns, and everything that happened during those years changed us, and with that being said, there’s much eagerness for everything to resume almost as normal.

    During the lockdown, what happened?

    The main thing that’s happened is people experimented. Everybody had some tea in their cupboard and didn’t know all the nice things about it. So now, with everything open again, they’re more into experimenting with the world of tea. One of the things that we want to know is what we can bring to the table and what the world can bring to the table regarding tea and everything around it.

    People call it the poor man’s drink because it’s accessible to everybody. It’s widely traded, and it’s over $50 billion worth of trade annually, and this is going up by at least 30 to 35 to 40% in the next ten years, so there are many opportunities. During COVID and right after COVID, everything that happened to the shipping industry affected everything, how things move and how tea moved. Now, it’s less economical for certain places to have tea than they would wish with the rising cost of shipping and the constraints within shipping. This is something that we want to touch on in the forum as well as to find the best ways of maneuvering trade routes. Our theme is, Unpacking the Future of Trade to see if we and everybody can add value so that everybody in the value chain benefits, and most importantly, end consumers anywhere to have something in their cupboard. So, we want to encourage the industry to see where there’s more value.

    Dan: DMCC has undergone several changes in the past five years. DMCC’s tea center continued to expand its trade capacity as the world’s top tea re-exporter, opened a new coffee trading center, its first lounge, and weathered economic turmoil stirred by the pandemic while deftly managing logistics under duress. Will you update us on DMCC’s current initiatives? I heard that trading cocoa is under consideration.

    Saeed: The DMCC Tea Center has been here for 16 years. We celebrated our 16th year this year, and the DMCC Coffee Center highlighted replicates that model in the coffee industry.

    We went through the rough times of COVID just after its launch, but we are full steam ahead. Capturing the coffee business makes sense, especially logistics-wise. We’ve become a much better logistical center for these two commodities and are now looking at cocoa.

    The cocoa industry is much more complex than coffee and tea, but we are looking at it seriously. You know, the majority of everything chocolate is mainly from West Africa. Our sister companies and logistics partners would help ease the movement of everything, chocolate, in terms of by-products, and so forth. We’re [also] looking closely into spices and tree nuts.

    Let’s establish a center focusing on tree nuts and certain spices that can work together. We’re looking at things that won’t cross-contaminate and so forth.

    We saw record growth last year, something that’s drawn our attention regarding forecasting for the future. We are considering expanding two or three-fold from where we are today.

    Ahmed Bin Silayem
    Anil Cooke
    The Address Dubai Marina
    Kolukkamalai Tea Estate Tea Processing Factory

    “Capturing the coffee business makes sense, especially logistics-wise. We’ve become a much better logistical center for these two commodities and are now looking at cocoa.”

    – Saeed Al Sawaidi

    Dan: DMCC brought you on board in part for your technological expertise, and I emphasize that because the future you are discussing is deeply interwoven with technology. Tell us a little about your background.

    Saeed: All my entire career, I worked in technology, starting from Fortune 500 companies to government entities in the UAE, semi-government entities in the UAE, and American establishments wanting to get their foot inside the GCC or North Africa.

    I have always had a big interest, funny enough, with both coffee and tea all my life. So, I visited tea estates in Asia and various establishments and brands of tea and coffee.

    When I saw this opportunity, I wanted to be part of this amazing organization. It is and has been the number one free zone in the world for the past eight years and captured the number one spot of rough diamond trading in the world as well.

    This means that they are the best, so of course, I wanted to be part of this organization. I saw the opportunities there, and what we can bring in with technology. You must be very fast in adaptation of movement and changing, and this was not the case overall with the tea industry. So yes, it’s the case somewhat of Dubai as we really adapt and change. But when it comes down to industries, like tea, especially, it’s not that kind of speed to change. One of the things that I want to change is how fast we can adapt to changes in this industry. I think when you look at this place specifically the tea business criteria, with a vision set by the Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ahmed Bin Sulayem, is to set up a tea center out of the tea growing regions to be a hub for tea, it’s not an easy task and also no one would think to have a center like this in a place like Dubai.

