“When we first started Friedrichs, I didn’t like coffee”, says Colleen, one of the two owners of Friedrichs Coffee Roasters. “But I loved tea. So I knew I wanted to start small, but we were conscious of how expensive tea can get. Another thing that we saw in the tea market, was how stale and dated tea bags can get in cafes, given that they are shipped from all over and stored for a long time before they hit the customers lips.”
We wanted to be different. We wanted to go with high quality, but more common teas, so that it would be more cost effective.
While we do have some higher cost Oolong and Jasmine Teas, the majority of our teas are approachable and recognizable by people who may not necessarily be the most avid tea drinkers.
Through all of our research on tea importers and providers, we landed on a wonderful source. We source our teas through G.S. Haly, who are based out of Redwood City, CA.
The tea culture is constantly growing.
However, Tea still only accounts for about 10% of our production. We definitely have more orders in our physical locations, but we can see a shift happening among our wholesale customers.
Let’s focus on 2 reasons why people are not as wild about tea as coffee.
1. A lot of people don’t realize the benefits from tea. (We won’t get into all of the medical benefits in this post, as there are tons of articles out there)
But for example, Chai Tea has been known to aid in digestion, Nausea, pain, immunity systems, chronic disease and heart health. (1) Or take Matcha is packed with antioxidants, helps with metabolism and has detoxification properties(2) . The Mayo Clinc even suggest green teas for anti-Anti-inflammatory aid (3).
For more on the health benefits, we suggest you educate yourself through the all powerful google. There are articles for days on how you can educate your customers on tea benefits.
2. There is a misconception that loose leaf tea is intimidating, or difficult to make.
The best way, we believe, as an initial foray into loose leaf tea, is to try our Chai. We have worked directly with G.S.Haly to make a specific blend of ingredients. We blend those ourselves with assam (from the Eastern part of India). A classic Irish Breakfast is an Assam tea (if you are familiar).
We mix our assam chai to be very malty, brisk, heavy to hold up to the spices very well. Once our chai cools, it gets muddy (visually). It’s heavy, therefore it goes well with milk (lattes are perfect).
There are some really really bad Chai mixes out there. And we aren’t even talking loose leave team combinations. There are syrupy sugary intimidators out there, but once our customers try our REAL Chai, they never go back.
We’ve found this to be a gateway tea that we start people out with. It’s an easy way to get people into loose leaf tea.
– We include instructions for people who want to steep the concentrate. You don’t need any extra equipment. Don’t have a proper way to steep the tea in your shop? Here’s a tip, you can use french press to steep tea!
Check out the details below.
1 teaspoon for 8 oz.
Use tea sacs
4 minutes
We’ve seen a couple of other trends in tea lately. And understandably so, there is no waste with tea. You make it by the cup, steep it double strength and add ice. (This also means they are very high margin, with no waste. I’m speaking to you Cafe owners)
So what are some other non-intimidating teas to get started with?
German breakfast
(great with ice or / and lemon) a big hits for the summer.
Earl Grey Lavender
Our Fruit basket is a good herbal warm days as well.
If you’re feeling adventurous, try adding a ‘Tea shake’ to the menu. Simply, tea, ice, berries, and shake it up so the berries fall apart.
Fruit basket would be a good one for this (as raspberries compliments it well)
We’ve also been infusing tea with nitro. It’s very similar to the nitro-cold brew process, but produces a super creamy tea beverage. We’ve been doing it for a few years now, but it’s starting to catch on more.
At the end of the day, we’re all about providing quality coffee and tea to cafe owners around the country. Hopefully we can convey our excitement about Tea, as most focus on coffee with tea as an afterthought.
