With its promises of healthful rejuvenation, invigorating refreshment, focus-inducing properties, and clean sustainable energy boost, tea continues to flourish in the beverage category. Restaurants are reporting confidence and growth as well, ending the first quarter of 2012 with strongest same store sales in the last 4 years.
The symbiosis here can't be denied. The number of tea beverages offered in restaurants grew 11.5% in the few years prior, while vertical integration in tea companies' supply chains as well as innovations in delivery systems, all enable restaurant purveyors to capture their part of this market with greater ease and confidence than ever before.

This weekend's NRA show will undoubtedly be a testament to the opportunities gourmet independent tea companies present to restaurants. As is fitting for its growing significance in the food and beverage landscape, a search of exhibitors reveals no less than 150 vendors related to tea. Two of the handful of awards for food and beverage product innovations were given to tea products this year... more

Who knew that tea would be so popular at a coffee show? An estimated 10,000 people turned out for SCAA's Exposition this year and peppered Portland with coffee and tea aficionados, growers, roasters, blenders, teasmiths, and eager consumers.

Coffee and beer flow plentifully in Portland, though the town may be more iconically known for its role in the US tea market. Among others, Tazo, Stash, Oregon Chai, Tao of Tea and more recently, Steven Smith Teamaker all had beginnings here.

I was fortunate to have shared some tea with Veerinder Chawla in his tranquil tea room, the Tao of Tea in Southeast Portland. He is a charming man of noble pursuits- he has plans to revolutionize tea production in his home country of India, starting with his own small farm collective and processing facility. Power to the tea people! I can't wait to hear more.

I was also fortunate to have sipped a flight of teas in Steve Smith's tasting room where Steve's right hand man, Tony Tellin, graciously granted us a tour of the young but busting-at-the-seams operation in their imaginative and quirky space... more

Let's be clear. It is a personal mission of mine to woo your inner tea drinker. If you drink more and better tea, there will be more of it available, in more places, at better prices. Good tea will become the norm [muahaha]! The biggest obstacle is this> what passes for "tea" in this country is detestable. Most places serve lousy, unpalatable, stale, bitter, flavorless, or otherwise awful stuff and call it tea, and people think this is all there is. At restaurants, on airplanes, in hotels, the story is the same. I hear people say "I'm not a tea drinker", which to me is like "I'm not an air breather." But who could blame them? How can something so ubiquitous be so unacceptably mediocre?

Pardon my Andy Rooney-like rant; I take issue because there is no substitute for a nice cup of tea, and preparing one couldn't be simpler. With the advent of the many newfangled teabag styles (pyramids, flow-through filters, filterbags, brew-taches, and so on) the barrier of loose leaf tea no longer exists... more