    Not everybody will buy it, and there was a very clear understanding of the movement for this to be established. We saw exceptional growth last year, and in the Agri Commodities, we’ve seen more than triple-digit and quadruple-digit growth in certain verticals.

    Dan: I believe the future you’re describing is deeply interwoven with technology.

    Saeed: I agree. There’s a lot of things that happened over the last two decades, specifically in technology if we’re talking about coffee and tea; what’s happened in coffee is we see more and more, like, you know, and retailers are getting in touch with farmers, and this is due to technology.

    You have all these traders in the middle, like, shrink. There’s more money going toward the farmers, and this is one of the better things happening today, both in tea and coffee.

    In terms of price discovery, farmers anywhere, whether in Sri Lanka, India, Kenya, or China, you name it, didn’t know the price their commodity gets. Due to technology, they now know. You had all these traders in the middle who would trade, and trade and trade, driving up prices and leaving the farmers out of the equation. Today both of our centers are working with governments because this is one of the only places where you can still own the tea and stilt own the coffee and your other commodities; whether it’s transferred or changed, or whatever, you can still own it throughout that value chain, and you retain the value, and this can really make a difference for estate owners.

    Dan: What have you most enjoyed about this position?

    Saeed: There’s so much to learn from everybody in the industry. I love learning, and this is a continuous thing. I have that mindset every day from farmers. I literally have everybody within the value chain to see. So I know the strains of the state owners and people who grow the tea, and people who buy it, and how to get to the end shipping and all of this, I see everything from start to end, and then the end product goes up goes on the shelf so to see that, and to see what can we add to have better is for more people around the world to consume this amazing beverage.

    People understand that coffee 20 years ago, you would have your regular coffee. Today, there is a specialty coffee and different ways of extraction and everything.

    I think this is just happening right now in tea. We see a lot of companies that are into extracting tea into new formats, and we see new machinery and tea. When you look at the coffee side, you have all these amazing machines, and you have all these different ways and different cups and mugs and so forth.

    But when it comes down to tea, you just have your regular cup. This is changing right now and we’re going to see this with bubble tea and all of these kinds of new trends, such as adding tea to different ingredients and so forth, where coffee can’t be. I think we’re just seeing the beginning of that.

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    DMCC is a center of global trade serving 18,000 companies. Headquartered in Dubai, it is the world’s most interconnected Free Trade Zone and the leading trade and enterprise hub for commodities.

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    Dan Bolton

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  • World Tea Expo Announces Tea Tycoon Competitors and “Best of Award” Finalists

    Expo "Best of Awards" Named
    World Tea Conference + Expo “Best of Awards” Named

    Tea News for the week ending March 10

    World Tea Conference + Expo Announces “Best of” Award Finalists

    | Pakistan is Willing to Barter Rice for Kenyan Tea
    | Teaware Manufacturers Adopt Consumer to Manufacturer (C2M) Business Model Pioneered by Fast-Fashion
    | Study Suggests an EGCG-based Therapy for Treating Alzheimer’s 

    | PLUS Entrepreneurs Three-Minute Meditation with Tea

    Hear the Headlines

    Seven-minute Tea News Recap

    Listen to Episode 107

    Show More

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    Dan Bolton

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  • Pakistan’s Economic Crisis Threatens Mombasa-based Tea Trade

    Port Karachi
    Millions of kilos of tea remain stranded at the Port in Karachi, Pakistan

    Tea News for the week ending March 3

    | Pakistan Willing to Barter Rice for Kenyan Tea
    | Asahi Launches SOU, its First New Tea Brand in Decades
    | Tatcha Unveils Virtual Forest Bathing and Meditation Experience

    | PLUS Tea Processing Reimagined: Extruded Tea

    Hear the Headlines

    Seven-minute Tea News Recap

    Listen to Episode 106

    Show More

    Pakistan Offers to Barter Rice to Resolve Tea Import Impasse with Mombasa Tea Suppliers

    Containers of tea from Africa have been piling up at the port of Karachi since December, with more on the way, but for the first time in months, ships are unloading at a brisk pace. The government needs $1 billion immediately and $8.5 billion to pay the country’s fuel bills.

