Competition announced for US grown tea… American Tea Room hires Tony Gebely to run its online operations…
National Competition for US Tea Growers
Tea farmers in the United States are eligible to enter the first competition designed to showcase US grown teas. A cash price of $1000 will go the top grower in each of four tea categories, juried by an international panel of judges.
Eva Lee, a Hawaii tea farmer and TOTUS awards director, with the Volcano Art Center hosting judging Nov. 4 in Hawaii, thanks to a grant from the Hawaii County Office of Research & Development, cash awards provided by the Hawaii Tea Society, and several contributing agricultural organizations involved in developing the cultivation of tea. The competition will be followed by an exhibition and presentation Nov. 7 at the Volcano Art Center in Hawaii.
“I recently returned from Washington DC after talking with representatives on Capitol Hill on the significant development of US grown tea in agriculture and its unique place in family farming,” said Lee, a former head of the Hawaii Tea Society. “The more informed our representatives are on domestic tea production the better assistance they can provide at the county, state and federal level. The TOTUS Awards will raise public awareness and create opportunities for many in tea production nationwide,” she said.
The deadline to enter opens Aug. 1, 2015. Entry forms with payment are due Oct. 16. The last day tea entries will be accepted at the Volcano Art Center is Oct. 26. Teas must be 100% grown in the US with no foreign tea blends, scents or herbals added. Categories include white tea, green tea, oolong tea and black tea. The competition is open to both commercial and non-commercial growers. Commercial growers pay $100 per entry. Non-commercial growers pay $40 per entry. Non-commercial growers are those that produce and sell less than 5 pounds of Camellia sinensis per year. Hobbyists and researchers are also invited to submit 36-gram entries. There is a maximum of three entries per tea type.
“Now that spring harvests have ended and with summer and autumn yields ahead, competitors should take this time to review, experiment and refine tea entries to demonstrate excellence of your skills,” said Lee.
Sponsorships, beginning at $100, are welcome to help underwrite competition expenses, she added.
Award-winning tea blogger Tony Gebely was named American Tea Room’s director of technology and distribution channels. He starts Aug. 1. Gebely, a two-time World Tea Award winner for his blog World of Tea (www.WorldofTea.org), has 10 years of experience in digital marketing strategy and business intelligence. He has worked 12 years in the specialty beverage industry and is the founder of Chicago Tea Garden. He will be responsible for all of American Tea Room’s online presence, including management of the website and social media channels, as well as tea education and hospitality outreach.
Tony Gebely
American Tea Room will soon open its second location, a 5,600 sq. ft. space in Los Angeles’ Arts District. The shop features a new open tasting arena and oasis garden tea lounge.
The shop, at 909 S. Santa Fe Avenue, will also house corporate offices for the online business which has grown more than 30% year-over-year since launching in 2006. Once the new spot opens, the company plans to remodel its Beverly Hills location into a contemporary, open concept that will accommodate more customers with indoor and outdoor seating, a more comprehensive food menu, and an expanded retail space. This renovation is expected to be completed by late winter 2016. CEO David Barenholtz plans a third location at Fashion Island in Newport Beach. Construction will begin at that location next week he said.
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What tea professionals need to start the week of Nov. 24, 2014 —
ABC’s terrific tea tally… consider a Confederation of Tea Smallholders… Unilever’s first T2 opens in New York shop…. Guinness awards certificate for biggest tea bag… elegant teapot design updates ancient Chinese masterpieces.
ABC Tea Market Report
Everyone in tea will want to study the American Botanical Council’s newly released Tea Market Report. It is the most thorough analysis of the American tea industry sales by channel I’ve seen. The report, which appears in the November issue of the American Botanical Council’s HerbalEgram, is authored by Sage Group principal Brian Keating and ABC Executive Director Mark Blumenthal with Ash Lindstrom and Mary Ellen Lynch, SPINS director of consumer insights.
