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
stumbling block. Oſt en, when tea doesn't come out right, the culprit is too-hot water. It's important to realize that diff erent teas need water at diff erent temperatures. Green tea, in particular, needs to be steeped at about 170° F. Even though many teas are remarkably forgiving, it's usually a bad idea to go more than 10 degrees above or below the recommended temperature. Th e problem in this regard is that many coff eehouses have cooled, then cut at the time of serving at a two-to-one proportion of water to concentrate. (Otte and others are not fans of so-called sun tea, which involves steeping in a clear jar at room temperature and exposed to direct sunlight. Th ey say it' in the refrigerator and doesn't yield better results.) only a single source of hot water that usually is about 200° F. Possible solutions include adding ice or cold water, or pouring the hot water into an intermediate vessel before it goes over the tea—a step that usually brings the temperature down 10 degrees at once. If tea becomes a big enough part of your sales, it might be worth it to install boilers to keep water at diff erent temperatures, as Blue Heron did. Time is the third factor, and the easiest to control. All you really need is a timer or timers, and a guide to steeping times that's easily accessible to your staff . Optimal steeping times for most teas range from two to fi ve minutes; a three-minute egg timer, or a pair of them, are a cheap and effi cient way to keep time. Once a sound tea menu is in place, iced tea is a natural next step—and it's not too hard. To brew iced tea, Otte said, all you need is a big container and a refrigerator. Steep an ounce of loose-leaf tea per gallon of water in the fridge overnight, and there' tea. If space and volume are concerns, an alternative is making a concentrate: 2 ounces of tea per half-gallon of hot water, steeped and s your iced s less sanitary than steeping MARKETING TEA As with everything else in the shop, a good tea program needs marketing. "Every time you make tea you're giving a product demonstration," Otte said. Signs and a sampling program, possibly with ready-brewed tea in an airpot (which is also great for drive-thru sales), are easy to implement. Displaying small quantities of each tea you sell in glass jars also helps: the sight and smell of fresh tea leaves is a powerful sales enhancement. (However, bulk storage should be done in opaque containers, as light can speed the long-term degradation of tea.) Th e bottom line is, starting a tea program in a coff eehouse why they come here, because they feel like we are trying to give them something quality as well, rather than just saying, 'Well, you have to be a coff ee drinker to get a good drink,'" Durham says. "Anything is better than a teabag, is pretty much the point." SCR WHAT IS TEA? source of all true tea: black, oolong, green and white. Botanically, this plant is the same worldwide (except for diff erences caused by climate, soil and other local factors). Th e diff erence between "colors" of tea is a diff erence in aging, and the Th e basics of tea start with Camellia sinensis, the tea plant. Th is is the oxidation goes with it. Green and white are the least aged, oolong is older, and black is oldest of all. Th e more aged the tea, the more intense the fl avor. Puer, an increasingly popular variety, is fermented by microorganisms during aging for an even stronger fl avor. Other teas are not, in the strictest sense, teas at all, since they come from native to southern Africa. Most of these have no caff eine. A signifi cant exception is yerba mate, which has more caff eine per serving than most "real" teas and is a good alternative for customers who want caff eine but not coff ee. " and Rooibos, which is made from a tea-like plant of the same name 18 doesn't take as much eff ort as you might think, and it can pay off in a big way. "I get compliments from a lot of my tea customers about plants other than Camellia sinensis. Th ese include herbals, sometimes known as "tisanes,