Our mission is to make tea awesome. That means making it better, saying goodbye to dusty tea bags served in not-quite-boiling-water from the coffee machine.
EVERYONE KNOWS THAT YOU CAN'T CHARGE MORE FOR TEA, RIGHT?
Typically you see tea running at around 30p less per cup on a menu versus an equivalently sized Americano (between £1.80 to £2.40!). In fact, sometimes that difference can be up to £1 or so.
We often get asked, “what’s your recommended selling price for a cup of black tea?” - the answer is always “the same as an equivalent sized Americano”.
So we completely disagree with the premise that tea is always the cheaper option, here’s why.
APPLES VS ORANGES.
When we talk about tea, we’re talking about a completely different product - ethically produced, rolled whole leaves, brewed properly by someone who knows exactly what they’re doing all wrapped up in the story of how that tea came to be in your cup. Likening this to a standard paper tea bag is comparing apples with oranges.
It’s about looking at tea differently, changing your attitude, not changing your brand.
This approach has served us well so far and the rise of quality tea coupled with the demise of commoditised paper tea bags gives us some reassurance that we’re on the right track.
OUR SURVEY SAID...
Rather than going off a gut feeling, we polled our drinkers. These drinkers are the right people, who better to ask than those who actually care about tea? We asked our Brew Times readers to let us know whether they agreed with this statement:
“Do you agree that an awesome cup of tea should cost around the same as an awesome cup of coffee?”
We received 443 responses from folks who actually care about tea and what they drink {also note that we received way, way more responses than those L’Oreal ad campaigns so we think it’s entirely representative!}.
87% YES
Resounding, right?
WHY DOES THIS MATTER TO YOU?
Because it quantifies for you the size of your tea opportunity. Knowing that your drinkers are willing to pay more for a great product diverts the conversation away from cost, cost, cost and into value generation - much like you already do with coffee.
This has a great knock-on effect for your business. Not only does it mean an increase in revenue and cash margin, but by serving a better quality tea, you will sell more cups, create a more memorable experience and gain greater drinker loyalty. This is the tea revolution we want to see.
Of course, there’s a lot more to making tea awesome than what we can fit in this blog post and in order to increase your price that’s what you need to do. But that’s for next time, in the meantime here is some food for thought that also came back from the poll:
“I admit I never buy tea when out unless I know it's proper loose-leaf otherwise I feel ripped off paying for something I wouldn't even give to the builder”.
Next up: Find out how to actually charge more for your cups of tea.