Sales of tea (loosed, bagged, concentrated and herbals) grew by 5.9% in the U.S. in 2013 reaching $1.7 billion while ready-to-drink teas in mass market, natural and specialty gourmet channels remained flat at $2.4 billion compared to 2012. Total RTD sales including convenience are estimated at $5.1 billion in the report which cites a Canadean study predicting RTD tea will grow by 6% to $5.3 billion in 2014.
The authors predict “a banner year” for both brewed and RTD tea sales in 2014.
The significance of their work is the breadth of sales channels covered. Herbals and medicinal teas are tallied as well as chai and Rooibos. These are important, fast-growing categories that can be difficult to research.
Chai in bags grew 21.4% compared to 2012 across all channels while Rooibos sales are up 3.5% in bags and 11.1% in loose leaf.
ABC’s first tea market report includes 12 tables covering mainstream, multi-outlet, natural and specialty/gourmet channels along with details on niche categories that include organic, Fair Trade teas and non-GMO labels.
“More impressive than the current size of the tea industry is the fact that, for more than a decade, annual sales totals … have grown consistently in the United States with very few types of tea showing anything other than consistent gains,” wrote the authors. “The onslaught of hundreds of new retail tea outlets — and thousands more projected to open in the next few years — parallels the germinal stages of the fledgling US natural foods industry circa 1980-2000.”
A significant advantage to this report is that it brings to light data on the herbal segment. The top selling herbal is chamomile with 2013 sales of $48 million, followed by mint infusions which earned $35 million and ginger which brought in $3.8 million, a distant third. Medicinal tea in bags enjoyed sales of $177 million.
Even packaging is documented with sales in cardboard boxes accounting for $1.1 billion of all tea and canisters grossing $276 million. Conventional packaging is challenged by tea in capsules and pods which saw a 32.8% increase in sales in 2013 to $138 million surpassing packet tea for the first time.
ABC plans to present its 2014 annual tea market report in HerbalGram issue #105 (January-March 2015).
Every two years the United Nation’s sponsored Committee on Commodity Problems, under the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), takes a close look at tea. This is because the $90 billion tea industry employs close to 15 million people and provides critical trade dollars essential to the stability of several countries. The Intergovernmental Group on Tea (IGG) brings together delegates from all the producing countries. These include government employed agricultural officials, tea board directors, research institute directors, tea association managers and tea executives from the larger brands.
The IGG met in Bandung, Indonesia earlier this month. Climate change, the harmonization of Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) and the challenges facing tea smallholders were on the agenda along with a discussion on how to increase consumption in producing countries. The group also heard a report on Codex Committee on Pesticides Resident (CCPR) will now recognize and accept that there is an alternative method with scientific merit for establishing MRLs in tea. The CCPR invited tea-producing countries to submit reports containing scientific evidence to establish safe levels of residue in brewed tea.
I will tackle all these topics in the weeks ahead but today the discussion I find intriguing is establishing an International Confederation of Smallholders. Smallholders are the fastest growing group of tea producers accounting for roughly 9 million of the 13 million tea workers and 60% of production. As the colonial model of estates crumbles in many countries smallholders will be responsible for growing most of the world’s tea. In some countries smallholders grow most of the tea, but often account for only a relatively small slice of the high-paying premium teas for export. India, Indonesia, Kenya and Vietnam are all working to improve the skills of smallholders to the point where they can sell direct to Western markets, ideally through cooperatives that provide efficiencies of scale and quality control.
At Bandung this discussion coalesced in a motion to establish an International Confederation of Smallholders identified by a global brand that will help retail customers better understand the contribution made by small tea growers.
The decision may encourage commercial tea brands to inform customers that all or some portion of their product comes from small family-owned gardens.
This is not a cumbersome third-party certification, it simply expands on the idea of traceability and provides an incentive to brands that market to consumers aligned with the idea that smallholders should be encouraged to make better tea.
In China, where 80% of the workers are small holders and only 20% work on estates, the finest teas are produced by smallholders who get top dollar in both the local and overseas market. Once organized as is done in Kenya, this could be a winning model for the world.
