Welcome to part two of our series on the new generation of tea drinkers. This week, we look at how tea has taken over college campuses through clubs and classes.
Missed an installment? Read them all here!
The emergence of tea clubs at college campuses in the United States over the past 10 years is indicative of the growing popularity of tea in America—first, among millennials and then within the Gen Z demographic.
Michael Slater, who is still an avid tea-drinker, co-founded one of the first such clubs at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), which is one of the few institutes of higher learning in the U.S. that engages in serious tea research, even assisting The Great Mississippi Tea Company, America’s second tea farm, establish their business.
While Slater hasn’t been involved with the USM tea club for around 10 years, he recalls the activities, fondly. “At the time, we learned how easy it was to start a recognized club at our university and decided on tea as our focus as we spent a lot of social time hanging out in our dorms drinking cup after cup of cheap green tea,” Slater recollects.
“We contacted Bigelow Tea Company about our club,” Slater says. “They ended up sending us a huge box of tea samples to use at our meetings and hand out to other students. Our meetings typically revolved around trying different teas and discussing a single topic, ranging from history to current events to the morality of Spongebob Squarepants.”
The USM tea club was actively involved in tea promotion among the student body. “When we would hold promotional events (usually setting up a table at university club showcases), we would provide free samples of individually bagged tea, and they were always taken up rather quickly," says Slater. "In these cases, I recall having to stock up on chamomile and other herbal teas."
Today’s tea clubs are far more serious. The Pennsylvania State University (more commonly known as Penn State) has no less than three tea clubs: Gong Fu Cha, the Chinese Tea Club; Chanoyu, the Japanese Tea Club; and Darye, the Korean Tea Club. Each club meets regularly to conduct a tea ceremony consistent with the culture of the club.
The tea clubs share the same space for conducting their tea ceremonies, and some of the same people have memberships across the clubs.
Eleonora Khafizova, the president of Gongfu Cha Club, describes the history of the three clubs. “The founder of our club did a study abroad program in China and loved the tea culture he observed there. When he came back, he established connections with Teaparker [Chih Jung-sien (池宗憲), a renowned Taiwanese tea expert and author], who is a tea master," says Khafizova. "With his help, [he] established this club in 2009. Later, the club and our connections grew to encompass Japanese and Korean tea cultures as well when club members connected with Japanese and Korean tea masters.”
Interestingly, the Japanese Tea Club Club provides demonstration of two traditional tea preparation methods, namely, Urasenke and Omotesenke. “We are the only institution in the world who teaches both Omotesenke style Japanese tea and Urasenke Japanese tea in one place,” says Sarah Christine Leonard, the president of the Japanese Tea Club. “Every month we have at least one lesson with our Urasenke-style sensei, Morgan Beard, as well as at least one Omotesenke style event with the senseis from The Omoteseke Domonkai Eastern Region, USA.”
The interest in tea from students isn’t limited to an exploration of tea culture. It’s more about the community that has developed around tea and a marked preference in tea consumption over other beverages, such as coffee.
“The reason that I joined this club first and foremost was for the people here. I liked the atmosphere,” says Leonard. “But the reason I choose tea over coffee is more just because of the taste.”
Khafizova, who drinks both tea and coffee, feels that coffee is associated with heightened anxiety whereas tea, though a caffeinated beverage, is associated with calm. “I don't know if younger people are just more attentive to their bodies," she says. "I don't see older people noticing those things so much.”
Each of the tea club presidents talk about the health benefits of tea as being a strong influence on the consumption trend, particularly the fact that certain antioxidants are only accessible on a regular basis from tea.
Khafizova is also thankful for the opportunity to “have a space for deeper conversations through ceremony.” She adds: "Each week, we gather for drinking one specific type of tea, [and] we have a meeting that's themed. And somebody leads that meeting, and we pay very close attention to the tea that we're drinking and how it's processed, where it's from, the flavor notes. And then, after we do the first round of tasting, it becomes more of a hangout than a tea meeting, and people get to connect over tea. We usually don't use our phones or laptops during those meetings. So, we have [that] space to just connect, as people.”
For others, it’s a means of learning the ceremonies, so they might practice tea culture commercially, such as for serving customers at the Penn State Teahouse where for a small fee, the tea ceremonies of each culture can be performed. Within this subset of the clubs, there are students who are experimenting to consider tea as a career.
The tea clubs even band together to hold a tea expo each year, inviting experts to speak and to showcase different teas and teaware. “It was an incredible experience,” reflects Khafizova on the last expo. “We had four days of so much knowledge that we could absorb.”
The next two years will see the expo being focused on Japanese tea in 2025 and then Chinese tea in 2026. That they’ve planned the themes so far in advance is indicative of how organized and serious these Gen Z tea enthusiasts are.
Baker also mentions that for younger people, drinking tea is about creating moments. This is reflected in how Khafizova describes tea consumption as slowing down and creating the “time that’s dedicated to oneself.”
Across the pond, The Guardian had reported eight years ago that younger people in the UK had been ditching the drink of their parents in recent years for fears that it would stain their teeth – or that it wasn’t ‘cool.’ However, more recent research cited by the UK Tea and Infusions Association (UKTIA) in 2022 stating that young people are consuming tea in various forms in increasing numbers – and black tea is still the most popular variety being consumed – contradicts this premise.
Indeed, Dr Sharon Hall, chief executive of the UK Tea & Infusions Association, says tea is more popular than ever with young people in the UK. “Real-world research among 4,000 UK adults found that over eight in 10 (83%) 18–24-year olds are having a daily cuppa,” Hall notes, explaining that the primary motivation is flavor preference, as 80% in a recent poll.
