Where To Buy Quality Tea

Summary: For over 5,000 years tea drinkers have enjoyed the taste and health benefits of high quality loose leaf tea. Those individuals that included tea in a lifestyle of exercise and diet have come to learn that teapot only tastes good, but tea also creates a feeling of well being and life satisfaction. No product has had more false starts than that of loose leaf tea however. Nor has any product had a more devoted, patient following than the proponents of loose leaf tea. These l...

For over 5,000 years tea drinkers have enjoyed the taste and health benefits of high quality loose leaf tea. Those individuals that included tea in a lifestyle of exercise and diet have come to learn that teapot only tastes good, but tea also creates a feeling of well being and life satisfaction. No product has had more false starts than that of loose leaf tea however. Nor has any product had a more devoted, patient following than the proponents of loose leaf tea. These long suffering supporters were waiting for the day that loose leaf tea would come into its own. Now, it seems, even tea vendors and tea connoisseurs will finally have their wish. The irony, of course, is that tea, next to water is still the most popular beverage in the world but that in much of North America, Western Europe and the U.K., loose leaf tea has had little more than a cult following But all that is changing now as new tea rooms are emerging and selling more and more tea and tea-based beverages and they are expanding their tea lines and selling more expensive teas. Tea, from green to black, has been getting great notices on its health-giving attributes and people have been reading these headlines and basing buying decisions on them. There are well over 1,000 tea rooms in the U.S. today, and the number is probably closer to 1,500. More and more tea-related products are being developed and sold. Better tea brewers are being placed on the market and more grocery store shelf space is being devoted to tea. Loose leaf tea is seeping through a surprising number of packaging formats and distribution channels and enlivening a rapidly growing and receptive customer base. Historical examination of comparable "natural" consumer products industries shows the emerging loose leaf tea segment exhibiting many of the same characteristics that existed within natural food and specialty coffee channels as they climbed from niche to mainstream markets. Of special note is the predominance of small, entrepreneurial companies opening up the category, while larger players playing it ultra-cautious as they test 'niche' markets. Fueling this growth is the media's huge appetite for positive tea stories. The latest development in the distribution of high quality loose leaf tea is e-commerce and the potential is enormous. E-commerce leverages the power of the internet to reach a broad audience and allows smaller players the ability to penetrate new markets and expand their customer base. The benefit of e-commerce is the convenience offered to the consumer. Orders can be placed at the customer's convenience, the e-commerce site describes the product and advises availability and delivery schedule and deliveries are mad to the customer's home or office. With the advent of search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN, tea producers and distributors can broaden their retail selling activities and reach a vastly larger market of tea drinking prospects. Accessing this market through e-commerce techniques is the wave of the future.