Comment below if you think this is a good idea and I’ll start a Linked In group discussion.
Unilever expands T2 to NYC
Last month Unilever opened the first of its Australian-based T2 tea shop on Prince Street in New York’s SoHo. The shop was warmly received and remains busy a month after an opening night party that brought founder and managing director Maryanne Shearer into the limelight of America’s specialty tea scene.
“I have always felt like T2 and NYC were made for each other,” said Shearer. “My goal is to get more people to drink tea in general, and the way we do tea at T2 is different—we modernize it and make it a fun experience.”
New York has witnessed a surge of high-end shops including French Le Palais des Thes’. In April T2 opened a shop in London.
Kevin Havelock, Unilever president for refreshments, said that the company intends to build hundreds of T2 locations, expanding on the 40 in Australia and clearly not limiting its domain to the Asia-Pacific region.
Sales in conventional channels declined for Lipton, Unilever’s top brand, while specialty offerings gain momentum.
Marketers point to the fact that 1.8 billion people will move into the ranks of the middle class by 2020, many in tea drinking cultures. There are also signs of a lessening enthusiasm for coffee shops in Western Europe and renewed expansion of specialty tea shops in France, Poland and Germany.
The British fittingly held the Guinness World Record for the largest tea bag until last week when an enterprising Arab firm took the prize.
Rabea Tea, a Saudi brand manufactured by Ahmed Mohamed Saleh Baeshen & Co., created a tea bag weighing 250 kilograms, enough to make 100,000 cups of tea. The bag, held aloft by steel truss, measures 13 feet by 10 feet (four meters in height and three meters width).
The event coincided with the launch of the company’s full leaf tea bags, which required a decade of research and development.
Once certified in Jeddah the bag began a tour of Saudi cities Riyadh and al-Khobar before the tea was donated to charities.
A report in PSFK notes that despite its rich history and cultural significance, Chinese tea culture is being slowly eroded by contemporary culture. Instead of fighting this trend, the Guanfu Museum in China commissioned Jeff Dayu Shi to design a series of nine unique teapots and a highly crafted bamboo chest. Each teapot corresponds to a different tea and method of preparation, all packaged in a way that appeals to younger generations.
Guanfu Museum Jiu Gong teapot by Jeff Dayu Shi
All of the pieces incorporate functions and aesthetics perfectly. Color transformations that occur as the result of substance changes during the heat and curing treatment have to be carefully managed by a skilled craftsmen with years of experience. Inside the pots, there is even a beehive structure with tiny sesame-sized openings that enhances the flavor of certain teas by facilitating filtration.
All of these teapots are housed in an expertly-crafted bamboo chest used a traditional Chinese tiered handle case as its inspiration.
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What tea professionals need to start the week of Sept. 15, 2014 —
Honest Tea in Keurig K-Cups… the North American Tea Conference beings Tuesday… the fast-growing bottled water market in China… this month’s HerbalGram features the research of Dr. Selena Ahmed who is studying the impact of climate change on tea.
Honest Tea in K-Cups
Coca-Cola’s licensing agreement with Keurig Green Mountain to offer Honest Tea in K-Cups is a very important validation of the Keurig beverage delivery system.
Honest Tea in K-Cups
In 2013 Keurig-licensed teas generated 6.5% of sales in the bagged/loose tea category, according to Packaged Facts. Keurig partnerships with Snapple, Lipton, Bigelow, Celestial Seasonings, Harney & Sons, Twinings, Teavana, Tazo and Tetleys “are only now gaining traction in the marketplace, which will translate to even stronger sales in 2014: 10% of 2014 sales seems quite reasonable,” according to Packaged Facts: Tea and Ready-to-Drink Tea in the U.S.: Retail and Foodservice, 5th Edition.
