TORONTO, Ont.
Canada’s leading franchised specialty coffee retailer last week unveiled a national television campaign promoting eight specialty teas.
A television spot by Mississauga-based Second Cup Ltd. highlights eight colorful new whole leaf teas and tisanes served in poly pyramid bags at the company’s 360 cafes.
"We are proud to offer a more premium, better tasting tea that is sustainably resourced while contributing to a better customer experience," says Stacey Mowbray, President and CEO of Second Cup.
"Our company has fully embraced the opportunity to align our teas to the same quality standards of our brewed coffee. We are confident that our new line will reinvigorate tea sales,” says Mowbray.
Tea sales are under-indexed according to the company which reported $25.2 million in 2010 revenue and will open 25-30 new cafes in 2011.
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Specialty tea consumption has climbed quickly and is broad-based enough to justify the expense of 15-second commercials, says Patrick Russell, Product Developer and the blender responsible for “rejuvenating” the tea platform.
Second Cup has changed its tea platform three times since the early 1990s in what Russell describes as a “natural progression from CTC in paper bags to a private label program and then whole leaf.” The latest offerings are Rainforest Alliance certified and conform to the Ethical Tea Partnership guidelines, says Russell.
“Recent research suggests that the average Canadian drinks two coffees a day, but also drinks one tea, and that 44 percent of people here had tea yesterday,” says Russell.
Tea is a good fit for a coffee shop, he says. “In addition to shared consumption, there is an obvious and strong movement towards tea drinking and experimentation. This is in part driven by the association of tea with health messaging, changing demographics, (including an aging baby boom generation) and an increase in new customers that come from traditional tea consuming countries,” says Russell.
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“These forces have joined with a growing demand for small luxuries in life that resonate with personal demands for healthy natural products which is why our super premium tea offerings are the perfect fit,” says Russell who spent a year selecting the teas and supporting the development of a company-wide training program to make sure the bag-in service includes an opportunity for associates to answer customer questions.
Canada is a nation of hot tea drinkers and home to several fast-growing tea retail chains. Canadians drank 380 million foodservice servings of hot tea last year. Sixty percent of the population drinks tea, averaging 6.6 cups per week with almost 30 percent steeping more than 15 cups per week. The specialty category enjoys 3.5 percent growth according to NPD Group/CREST®.
“The tea is the hero in this campaign. Not people enjoying tea — the teas themselves,” Russell says proudly. “It took a year to get it right and it is something we are all behind,” he says. The commercials air for six weeks. The company simultaneously launched a Facebook, YouTube and Twitter campaign and will make extensive use of social media promotions. The program features extensive in-store supporting materials.
Teas are priced regionally at $1.90 or $1.95 for any size, with both English Breakfast and Wildberry available as brewed iced tea. Extraction temperatures vary from 190- to 195-degrees depending on the hot water delivery system available in cafe. Preparation is no more laborious than other beverages and as such is not more costly in terms of labor, according to the company.
The firm’s 4,000 associates were trained to properly steep and serve these teas and to help customers migrate through the portfolio. They can all explain the basics, where the tea is from, what is different about the oxidation but they are not trained to the level of Canadian Tea Association sommeliers. “This all about guest service,” says Russell, “we make sure associates take into account our guest’s mood, energy and flavor preference when helping select what is right for them.”
The eight teas, a holiday blend and a tisane (described in detail at right) establish a baseline of quality, representing different families of tea, explains Russell. Blends are authentic but distinct. The breakfast tea blend, for example, contains expensive Darjeeling tea from India. The decaffeinated version uses the more expensive liquid CO2 method of extraction to avoid solvent residue. Teas are overwrapped in a foil sachet, 12 to a box. He prefers compostable bags to poly, says Russell, but pyramids made of plant-based materials didn’t seal reliably.
As to starring in the commercial, Russell admits “the blush factor is high, but we wanted to be able to tell the story from our perspective. My colleagues who appear in the spot really do talk about how excited we are about the teas we are bringing in.”
Additional teas will be added in the months ahead, says Russell, who is eager to add a white tea to the lineup. But, before he does, “we intend to listen closely to what the market will tell us,” he says.