    Pakistan customs officials estimate that 95% of the 8,500 containers in port await letters of credit, including almost 5 million kilos of tea in 300 containers shipped from Africa.

    The logjam is preventing billion of dollars worth of raw materials from reaching manufacturers. During the weekend of March 12, port authorities processed 1,024 inbound containers and 2,553 containers filled with long-delayed exports essential to offset a $48.4 billion trade deficit.

    Honda, Suzuki, and Indus Motor assembly lines are closed or curtailed due to severe disruption to their supply chains. Shipping agents this week advised Pakistan that foreign shipping lines will halt services if the backlog is not resolved. DHL announced it would scale back operations, suspend imports, and limit outbound shipments.

    Tea retail prices surged by Rs1000 to Rs1,600 per kilo leading to the celebration of Ramazan on March 22. Prices could go as high as Rs2,500 per kilo (about $9.50 per kilo), according to Zeeshan Maqsood, an executive member of the Pakistan Tea Association(PTA). Maqsood told the Dawn Newspaper that delays in processing bank documents lead to shortages and higher prices as retailers ration supplies.

    Last year Pakistan purchased 234 million kilos of tea from Kenya. To resolve the impasse, Islamabad offered Kenya 150,000 metric tons of rice for tea of equivalent value. Mombasa traders welcomed the swap, according to East African Tea Trade Association (ETTA) Managing Director Edward Mudibo. He told Business Daily Africa, “We welcome this arrangement because it will work in our favor given the economic situation in Pakistan.”

    Africa supplies 90% of Pakistan’s black tea imports, and Pakistan, in turn, supplies Afghanistan with 87% of its tea. In 2023 Pakistan’s tea market is expected to generate $1.12 billion, a 4.3% decline, according to Statista market research. Pakistan and Egypt buy 55% of Kenya’s tea exports annually, but sales have steeply declined since November, according to EATTA.

    Pakistan is currently in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to unlock the next tranche of $1.1 billion of a $6.5 billion bailout agreed upon in 2019.

    New Asahi SOU bottled green tea

    Asahi Launches First New Tea Brand in Decades

    Beverage giant Asahi expects to sell 60 million bottles of SOU this year. The innovative Icho-style unsweetened partially fermented green tea launches on April 4.
    Asahi surveyed 12,000 people over two years to discover that the taste preferences of Japanese consumers have changed from slightly bitter green tea to teas with “high aroma and crisp flavor.”

    This is Japan writes that the country’s top tea master Yasuyuki Suda was commissioned to develop a “high aroma tea that meets the needs of the times,” writes the company. The tea will be available in 620ml and 2-liter PET bottles developed exclusively for Asahi.

    According to the International Tea Committee, Japan is the eighth-largest tea-consuming country in the world. Green tea accounts for 15% of sales volume. It is also a popular export. Leading brands include Kirin, Suntory, and Ito En. In 2021 the export value of Japanese tea reached more than 20 billion yen, doubling since 2015. The top destination was the U.S., accounting for half the total.

    Asahi is known for its international beer brand but also owns Mitsuya, a traditional steamed tea brand that dates to 1884, and Wonda, an RTD tea launched in 1991. Wonda’s product range includes black, green, and oolong teas, bottled coffee, and fruit blends.

    Asahi Holdings earned $25.1 billion in the fiscal year ending January.

    BIZ INSIGHT – Japanese consumers drink more bottled tea than all carbonated beverages combined. Kirin developed the world’s first canned tea in the 1960s. Kirin Namacha, a heat-treated green tea, was sold in small, 150ml cans that became a staple in Japan’s vending machines by the 1970s. Bottled teas were first introduced in the US in the 1980s by Lipton and Nestea and are now the top-selling format in Japan.