Celestial Seasonings was early to the format, packaging a significant selection of its herbal blends for the Keurig machines. Bigelow Tea was another to enjoy first-mover advantage, locking in a contract with Hilton Hotels to put its tea in K-Cups in 89,000 hotel rooms equipped with K130 K-Cup brewers. Coffee selections vary throughout the U.S., guestrooms at Hilton Gardens Inns; for example, include Diedrichs regular and decaffeinated Coffee, in Canada Van Houtte’s or Timothy’s Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee but rooms in both the U.S. and Canada feature Bigelow Black Tea K-Cup packs.
Higgins & Burke is another early adopter but chose RealCups capsules instead of licensing through Keurig. Snapple (DrPepper) and Lipton, Twinings and Tetley and a growing number of smaller brands are packing tea in Keurig-compatible capsules.
“Keurig Green Mountain and Honest Tea share a longstanding commitment to organics and fair trade,” said Seth Goldman, Honest Tea co-founder and TeaEO. “We’re excited to make our tea available in this new convenient format.”
Keurig brewers are now in 18 million American homes.
Honest Tea sold 100 million bottles last year and more than 1 billion since its founding in 1998. It is the nation’s top-selling organic bottled tea. Count on boxes to crowd out other brands and carve some additional space from the coffee-centric selections at Bed, Bath & Beyond, Target and Walmart. Honest Tea will feature Just Green and Just Black organic, Fair Trade Certified tea to be brewed hot over ice and enjoyed unsweetened – the alternate and some say the antidote for carbonated sodas.
Honest Tea is the first Coca-Cola brand to appear in K-Cups since Coke purchased 16% of KMG. Look for FUZE Tea to follow when Keurig unveils its new cold brewer.
The magnificent horseshoe of cascading water is spectacular, driving spray as high as my perch 37 floors above Niagara Falls. The 5th North American Tea Conference, an annual gathering jointly sponsored by the Tea Association of the USA and the Tea Association of Canada (TAC), opens this week on the Canadian side of the border.
Horseshoe Falls, Niagara Falls, Canada
Canada’s Tea Association President Louise Roberge and her able staff have organized a number of interesting and timely sessions that I’ll report on this week.
Roberge chose the theme “SolidariTEA” for this year’s event which draws producers and manufacturers from around the globe. North America is now a top export destination for several countries as noted by Norman Kelly, with the International Tea Committee based in London. Rick Winslow with Nielsen Canada will present a state of the industry report on retail tea sales and Shimona Mehta of the NPD Group, Inc. will lead a discussion of key trends in the foodservice industry.
One session I’m sure to attend is Kevin Gascoyne’s pairings of tea and scotch. Gascoyne is a co-founder of Camellia Sinensis in Montreal.
This is the 60th Anniversary of the Tea Association of Canada, a milestone celebrated Wednesday at an award banquet where winners of the 3rd Gold Medal Tea Competition will be announced. The Tea Association of the USA hosted the last session in Bermuda where Peter Goggi was handed the baton as executive director.
Bottled Water in China
In a country awash in tea bottled water is a refreshing alternative. Tea is safely consumed throughout the country when boiled but in many parts of rural China breaking the seal on a bottle of water is reassuring. China has developed a thirst for Western bottled waters. Boreal Catskill Mountain Spring reported a $24 million 36-month deal with SOHO Corp. for distribution of the Boreal Water Collection, premium water previously unavailable in China where it will be branded as Catsky.
A report from Transparency Market Research identifies China as the most active market worldwide for bottled water. The Asia Pacific region accounts for 33% of global demand with sales of $157.27 billion in 2013, according to TMR. The region, led by China, is expected to experience an estimated compound annual growth rate of 10.5% in revenue from 2014 to 2020 with sales of $279.65 billion by 2020.
The chemistry, taste, and health effects of tea can vary with changes in climate, says a new article published by the non-profit American Botanical Council (ABC). Recent research by Selena Ahmed, PhD, on climate change and its effects on the phytochemical compounds in tea (Camellia sinensis) is part of an extensive study conducted by Dr. Ahmed in the Yunnan province of southwestern China and has implications for the future of medicinal botanicals. Dr. Ahmed’s report on her ground-breaking research is the cover article for the current issue (#103) of HerbalGram, ABC’s peer-reviewed, quarterly scientific journal.*
Dr. Ahmed has worked in the Yunnan province for eight years, studying how weather pattern variations impact the naturally occurring phytochemicals and beneficial health properties of tea. Her forthcoming research will investigate how the effects of climate change could alter the benefits of other medicinal plants.