“The main reason given is the great taste – cited by 80%... with 31% of younger adults polled saying they drink more tea than their parents, so it is far from an outdated beverage. In fact, younger adults are drinking English breakfast during the day for relaxation and warmth then choosing herbal teas at night to wind down. Seven out of 10 young adults brew up a cuppa as soon as they get out of bed. When asked what word they associate with tea, 18–24-year olds say ‘cozy’ and associate tea with that lovely ‘warm, loved feeling – a hug in a mug,’” Hall adds.
The information went into the first-ever “Tea Census” conducted by the UKTIA in 2022.
Chai Point, an Indian hot beverage company that mainly serves its customers chai tea and green tea, shared its demographic data. The company, which is registered under Mountain Trail Foods Pvt. Ltd. and uses technology to track their customers, reports that approximately 53% of their customers fall within the age group comprised of 18-34 year-olds.
In response to email requests, The Tea Board of India (TBI), a governmental body reporting to the Commerce Ministry, provided a document called, “Tea Consumption in India,” which states that “young people between 18-30 years of age have a ‘tea penetration rate’ of 65% and are expected to have an estimated consumption of 435 M. Kgs out of the apparent consumption of 1197 million Kgs in 2023, which is arrived provisionally.” As of the writing of this article, the definition of the term “tea penetration,” has not been provided for this writer despite email requests to do so.
While the Chai Point data may not be indicative of the country as a whole and the TBI data is somewhat ambiguous, there are ample anecdotal accounts that young people are consuming tea—at least outside of the home. Another tea retailer called First Flush, a teahouse located in Kolkata, which specializes in serving and selling loose Darjeeling tea, contends that young people comprise the majority of their customer base. According to Proprietor Subhasish Mitra, the under 35 demographic not only likes learning about Darjeeling tea, but his small corner café, located in a by-lane of South Kolkata, provides a place for customers to “slow down and enjoy tea” even though it’s not the easiest place to find. Slowing down and creating “moments” stands as a common theme that comes through when gauging what young people think about drinking tea—whether it’s in talking to young people in the U.S., scanning UK survey results, or speaking to retailers in Asia.
In Taiwan, according to the website steepedcontent.com, 46% of tea drinkers fall in the age group of 18–39-year-olds. While Taiwan’s tea culture is essentially Chinese in origin – they like their oolongs such as Baozhong, Ruby Tea, and Gunpowder Green—a tea-trader named Kevin Chen told this writer that his whole business consists of travelling to Darjeeling each year and sourcing Darjeeling tea for a younger customer base, who want to experiment with different teas than have been traditionally popular in Taiwan.
Tea Studies
While tea studies programs have been available to young people in tea-producing countries for generations, such programs have only launched recently in countries like the United States—and this too at select institutes for higher learning.
USM and Louisiana State University (LSU) as well as the University of Florida and Northwestern University have researchers who study the science of tea from a botanical or plant science perspective. Professor Katharine Burnett, founder of the Global Tea Institute at The University of California, Davis (UC Davis), is something of a pioneer in a more holistic approach to tea studies. She is also co-chair of the Department of Art and Art History department at the university. The institute is the first of its kind in the USA, taking a multidisciplinary approach to the study of tea.
“GTI, as we call it, is the first and only institute for the study of tea holistically, to look at tea from just about any perspective, any discipline with the University of California,” Burnett says. “At [UC] Davis, we have over a hundred undergraduate majors and over a hundred graduate programs. That means that our faculty can study tea from almost any department and discipline. So, the breadth and the depth of our expertise can be brought to bear on the study of tea. And by tea we generally mean camellia sinensis, but we know that other people think about herbals as tea, so we're open to it if people want to research other things as tea."
The presence of the institute on the university’s campus, in Professor Burnett’s opinion, has catalyzed an already active interest in tea among the students.
"There is ferocious interest in tea studies across campus, in all departments, and it's exciting to witness this," says Burnett.
Not only do students discuss, make, sample and share tea at the university tea club, but Burnett says that she knows of many students who are interested in pursuing tea as a career. “They’re interested in starting their own tea companies,” she says.
The tea club was a student-driven initiative. Once a certain critical mass of students learned that a tea institute was active on campus, they felt the need to have their own club. “They pounded on my door and said, ‘Can we please have a club?’” says Burnett.
“They established an official club through the university, calling themselves the Global Tea Club, and every other week they met with like 90 people coming to share tea for two to three hours,” Burnett adds enthusiastically. Since then, another unofficial tea club has been established.
Burnett attributes the interest in tea among young people to be twofold. “All signs seem to indicate that the drive is health,” she says. “And of course nobody's gonna [drink] it if it doesn't taste good.”
These observations sync well with what the UCTIA found in their tea census. Moreover, Burnett’s observations on the activity of the tea club and other inputs is that young people, at UC Davis at least, have moved beyond the bag to loose leaf tea, which is roughly the same as what the presidents of the tea clubs of Penn State say.
Indeed, if Penn State is anything to judge, the outlook on the future of tea consumption in the Gen Z population is really quite strong. The tea club presidents in particular are quite serious about their tea.
As young people experiment with tea, all indicators demonstrate that they are not only leading the charge in tea consumption, but in doing so, like many other facets of life, making it their own.
Part 3 will be out next week, and it will cover what the next generation of tea enthusiasts is drinking.
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