One of Scotland’s top tea blenders, PekoeTea, is launching a new tea studio this summer, which will be in Edinburgh’s Leith neighborhood on the Leith Walk. The move is a tribute not only to the company’s reputation but to tea’s growing popularity during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
PekoeTea Co-owner Esther Kungu-Cooper says, “Over the last few years, PekoeTea has been consistently recognized for its knowledge and stand-out tea blends. Our new tea studio is more than double the size of our existing store and will allow our customers to attend special events and taste more teas than ever before. With COVID-19 there has been a big move away from traditional retail, and our new studio allows us to further enhance our digital presence, ensuring that our brand is recognized further afield.”
An Increase in Home Tea Consumption
PekoeTea Co-owner Jon Cooper notes they’ve been seeing a lot of interest in tea during the pandemic. “There has been a massive increase in home tea consumption because everyone has been working from home,” he says. “People want something nice to drink. When working in an office, you usually have a choice of what your employer has provided; when at home, you can make your own choices. Also, the money saved from coffee shops being shut has given a boost for people ordering specialty teas at home.”
With an increased interest in tea, PekoeTea’s new, specially designed studio will continue to offer a space for customers to taste and browse their extensive range of teas, as well as the opportunity to experience private blending classes, where the team will share their knowledge and love of teas from around the world.
The PekoeTea Studio will also allow the team a space to provide special training for wholesale clients, in addition to more room to produce online workshops that can be used to spread the word about tea to a growing global audience. Also, with an increased focus on their digital presence, the team plans to use the new location as a creative space to facilitate product design and photography, alongside blend development.
“We’re relocating and adapting rather than launching a completely new shop but yes, the fact we are able to do this during a pandemic is a testament to specialty teas’ growing popularity,” says Cooper. “The new shop is bigger than our current one, but we will be making a variety of uses of the space but with more of an emphasis on the experience.”
Specializing in Blending Techniques
Working directly with tea growers from Scotland to Sri Lanka, Kenya to China, PekoeTea sources the finest single-estate teas, to create unique handcrafted blends. The company says it’s the only one in Scotland to specialize in such blending techniques rather than relying on pre-flavored teas. The two co-owners, Cooper and Kungu-Cooper, produce a range of teas – from black, white and green teas, to oolong, fruit and herbal blends. They also offer a selection of five whisky teas that are blended by hand and flavored with real Scotch single malt whiskey, alongside a Whiskey Fudge Tea.
“The specialty tea industry is very crowded with a finite number of sources for high-end single-estate teas,” says Cooper. “Many tea companies are ending up selling the same product with the only real differentiation being price and branding. There is also a general decline in consumption of tea as whole in the U.K. Therefore, the creation of interesting blends is very important. You can stand out by making signature products. We have found our custom blend – such as our whisky teas – are outselling all our single estate teas by a significant margin.”
PekoeTea also makes bespoke blends that can be created privately for customers, in addition to seasonal flavors – like a comforting Christmas blend with infusions of apple, cinnamon, cloves and orange, or a summery Orange Blossom Oolong. All of their teas are loose leaf, and many are available in biodegradable pyramid teabags.
Cooper says he started the company in 2008 as a single estate tea company, importing directly from China, and then in 2014, Kungu-Cooper joined the business. Since then, over the past decade, the husband and wife team has expanded their single estate range to other countries, but their main growth has been in their popular flavored blends. “We built a factory in 2018 to make flavored teas from scratch, and this has enabled us to make unique signature blends,” says Cooper. “We also ship all over the world and we offer wholesale, too. Our teas are stocked in many hospitality businesses and independent retailers in the U.K., and we are currently growing our number of export clients.”
Future Growth Plans for PekoeTea
PekoeTea hopes to be a global company in the future, but they always want to stay true to their Edinburgh roots. “We are looking to change our focus as a brand, away from traditional retail to a more digital-based company, to adapt to the modern retail environment, especially in light of COVID-19,” says Cooper.
Right now, according to Cooper, tea culture in Scotland is very similar to the rest of the U.K. – most of the tea that’s consumed is in teabag format. “There is a developing specialty scene, and in Edinburgh – being a foodie city – there is a growing number of consumers and businesses who appreciate fine teas. We also have the developing Scottish-grown tea industry, and it will be interesting to see what happens with this over the next few years.”
Cooper explains that the market in Edinburgh is currently saturated, so they have to work twice as hard to stand out. “The advice I would give [to any new tea business] is to research your local area,” he shares. “Some places in the world, there are many tea shops in a small area, and they all thrive. In other places, the market is not as developed. It is also vital to have a strong online presence. The first place most people look for a recommendation of where to go is on Google or social media.”
Overal, Cooper says the Leith neighborhood of Edinburgh is fantastic place with a fascinating history. In fact, it didn’t become part of Edinburgh until 1920 and was one of Scotland’s most important shipping ports. “Tea in the U.K. was controlled from London by the East India Company, and any tea in Scotland that didn’t come via London was smuggled. It wasn’t until Andrew Melrose and Company started in 1812 that tea was legally imported into Leith independently form the East India Company,” Cooper explains. “The building of their first tea factory is only a 10-minute walk from the location of our new tea studio. As It happens, our new shop is in the same block as a Melrose’s Tea and Coffee House that opened when the building was completed in 1906.”
Find out more about PekoeTea or order online at www.pekoetea.co.uk. The company’s new expansion and re-launch will take place in late summer 2021.