Chinese tea farmers have a finely attuned sense of how differing weather patterns affect the taste and quality of their crop: In the dry seasons, the tea leaves are more potent; in the wetter monsoon seasons, the leaves have a gentler taste and aroma. “The majority of tea farmers I have interviewed state that climate patterns have shifted noticeably over their lifetimes; such observed changes include warmer temperatures, greater unpredictability of weather such as increased variation of rains, and changing phenology of plants (i.e., the effect of weather patterns on plant growth cycles, including flowering and fruiting seasons, etc.), including earlier bud burst,” wrote Dr. Ahmed. The idea that weather patterns could noticeably change the taste, and thus the quality, of crops and influence the livelihoods of the farmers prompted her to analyze samples of tea from successive growing seasons to ascertain what differences are present on a chemical level.
“A vast body of scientific and medical research in the past several decades shows many strong correlations between tea, particularly green tea, and abundant health benefits” said HerbalGram Editor-in-Chief Mark Blumenthal. “Dr. Ahmed’s research has compelling implications not only for tea, but for other food and medicinal plant crops, for which changes in climate can cause alterations in taste, and, accordingly, the plants’ nutritional and medicinal values,” he said.
Dr. Ahmed writes about her tea research and connects the phenomenon in China with tea growers in other regions, including Sri Lanka, Hawaii, and Japan. In collaboration with researchers from Tufts University and the University of Florida, she studies the chemistry behind the shift in functional quality and secondary metabolites in the tea plant. Plants produce secondary metabolites as a defense mechanism in response to environmental stressors, and a high concentration of these metabolites often correlates to higher nutritional and therapeutic benefits for the consumer.
Through laboratory studies of extracts made from tea samples collected from the Chinese farms, Dr. Ahmed discovered that tea’s key health compounds (called catechins) can decrease by almost 50% when the leaves are harvested after the monsoon season as compared with leaves harvested after a drought. This is consistent with anecdotal observations concerning changes in tea flavor noted by the farmers she interviewed; the differences in flavor correspond with her analyses of the plants’ overall chemistry, including the catechins.
Dr. Ahmed is an assistant professor of Sustainable Food Systems at Montana State University.
*Ahmed, S. Tea and the taste of climate change: understanding impacts of environmental variation on botanical quality. HerbalGram. 2014;103:44-51.
Source: HerbalGram is available at some bookstores and natural food stores and is mailed to members of ABC. Dr. Ahmed’s feature article is posted on the ABC website, accessible here.
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Tea Biz serves a core audience of beverage professionals in the belief that insightful journalism informs business decision-making. Tea Biz reports what matters along the entire supply chain, emphasizing trustworthy sources and sound market research while discarding fluff and ignoring puffery.
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What tea professionals need to start the week of June 23, 2014 —
TEAM UP participants in London last week presented a program to raise wages for tea workers… Nestle is withdrawing its Nestea bottled products from China… India tea production fell 24.5% in April…the Fill’er Up unlimited drink app CUPS makes it debut in New York City.
Tea Worker Wages
TEAM UP is an annual gathering of tea professionals hosted by the Ethical Tea Partnership and IDH The Sustainable Trade Initiative in a coalition that includes OXFAM and the German Development Agency GIZ.
Combined these organizations are seeking to remedy the issue of low pay on tea estates in several developing countries.
Many tea producing countries are so poor that legally mandated minimum wages not enough to give tea workers a living wage. While tea estates that pay their workers the legally agreed amount it is not sufficient to covers a household’s basic needs, explains ETP in a release following the event.
