Why isn't there a tea chain like Starbucks?

I'm sure there are lots of reasons, but I can think of two big ones:

- Most really good teas only come into their own when you steep them multiple times. How can the proprietor convince the customer to pay enough money to support this style of brewing and drinking? By the way, one aspect of this question is, does the owner pay employees to brew the multiple steeps or pay an insurance company against the possibility of being sued by a customer with a scalded lap?

- Judging by my limited experience with Starbucks, they lose money on people drinking coffee in the store and make money on customers taking coffee out in paper cups. Coffee's taste is domineering enough to overcome the taste of a paper cup, but the same isn't true of tea.

/Lew

Coffee fans usually say that Starbucks have a terrible over-burnt taste. So, it might be that there is not a good tea chain because Starbucks itself isn't good.

Coffee is relatively simple and consistent. For teas, you have Black, puerh, green, oolong, white, and that's not even counting many variations within each group. Eash has to be brewed differently, is very sensitive to quality of water, you have to be more careful with storing and handling, water has to be heated to different temperatures. You'd have to have a huge amount of training for your staff.

Besides all that, people now eat so much oversugared, oversalted, overspiced foods and drinks that their palate can not physically appreciate very complex but weaker tastes of various teas.

Quite simply, good tea is inexpensive in form of loose leaves, but is extremely expensive in form of expertly prepared drink.

Even if a place like Starbucks specialized on a few cheap but very decent teas like inexpensive darjeeling and long jing, they would probably exhaust supplies quickly and would have to mix in lower and lower quality lots until it all becomes like supermarket generic green tea.

I have actually solved this problem. It was one of the first I tackled when I started fleshing out a business plan, unfortunately it is one of the areas I can't openly talk about as I stated in my last reply. I'd probably be behind the counter, but even still the system I have requires virtually no training and little in the way of potential error.

I believe I have it down to a point where water is of no issue at all. Tea quantity and freshness is more of a concern than water and I never thought I would get to that point. I hope that someday I get the opportunity to make it reality and share the idea, I actually think even big chains would adopt (steal) it and greatly enhance their offerings.

- Dominic

Isn't it bad enough that Starbucks has convinced Americans to drink huge amounts of lousy-quality burnt coffee, and plenty of sugar-laden coffee milkshake drinks? Do you REALLY want to see that happen to tea?

Well, I guess it is sort of happening with the whole Bubble Tea craze. Look for a nationwide Bubble Tea chain soon.

Yecch.

--scott

Wouldn't then this system be just as useful for home tea making? If that is the case, you must have found a solution that Chinese tea masters failed to find over thousands of years!

I do think it's possible by making a very complicated automatic tea maker with presets, something very bulky, in the style of Wallace and Grommit, something I myself have thought about for some time.

Anyway, since you can't talk about it. :-).

It's not that it is complicated, it is actually very simple... which is why I don't want to get into it online. It also certainly isn't something ancient tea masters would have been able to do... nor is it so precise that it would please them. But it is precise enough to produce exceptional tea that is far beyond most current offerings. I really didn't mean to sound so nebulous and secretive in my post, I was just trying to say that water temp/quality is a big hurdle that any chain/tea shop has to overcome and many fail miserably at or it becomes a nightmare of logistics... I figured out a good solution. I'd say I could produce 75% of the quality most of us here achieve with it, so again it is not perfect just the best above average balance I could create simply and efficiently.

- Dominic

After posting I realized that what you're probably meaning to do. I agree that this is probably the best course for a tea shoppe that might want to expand. This might become exteremely successful. The only way to find out is to try it, of course. One issue may be that tea is funny like that, people will teabag the cheapest lipton and be more or less happy with that, (once I remarked to a salesman in our company that his tea is going to be bitter because he left it sitting there for a long time, he answered that it's just as well because his chocolate bar is too sweet and his tea will be too bitter and he will achieve balance!). On the other hand when you get into it, well, it might be just me but I could be unhappy if an almost-perfect green or white is just a tiny bit off.

So this type of business may fall into the crack between folks who will see a tea that's not strong enough for them and costs more and those who will say they can do better at home (and cheaper for the tea of same quality). Or it might be very successful and convert & lure enough of formerly-bad-tea-drinkers and make it an attractive option for tea fans to try a fairly decent new tea away from home.

I'd love to see that, I work on my computer a lot and it'd be just perfect to have something that's like starbucks but with good tea where you can sit down for a few hours and get some work done. So, best of luck :-).

I am quite sure it takes a rather long time to develop ones palate to qppreciate fine teas.

It is not only that there are no proper offerings of good prepared tea to be had. Most potential walk in customers would not recognize a quality cup of tea if they were had one. Very few of my friends do.

Lars Stockholm