What’s the last cup of tea you enjoyed? Now think back and try to remember – what actually prompted you to have it? For me, it’s pure habit. I’m drinking tea right now, as I write, because that’s what I always do. As our industry emerges from lockdowns and faces a very different world out there, the question of habit becomes an important one.
Over the last year, we’ve seen many habits disrupted and many new ones formed in their place. Drinking tea at home is one of those new habits for countless households. In March 2020 alone, e-commerce retailers saw sales increase by 25 percent, and while some of this represented one-time “pantry packing” behavior, 2020 as a whole brought an undeniable acceleration in the way we shop, shifting to e-commerce. Even with restaurant and cafe closures, loose leaf tea sales still managed to grow – not shrink – in 2020.
The specialty tea industry has been uprooted by the pandemic – from lockdowns driving many brick and mortar shops out of business, to supply chain disruptions creating unprecedented shipping challenges. Yet, the specialty tea industry grew; it did not wither away.
More People Are Drinking Tea – But Why?
We know more people are drinking tea, so the important question is why? If we can understand why people have turned to tea, then maybe this moment of new consumer habits formed can be an opportunity for our industry to form its own new habits, new ways of doing business that lay a solid foundation for the future of tea.
So, what kept people drinking tea through the pandemic? Was it about health and wellness? Was it a shift in outlets for disposable income with restaurants closed? I’d venture to say that it goes deeper. This pandemic has had us all re-evaluating our priorities, and one of the biggest clear priorities that emerged was the centrality of our living spaces, of our homes.
People. Not Trends.
It would be reductive to talk about trends. Instead, let’s talk about people.
People didn’t start drinking tea and keep drinking it just because they were being marketed to in a new way or because they heard it would be healthier. People make the decisions every day to do what they do because we believe our decisions will make us happier, bringing pleasure into our everyday lives. Everyone has their own unique story on how they began drinking tea, but the commonality is bringing tea out of the unfamiliar and exotic and into the familiar and comforting.
Tea may have started as a medicine, going all the way back to its mythical origins and Emperor Shen Nong, but it quickly shifted to a ritual. This ritual was codified by Lu Yu in one of China’s first mass-published best-sellers, Cha Jing. This influential text captured the changing attitude towards tea from a bitter medicinal brew to an important ritual in both private life and social interaction.
Specialty tea drinkers use tea to punctuate their days, using tea as a companion to work, to study, to leisure. We offer tea up for guests and for family, and tea lovers around the world connect and form new communities across social media platforms.
Our critical question as an industry now is how to preserve these new habits. How can the specialty tea industry encourage even more people to bring tea into their daily ritual, the same way Americans have with wine and coffee? How can specialty tea become a habit as indispensable as the morning cup of coffee or as familiar as sweet iced tea?
The Tea Industry and Building Credibility
Our industry is constantly sabotaging itself by marketing tea as a trend, as something exotic and rarified. Instead, we need to build credibility for tea as something that can offer as much (or more) depth to our personal lives and our social lives as wine and coffee.
How do we do this? Accessibility and trust.
Accessibility is about stripping back the layers of gatekeeping. Tea needs to be treated as something anyone can enjoy: hot or iced, in a mug or using traditional tea ware. This is not just a messaging issue – this is a quality issue. Tea needs to be good enough to be worth the effort. If someone takes the big step to try tea, newcomers should be rewarded with stunning results, not confronted with a bitter brew.
We need to stop treating tea as something exotic. Exoticism does not always communicate value - it may intrigue or momentarily entice, but this marketing strategy ultimately separates the people enjoying a product from the people that made it. In specialty tea, this practice inserts unnecessary distance between producers and consumers, hiding authenticity by taking away the stories and names of the people behind the tea.
As restaurants and coffee shops reopen, our industry has further opportunity to normalize tea by partnering with ambassadors (like sommeliers and baristas) to bring tea to brick-and-mortar beverage programs in a way that is neither an afterthought nor a “dress up party,” but instead puts tea on the same par as wine and coffee.
What About Trust?
Accessibility opens the door, but trust is what brings people in to stay. We cannot expect to grow as an industry until we stop thinking of growth in purely fiscal terms and instead incorporate the idea of growing up, of bringing our industry’s standards of transparency up to at least the same level as coffee and wine, if not higher.
With coffee, people can actually meet the roasters if they visit a coffee shop. There is a direct connection between producer and consumer, and this connection builds trust. And while the coffee industry faced its own unique COVID-19 challenges in 2020, its place as an unassailable part of daily routine and the industry’s more mature dedication to transparency helped it weather the storm.
With wine, the maker is almost always credited. Bottle labels feature the winery prominently so that when people find something they love, they can build trust with that producer, looking for other wines by the same maker, or even visiting the winery.
Yet with tea, individual growers and producers are rarely credited. There is no opportunity for consumers to build trust with producers, and trust must be outsourced to brands. Teas are sold under the brand of resellers, even though resellers add value to logistics and distribution, not to the product itself, and the resulting gaps in value can sabotage the trust-building process.
If the specialty tea industry wants tea to stay a part of American life, it needs to show that specialty tea has something fundamental to offer people. This means finding a way to communicate lasting value and taking an introspective moment to make sure that we are, in fact, delivering value that is worth communicating.
Our homes, our everyday lives are our most private spaces, and consumers do not want to feel marketed to – we want connection with people. The growing reach of social commerce plays on this feeling, as consumers respond to enriched social experiences. We want to know where the things we enjoy come from, we want to know their story and the value this story brings, and we want to connect with, learn from, and support people that we trust.
Tea in North America – Consumers Are Ready for It
Americans are more than ready to bring tea into their daily lives, but the specialty tea industry has to meet them halfway. The growth of tea in the American household over the pandemic is an invitation to meet new interest with genuine accessibility and genuine trust. This means evaluating our roles and making sure that every action we take adds value to tea instead of taking value from the producers (underpaying, exploiting and more), or taking value from consumers by underdelivering on quality.
For years, our industry has wondered if Americans are not ready for specialty tea, or don’t yet appreciate it on a large scale. The studies are in. They are ready. But… are we ready to deliver?
David Duckler is co-owner of Verdant Tea, a collaboration with tea farmer He Qingqing and Shandong-native Ren Weiwei. The partnership was founded over a decade ago to advocate for small family tea farming in China, representing over a dozen farmer families and teaware artists. Verdant Tea believes in transparent sourcing and supporting farmers who champion biodiversity and sustainability through innovative farming, dedicated craft and community leadership. Duckler – with a background in research and translation – has over a decade of experience in tea import and logistics, RTD beverage manufacturing, and consulting for tea and beverage startups. He works to represent small family tea producers across China through Verdant Tea. To learn more about Verdant Tea, visit VerdantTea.com.