• Kenya’s Annual Tea Bonus Brings Strife | Sri Lanka Reinstates Minimum Daily Wage Challenged in High Court | Lipton CEO Nathalie Roos Resigns

    Tea News for the week ending Sept. 20, 2024

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    India Tea News | Week of 13 September 2024
    India Tea News | Aravinda Anantharaman
    Tea Bonus Protests
    Tea bonus protests, arson and looting led to one death and several injured

    Kenya’s Annual Tea Bonus Brings Strife

    By Dan Bolton

    Disappointing bonus payments angered tea workers at several Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) factories and led to violent and, in one instance, deadly protests. Protesting smallholders questioned the accounting and fairness of apportioned funds.

    The Nation reports approximately 612,000 small-scale growers qualified for the estimated final bonus for sales through June.

    Kenya Tea News reported that Principal Secretary of Agriculture Dr. Paul Rono has directed the Tea Board of Kenya (TBK) to audit all KTDA financial commitments and operations and all its assets.

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  • Northwest Tea Festival Nears

    Tea festivals are enjoying a resurgence, basking in the renewed enthusiasm of health-conscious consumers and the joy of imbibing quality tea. The 14th Annual Northwest Tea Festival draws tea enthusiasts to Seattle for two educational and fun days at the Seattle Center on September 28th and 29th. The Northwest Tea Festival has a rich history in tea, evolving from a small local event to become the foremost social gathering for tea lovers in a region known for its beverages.

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    Founders Doug Livingston and Julee Rosanoff chat with Tea Biz Podcast Host Dan Bolton
    Founders Doug Livingston and Julee Rosanoff chat with Tea Biz Podcast Host Dan Bolton

    How it Came About

    Julie Rosanoff is a pioneer in specialty tea dating to 1990 when she co-founded the Perennial Tea Room near the Seattle waterfront. In 2004, Julee hosted tea-themed dinners there, with author Norwood Pratt narrating the story of teas as courses were served. Tastings and special events led to the founding of the Puget Sound Tea Education Association and the region’s first tea party featuring Barnes & Watson, Teahouse Kuan Yin, Tea Geek (Michael Coffey), Sa Tea, Village Yarn & Tea, and Choice Organic Tea. Inspired by the mass tastings hosted by Bay Area tea firms for the 50,000 foodies attending the first Slow Food Nation in September 2008, the Northwest Tea Festival, a not-for-profit venture, launched to wide acclaim later that month.

    Dan: The Northwest Tea Festival is a genuine specialty tea experience, a social gathering of respected speakers and vendors with a delightfully appreciative audience. Julee, tell us what inspired you to get involved in hosting the event.

    Julee: Author and tea expert Norwood Pratt inspired me to start the festival. He attended a meeting of several key vendors in Seattle then, and he said that no one was celebrating the 400th anniversary of the House of Orange importing tea to Amsterdam, which is the origin of orange pekoe. So we said, We’ll do it, and we spent a year sorting it out, and the following year, we had our first tea festival, and we’ve had them every year since then, except for COVID, where we were down for three years. Now we’re back.
    I didn’t know what would happen the first year we did it. The most exciting thing for me was having 500 people standing in line waiting to get in that first day, all having a wonderful time. I think we only had about seven booths, and it was a wonderful thing. Everybody had a good time. And they all said, We want to come back, please do it again.

    On the morning of the first day, there is a line out the door, down the street, and around the block, and it is just fabulous to see all these people waiting to have tea.

    That’s how it started.

    Founders Doug Livingston and Julee Rosanoff with Author Norwood Pratt
    Founders Julee Rosanoff and Doug Livingston with Author Norwood Pratt
    CLICK TO CONTINUE reading the interview and see a preview the new Tea Bar & Lounge
    Northwest Tea Festival

    Northwest Tea Festival | Seattle Center: Exhibition Hall
    301 Mercer Street, Seattle, WA 98109
    Saturday, September 28 – 10 am – 4 pm
    Sunday, September 29 – 10 am – 4 pm

    Buy Tickets | Program | Tea Bar & Lounge

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    Lindsay Lohan TV Ad Advocates Office Tea Breaks | Suez Shipping Disruptions Intensify | China Launches Global Tea Marketing Initiative | Kenya Suspends Auction Price Minimums on Old Tea | AI Models Predict Local Weather on a Planetary Scale. | Dan Bolton | Episode 182 | 23 August 2024


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  • Lindsay Lohan TV Ad Promotes Office Tea Breaks | Suez Shipping Disruptions Intensify | Botanists Identify the Gene that Causes Tea Leaf Droopiness

    Lindsay Lohan TV Ad Advocates Office Tea Breaks | Suez Shipping Disruptions Intensify | Botanists Identify the Gene that Causes Tea Leaf Droopiness | PLUS Revitalizing Kumaon | A century ago, Kumaon’s high-mountain estates were abandoned. The formerly productive tea fields lay fallow until an enterprising young entrepreneur marshaled the resources of US-based Frontier Co-op and USAID’s Cooperative Development Program to benefit hundreds of tea smallholders.

    Tea News for the week ending July 5, 2024

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    India Tea News
    India Tea News | Aravinda Anantharaman

    Raj Vable, founder of Young Mountain Tea in Marquette, Mich., inspired the villagers in the Kumar region to create a new era of economic resiliency and autonomy. The solar-powered factory with state-of-the-art equipment will process regeneratively grown certified organic tea in four styles available in retail locations by November. Vable writes, “We hope our model serves as a blueprint that can be replicated and improved upon so we can all collectively raise the bar on transparent sourcing, regenerative agriculture, and smallholder farmer equity.”

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    Lindsay Lohan for Pure Leaf Tea
    Lindsay Lohan for Pure Leaf Tea

    Pure Leaf TV Ad Advocates Office Tea Breaks

    By Dan Bolton

    Actress and producer Lindsay Lohan appears in a new television commercial and social media campaign urging tea drinkers to take a break at work. The commercial, financed by the Pepsi Lipton Tea Partnership, features Pure Leaf, the top-selling ready-to-drink tea brand in the US.
    The minute-plus spot is the first national multimillion-dollar tea advertising campaign since the pandemic.

    The Pure Leaf brand also launched a US-only coupon giveaway of a free bottle to enjoy on your next tea break. Text 737-377-3774 between June 27 and July 25 to receive a bottle or visit. PureLeaf.com/TeaBreak

    Try: Tea break recipes

    In the commercial, Lohan, who has starred in several Netflix original films in the past few years and is currently filming Freaky Friday 2 with Jamie Lee Curtis, asks, QUOTE “When was the last time you took a break? I mean a real break. It’s like we forgot breaks even exist. Standing on an office coffee table, she shouts “it’s time for a tea break.” We all deserve a moment to recharge and revitalize ourselves. Soon the office staff is headed out the door chanting “tea break, tea break” and chugging Pure Leaf.

    Edelman made the humorous 90-second spot, supported by research that reveals “three in five workers struggle to take breaks during the workday, and more than half of workers feel too busy or interrupted by work to take a refreshing break. Nearly two-thirds of the 1010 full-time workers surveyed feel mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. However, sixty-three percent (63%) of workers surveyed noted that when they take quality breaks, they return recharged for what’s next*.

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