Specialty Coffee Retailer is a publication for owners, managers and employees of retail outlets that sell specialty coffee. Its scope includes best sales practices, supplies, business trends and anything else to assist the small coffee retailer.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/92590
Glass containers are the best way to show off tea, appealing to customers' eyes and noses... Photo courtesy of TeaSource ...but opaque airtight containers are best for both long-term storage and retail dry sales. Photo courtesy of DavidsTea down and you can say it's a house blend," Otte says. "People always go for house blends." You can also avoid the excessive sweetener that characterizes many commercial chai mixes, he adds, although he cautions that anyone planning to serve frozen chai in the summer should use a blend that's specially formulated to freeze well. Possibilities for still more tea include a second green, a second unflavored black and another herbal. Beyond that, look at oolong, white, Rooibos, and puer. Once a tea menu gets fairly extensive, Lannier recommends it—the staff or the customer? There are advantages to either approach. Obviously, when staffers do the brewing, they can control the quality more easily. But it's also an option to turn the tea and hot water over to the customer, along with a timer, and leave them in charge. "Flip the timer over, put it in the customer's hands, and keeping about 80 percent of the offerings as a permanent base and making 20 percent seasonal. That's roughly what OCF Coffee House does, Durham says. It has about a dozen tea offerings, and three of them change with the seasons. For this year's fall tea, she has her own blend, called Autumn Festival, a black tea with apples, apricots and a chai-like spice with cloves, cardamom and cinnamon. TEA EDUCATION Selecting teas is, of course, just the first step. It's important more respect," Lannier said in his Coffee Fest lecture. "They're more careful; they're more interested. information. The supplier should provide samples and be able to answer questions about all his or her products: where it comes from, how best to prepare it, what it should taste like. "We have developed this very simplified process that allows A good tea supplier can be an invaluable source of " a staff person to step in, get some very basic information and make something consistently, having confidence that it's going to be a far better experience for their customer than any other tea experience they've had, Mandala Tea, a supplier based in Winona, Minn. That "staff person" doesn't necessarily have to be the shop's " says Sarah Crawford, co-owner of owner, but it has to be someone. Tea experts recommend designating a "tea champion" among employees to be a conduit for tea information and generally oversee the program. The next step will be to structure your tea operation in terms of how the brewing gets done. Specifically, who does to educate people about tea—meaning yourself, your staff and your customers. "When people know something about tea, they treat it with they're going to take ownership of that" brewing process, Otte said in his lecture. "We operate under the philosophy that people like to play with their food. tea while it's steeping. From a practical standpoint, when evaluating infusers and other equipment, two things must be kept in mind: the leaves expand up to five times in volume while steeping, and there has to be a way to remove them quickly. That means a sac or an infuser has to have enough room (which rules out most tea balls), and it has to be removable or otherwise allow the brewing process to end. For example, teapots are available with infusers shallow enough so that the water level drops below the leaves when the first cup is poured. Even more sophisticated equipment is available for shops Then comes equipment. There are many options for holding " that are, or want to become, serious about tea. Blue Heron Coffee House, Winona, Minn., uses teapots with valves on the bottom that operate in a way similar to a French press. When the pot is pressed on top of a teacup, the tea is released through the bottom while the leaves are filtered out. This method is not only precise, says owner Larry Wolner; it allows Blue Heron to take advantage of how certain varieties of tea leaf can be brewed more than once. THREE PARAMETERS No matter who does the brewing, or how it' parameters remain the same: amount, temperature and time. One of the biggest mistakes tea servers make is using too s done, the three vital much tea. Ideally, tea should be weighed, with 3 grams usually being the right amount for an 8-ounce cup. But weighing out 3-gram portions isn't really practical unless it's done ahead of time, for instance into sacs that are prefilled and stapled shut. When it's done on the fly, it's usually more realistic to measure it out by volume, at one teaspoon per cup. Temperature is the next factor, and another potential 17