Work will focus initially on Malawi, Africa’s second biggest tea producer, where pickers earn two thirds of the World Bank poverty line income of around $2 per person per day. It is a small sum but tea workers are better off than 62% of the population, who exist on less than the World Bank’s extreme poverty line of $1.25 a day.
The coalition aims to help tea estates improve their productivity and profits and make more finance available to invest in improvements in return for a commitment to raise wages. They will also work with employers, unions and governments to agree phased improvements to wages – which are set at national or regional level – and increase worker representation in negotiations. The program will run for several years and inform similar work to raise wages in other countries.
Nestle first introduced its bottled tea in China in 2002, a program jointly backed by Coca-Cola known as Beverage Partners Worldwide.
Coca-Cola had previously attempted to market Tianyudi tea and a honey tea called Lanfeng. Neither survived.
It was thought the combined marketing efforts of the global beverage giants would make Nestea a success in competition with China’s Master Kong and Taiwan’s Uni-President brands.
According to an article in the Chinese publication Want China Times, Nestea’s market share peaked at 2.3% in 2008 according to Euromonitor International figures dropping to 1.9% in 2010. This led to Nestle and Coca-Cola’s decision to go their separate ways in China in 2012, with the Swiss company taking over the operations of Nestea in the country, while Coca-Cola focused on its Yuan Ye tea brand.
According to the latest report on China’s tea drink market published by Askci Corp, Master Kong and Uni-President now hold a combined market share of over 40%, reports Want China Times.
India Tea Production Falls 25%
Data from the early harvest have been compiled and declines due to the lack of rain were steep as projected.
Production in April declined 24.48% to 56.77 million kg due to lower output in Assam and other regions, according to a report in the Economic Times.
The production stood at 75.17 million kg in April 2013, according to Tea Board data.
Output in Assam, the largest tea-producing state, decreased by 40.34% to 25.33 million kg in April this year from 42.46 million kg a year earlier.
However, in West Bengal, production was up by 21.58% to 13.41 million kg during the month, from 11.03 million kg in April 2013.
The combined production of tea in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka decreased by 18.41% to 16.53 million kg from 20.26 million kg in the year-ago period.
India’s tea production in 2013-14 increased by 6.19% to 1,205.40 million kg from 1,135.07 million kg in 2012-13, according to Tea Board of India.
An Israeli software developer has teamed with 40 independent tea and coffee shops in New York to launch a new subscription phone app good for unlimited drinks for the month.
A $45 subscription covers as many cups as you wish of tea and regular coffee in any size. Upgrade to $85 and users can enjoy unlimited lattes, iced coffee and espresso drinks.
Alternately you can opt for a variable X-cups for $Y dollars fixed price (5 cups $7 for example).
You select your location. Select your drink and present your phone to the cashier. The cashier enters a payment confirmation code.
There is no cost for the shop to join and no point-of-sale integration. It is not a traditional loyalty program, more of a marketing strategy to bring new drinkers into your shop.
Co-founder Gilad Rotem anticipates 200 NY shops will participate as the program advances. Shop owners are paid a discounted rate for every cup purchased by customers using their phone. The fine print requires customers to wait 30 minutes between purchases and prevents them from sharing a login with their friends.
CUPS has been operating in Israel since 2012 after Rotem and four of his high school buddies came up with the idea.
Rotem told the New York Times “People love the notion of unlimited coffee and empowering independent coffee shops.”
Tea Biz serves a core audience of beverage professionals in the belief that insightful journalism informs business decision-making. Tea Biz reports what matters along the entire supply chain, emphasizing trustworthy sources and sound market research while discarding fluff and ignoring puffery.
Tea Biz posts are available to use in your company newsletter or website. Purchase reprint and distribution rights for single articles or commission original content. Click here for details.
Tea farmers in the United States are eligible to enter the first competition designed to showcase US grown teas. A cash price of $1000 will go the top grower in each of four tea categories, juried by an international panel of judges.
“Now that spring harvests have ended and with summer and autumn yields ahead, competitors should take this time to review, experiment and refine tea entries to demonstrate excellence of your skills,” said Lee.
