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: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/103518
JACK'S BLEND It pays to learn about tea A by Jack Groot bout a year and a half ago I was invited to be a part of the its first retail store in Seattle. Starbucks recently purchased World Tea Expo, North America's largest tea trade show. I Teavana, the largest national tea store chain. Argo, Adagio was part of the show because of my knowledge in retail-related and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf are the main chain tea stores, issues, not any particular tea expertise. Although I consider and independent tea shops are popping up more frequently. myself a novice in all things tea, we have, over the years, Although tea stores will not eclipse coffee shops in our lifetime, consistently employed a continuous improvement mindset in tea as a product will. I don't have the space in my column to share much about our operations, and that includes our tea program. As an educator at the show I was given full access to the tea, but here are a couple of very interesting things I've educational track. I was able to audit any class, and took learned. All tea comes from one plant, camellia sinensis. All advantage of what was a great learning experience. The most the varieties of tea are created after the leaves are removed important for me was the World Origin Tasting Tour, a full from the tea plant. The different teas—black, green, oolong and more—all day of sampling teas from seven nations: Sri Lanka, India, China, Japan, Kenya, Nepal and Taiwan. Over the course of come from variations in how the tea leaf is processed or eight hours we sampled five to eight teas from each country, handled after harvesting. To make green tea, heat is used learning about the nation, its tea-growing regions and tea to stop the enzymatic breakdown of the leaf 's chlorophyll. processing methods, all while tasting the best of what they To make black tea, the enzymes are allowed to fully oxidate the leaves. had to offer. A good example is to think autumn and leaves falling Although I major in coffee and consider myself a "tea newbie," I have been a tea drinker for many years. My off the tree. The leaves turn dark brown because enzymes personal favorite has always been Earl Grey, especially when destroy the leaf 's chlorophyll. Try this: Take a green leaf off served white (with cream). But during the Tasting Tour I a tree and lightly heat it in a pan on the stove. Doing so will was served almost exclusively green or oolong teas, a new deactivate the enzymatic process and the leaf will be dead, but remain green. experience for me. There is so much to learn about tea. Matter of fact, at this If I were to ask for a show of hands right now on how many of you drink tea, I'd see most hands raised. But my next point I feel as if there is more to learn in tea than there is in question—how many of you drink green tea?—would see a coffee. The important thing for us coffee folk to learn is this: majority of hands go down. Tea drinking stats for America Tea is an important beverage to serve well in your coffee shop. show that on any given day 50 percent of Americans drink A good variety, properly prepared and served, will go a long tea. Of that number, 80 percent of consumption is black tea, way to building the tea profit center of you store. To read more about tea and how to implement a simple, but about 19 percent is green tea, and fully 85 percent of tea is effective tea program in your shop, go to my blog post: http:// drunk iced. I still remember my first couple of green tea experiences. bit.ly/teaprogram. SCR I'm sure the water temperature wasn't correct (water at too high a temperature turns green tea bitter), and the tea I tasted was probably not the highest quality, but let's just say I wasn't looking to dump my Earl Grey anytime soon. I perceived this whole green tea "thing" as a healthy decision (it was especially Jack Groot owns JP's Coffee in Holland, Mich. He also provides coffee marketed that way in the early days), and I don't drink stuff business consulting and training through the Midwest Barista School just because it's healthy. (MBS) and On Track Coffee Consulting. Also, check out Jack's new blog, Fast-forward to what is happening today. The tea industry "Jack Groot's blog – confessions of a coffee shop owner" at www.coffeegroot. has eclipsed the coffee industry in growth numbers (tea is com where you can read more from Jack's two decades as a coffee shop growing at 8 percent, coffee at less than 7 percent), and tea is owner and sign up for the MBS newsletter. Jack can be reached at jack@ getting a lot of notice. Tazo, owned by Starbucks, just opened jpscoffee.com or 866-321-4MBS. 8