Zoomdweebie
New member
Sorry this is long... I promise it's worth it...
I don't drink coffee. I'm sorry, but it just tastes like muddy, burnt yuck to me. But I love iced tea. As someone who has been dragged along to coffeehouses by friends, I have to say that I'm always a little surprised by the way coffeehouses put so much thought and care into their selection of coffees and so very little into their iced tea offerings.
I've had iced teas that were clearly run through a coffee pot brewer (and tasted like it! Yuck!), and iced teas that were made with commercial iced tea brewers that met one or more of the following distasteful qualities: they were made with the cheapest tea available; they were over-steeped or under-steeped; they were not made with enough actual tea and tasted mostly like water; they had been sitting in a tea urn since the beginning of time; and/or they are rarely offered with lemon and sometimes offered with lemon, but no teaspoon (a pet peeve, and perhaps nitpicking a little, but still...).
The point is, I wonder how many potential customers you are giving up if you don't care as much about your iced tea as you do about your coffee. I'm just saying that I personally will never suggest to anyone that we meet at a coffeehouse. But if I knew of one that made great iced teas, that would change in an instant. And I am sure there are more people like me out there.
So, I kind of have an ulterior motive in writing this today, because I've created a business that manufactures specialty organic flavored iced teas in almost 100 different flavors of organic black tea, green tea, white tea, and even caffeine-free African honeybush. I'm not trying to spam your forums or anything, and this is not a sales pitch. Really, I'm just doing a little market research, though if any of you want to buy some tea from me, I certainly wouldn't mind. But what I really want to know from you coffeehouse owners is this: I know everyone is used to working with tea in the way that they are working with it now, but if I could show you a better way, that maybe took just a little extra time, would you consider changing the way you do things?
What I'm getting at is this: we package our teas individually in oversized teabags that yield 2-quarts of premium iced tea at a time. We package them that way to keep them at optimal freshness (teas are very susceptible to absorbing other flavors and aromas around them (particularly in a coffeehouse, I might add)). So our teas are packaged individually in foil bags for resale individually. They retail for $2.99 or 4 for $10 or 10 for $20, and if you buy from us wholesale, you could make 37.5%-58% margin just selling the packaged teas, but if you served them and charged your customers by the pitcher for them, you could make considerably more, and all it would take is ripping open a foil pouch, dropping the teabag into a pitcher or carafe, pulling some hot water from your coffee machine spigot and steeping the bag for 2 minutes or less before filling up the rest of the pitcher with ice and water.
My question is simply this: Is this something that you think coffeehouses would ever be willing to do? Or am I wasting my time because no one wants to take the time to properly prepare iced tea by the pitcher? The only tricky part here is that to steep the tea properly, you really need to be attentive. If you leave tea in water that is too hot for too long, the water begins to break down the woody tissues in the plant and it releases tannins into the tea, which makes it bitter. Nobody wants bitter, over-steeped iced tea. With green teas and white teas, you might need a special temperature-controlled electric water kettle ($50-60?), because boiling water will destroy green and white teas.
So, am I asking too much of coffeehouses, or is this something you think some of the finer establishments might be interested in? Thanks for taking the time to read this. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
I don't drink coffee. I'm sorry, but it just tastes like muddy, burnt yuck to me. But I love iced tea. As someone who has been dragged along to coffeehouses by friends, I have to say that I'm always a little surprised by the way coffeehouses put so much thought and care into their selection of coffees and so very little into their iced tea offerings.
I've had iced teas that were clearly run through a coffee pot brewer (and tasted like it! Yuck!), and iced teas that were made with commercial iced tea brewers that met one or more of the following distasteful qualities: they were made with the cheapest tea available; they were over-steeped or under-steeped; they were not made with enough actual tea and tasted mostly like water; they had been sitting in a tea urn since the beginning of time; and/or they are rarely offered with lemon and sometimes offered with lemon, but no teaspoon (a pet peeve, and perhaps nitpicking a little, but still...).
The point is, I wonder how many potential customers you are giving up if you don't care as much about your iced tea as you do about your coffee. I'm just saying that I personally will never suggest to anyone that we meet at a coffeehouse. But if I knew of one that made great iced teas, that would change in an instant. And I am sure there are more people like me out there.
So, I kind of have an ulterior motive in writing this today, because I've created a business that manufactures specialty organic flavored iced teas in almost 100 different flavors of organic black tea, green tea, white tea, and even caffeine-free African honeybush. I'm not trying to spam your forums or anything, and this is not a sales pitch. Really, I'm just doing a little market research, though if any of you want to buy some tea from me, I certainly wouldn't mind. But what I really want to know from you coffeehouse owners is this: I know everyone is used to working with tea in the way that they are working with it now, but if I could show you a better way, that maybe took just a little extra time, would you consider changing the way you do things?
What I'm getting at is this: we package our teas individually in oversized teabags that yield 2-quarts of premium iced tea at a time. We package them that way to keep them at optimal freshness (teas are very susceptible to absorbing other flavors and aromas around them (particularly in a coffeehouse, I might add)). So our teas are packaged individually in foil bags for resale individually. They retail for $2.99 or 4 for $10 or 10 for $20, and if you buy from us wholesale, you could make 37.5%-58% margin just selling the packaged teas, but if you served them and charged your customers by the pitcher for them, you could make considerably more, and all it would take is ripping open a foil pouch, dropping the teabag into a pitcher or carafe, pulling some hot water from your coffee machine spigot and steeping the bag for 2 minutes or less before filling up the rest of the pitcher with ice and water.
My question is simply this: Is this something that you think coffeehouses would ever be willing to do? Or am I wasting my time because no one wants to take the time to properly prepare iced tea by the pitcher? The only tricky part here is that to steep the tea properly, you really need to be attentive. If you leave tea in water that is too hot for too long, the water begins to break down the woody tissues in the plant and it releases tannins into the tea, which makes it bitter. Nobody wants bitter, over-steeped iced tea. With green teas and white teas, you might need a special temperature-controlled electric water kettle ($50-60?), because boiling water will destroy green and white teas.
So, am I asking too much of coffeehouses, or is this something you think some of the finer establishments might be interested in? Thanks for taking the time to read this. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