    Japanese Hinoki “Virtual” Cypress Forest

    Tatcha Unveils Virtual Forest Bathing and Meditation Experience

    The Japanese company, with offices in San Francisco, Hong Kong, and the UK, currently hosts an online meditation set in a virtual cypress forest.

    Touring the virtual store provides insights into “shinrin-yoku,” the ritual of connecting to nature through the senses. The destination is an onsen wellness resort with a ceremonial tearoom, hot tub, and meditation led by Toryo Ito, a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and brand ambassador.

    Last week the metaverse forest came to life as a three-day Los Angeles pop-up that introduced visitors to forest bathing in a setting that resembled a Japanese Hinoki Forest. The occasion was launching of Tatcha’s Forest Awakening skincare collection at Sephora.

    Online visitors are introduced to the body wash and skincare products in a natural setting enhanced by the simulated forest with sounds of running hot springs and varying shade as they “walk” about the forest and spa.

    Olga Dogadkina, co-founder and CEO at Emperia, the software company that created the metaverse experience, told Chain Store Age, “Virtual stores are becoming an extension of the brand, one that allows retailers to tell a story as no other media could.”
    Tatcha offered a line of green tea-based cosmetics and developed a “Renewal Tea” blend of Japanese Pine and Mulberry created by Japanese blender Hagugendo tea to accompany the campaign. The tea sells for $14 for 20g in 8 tea bags.

    Mulberry & Pine | $14 20g
    Meditation Hut
    Onsen wellness resort in Hinoki forest
    Cosmetics firm Tatcha offers an immersive lesson in experiential retail.

    International Taste Institute Awards Two Starts to Mount Everest Fruit Tea Blend

    Brussels Judges Present “Berry Gang” a Superior Taste Award – the equivalent of two Michelin Stars

    Kirchner, Fischer & Co. Managing Director Stefan Gieschke said the winning tea was blind-tasted by 200 well-known chefs and sommelier judges who evaluated hundreds of teas for color, brilliance, fragrance, complexity, character, mouthfeel and finish, among other criteria.

    “We always knew that our teas are top class! That’s how self-confident we are with 230 years of company history,” said Gieschke. “Now we have it written in black on white or better, yet — gold on white!

    The Institute’s expertise is recognized worldwide, and it has been tasting, judging, and evaluating food and beverages from more than 130 countries for over 20 years.

    Download the award

    Since 1793 excellence was a matter of fact as we face the most critical jury in the world: our customers — but now also the jury of the International Taste Institute agrees,” he said.

    “We are beyond proud of this amazing result and dedicate a lot of applause and a double page of attention in our catalog,” said Gieschke.

    FEATURES

    Adaptable Extruded Tea

    Narendranath Dharmaraj, a 40-year tea industry veteran in Kerala, India, has developed an economical technique that rids tea of its stringy fiber skeleton resulting in a substrate superior to fannings and dust. Extruded tea is a malleable hybrid format that retains the fragrance of well-made, orthodox tea. The adaptable substrate can be blended to improve conventional CTC or pressed and die-cut to resemble broken-leaf grades. Imagine 3D-printed tea in myriad shapes and sold at a premium.

    Extruded tea
    Pneumatically semi-orthodox processed extruded tea

    Tea Manufacture: Futuristic Development Opportunities

    By Narendranath Dharmaraj

    Not much has changed in tea manufacturing in this traditional and tradition-bound industry. Orthodox, as it means, is the original production method of tea with a typically twisted leaf appearance and liquor characteristics delivering flavor and aroma. Such teas are best brewed by steeping in boiled water for a few minutes and typically yield fewer cups per unit weight of tea, described as ‘cuppage.’ Normally the withering is hard, meaning more moisture is removed from the leaf. The withered leaf is subjected to gentle and limited maceration in gently rotating rollers to express just enough juice to impart the aroma and flavor over longer periods of ‘fermentation.’ The target is to maximize the whole leaf and rolled nutty leaf grades which typically result from a combination of finer green leaf quality and careful adherence to manufacturing parameters (many of the ‘specialty teas’ are in these grades). Read more…

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