Japan. It has been passed down from parent to child and is reinforced at every level of our society. "A coff ee shop owner with a brain off ers tea. A smart coff ee
about 5 percent of beverage sales to 7 percent," Fish wrote. Keating writes that "hybrid operations (selling coff ee and
shop owner sells good tea. But even the most successful of coff ee shop owners only sell a fraction of their sales in tea. So tea as a coff ee shop profi t center, even when done well, is a small portion of sales and profi ts." Groot explains that while JP's sells excellent loose tea with
properly executive serving methods, "tea as a category runs a consistent 3 percent of sales. "Competition really boils down to so much more than tea
vs. coff ee, it is space vs. space, customer service vs. customer service, convenience vs. convenience, and cleanliness vs. cleanliness. Coff ee drinkers will come to JP's. Tea drinkers will continue to come to JP's unless they prefer a tea retailer's other amenities or that retailer provides tea-specifi c products that JP's either doesn't provide or can't," he said. Biggby CEO Fish wrote that "we have carefully watched the
tea) are winning success for specialty coff ee and tea retailer ventures now, and this will expand going forward. Why? Tea is a low capital investment whether you are a tea room adding loose (dry) tea for customers to take home or a tea or coff ee shop adding brewed tea service.
"
VARIETY NEEDED Small single-store coff ee and tea shops have struggled in the
past by limiting off erings and service. Even with limited space, a specialty coff ee operation can serve great teas in-house and for grab-and-go. Meanwhile, most specialty tea venues are awakening to the fact that off ering a one-stop shop (dry tea, tea service and more) can mean the diff erence between success and failure, Keating wrote. "But don't hold your breath when it comes to the outlook
launch of several tea concepts, but to date have not seen unit customer volume amass. Th ere appears to be a built-in bias. Coff ee is 'get up and go' with heavy traffi c concentrations in the a.m. Whereas tea is 'a relaxer/stealing a moment' built for aſt ernoon breaks." Biggby Coff ee has expanded its off erings beyond steeped tea
for large numbers of tea shops adding coff ee to their menus… it will remain at a snail's pace,
by introducing tea lattes. "Th is has moved tea as a category from Washington, N.Y., annually conducts a census of gourmet
several hundred shops. Th e national count is now 3,500, according to the Tea Association of the USA, up from 3,000 in the past two years and climbing. Th e NPD Group, a market research fi rm based in Port
Tea's pace quickened in 2012 as tea merchants opened " he added.
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