Ready to Ware

A perfectly steeped cup of tea can be a balm to soothe a weary soul, a respite from uncertain times or just a naturally healthy beverage to enhance one’s day. As this ancient beverage grows in popularity, so too do its accoutrements. Beyond the leaves, steeping and serving good tea calls for the right teaware, which, when used correctly, adds to the entire experience. “If people drink a nice cup of tea and it is brewed correctly, they’ll notice that,” says Karen Harbour, co-founder of The Tea Spot in Boulder, Colo., which recently trademarked its Steepware line, “and then they will want to replicate that experience when they go to restaurants and when they make tea at home.”

Enter proper teaware, where things can get tricky. Ceramic or glass or iron pot? Not to mention infusers, mugs and travel accessories. While there are hundreds of different tea sets, pots and infusers in the marketplace, some guiding principles will help you pick the best ones for use in your store or restaurant, as well as for retail sale.

Function is a good starting place when evaluating new teaware, especially for foodservice use. “It’s got to be somewhat sturdy because this is something you will be using constantly,” says Chris Cason, co-founder and tea sommelier at Tavalon Tea in Brooklyn, N.Y. “That really takes center stage. The whole point [of the equipment] is to last and put up with a lot of punishment.”

To determine what kind of teaware you’ll need for your shop, evaluate how your dishware is cleaned, as well as how it will be handled in everyday use. To be sure that a teapot, mug or infusion system works for you, purchase a sample before committing to a new line, advises Linda Smith, owner and master tea blender of Divinitea in Schenectady, N.Y. “We buy a sample, and then we use it until we kill it,” Smith says. “We just don’t order things sight unseen.  A lot of things don’t work. You have to make sure something is functional and is worth the money.”

One feature of a functional teapot or mug is an appropriately sized basket or infuser. “It seems like a simple thing, but it’s not,” says Bill Waddington, owner of TeaSource in St. Paul, Minn. “Tea needs room to expand. One of the biggest problems in the past has been that some manufacturers have put in these miniscule brew baskets in large pots. Now most manufacturers are making large brew baskets.”

Then there is ease of use to consider. If you’re making a lot of tea, it needs to be done without a lot of fuss or room for error. Harbour of The Tea Spot says the purpose of the Steepware line is to turn loose-leaf-tea brewing into a facile process. “Steepware is a new housewares line to make steeping tea easy, whether in the home or shop,” she says. She recommends the Steeping Cup, which combines a porcelain cup, lid and infuser.

Teaware company For Life Design recently debuted a line of porcelain pots with silicone spouts. In foodservice, spouts are the most-often-damaged part of a teapot, Waddington says. “One of the biggest complaints of some of my customers is that they go through so many teapots,” Waddington says, adding that the new For Life pots may address this common problem.

Another functional line with an emphasis on ease of use is Bodum’s tea presses. In the early ’90s, the UK Tea Council approached Bodum with the challenge of designing a French press for tea; the company came up with a press featuring an infuser that pushes the tea leaves below the water to stop the brewing process and prevent the brewed tea from becoming bitter. “Your first cup will taste as good as your third cup,” says Jeff Malkasian, Bodum’s vice president of sales. Functionality, Malkasian adds, shouldn’t be boring. “One of our new deigns is the double-walled glass of Bora Bora, which has a double layer of air between two layers of glass, which helps to keep the tea hot.”

While function reigns supreme in foodservice, it’s also vital when it comes to home use. According to Waddington, there’s a correlation between products that are good for foodservice and those that work well at home. “I think it’s a mistake to separate the two. If there’s a flaw in a tea-brewing device for foodservice, there’s a flaw for home use. If something has a functionality issue for use in foodservice, the same functionality issue will sabotage it for use at home.”

When choosing items to retail, it’s important to be picky not just about the main products, but also with related gadgets. “A lot of people sell gadgets because they’re cute or they look good,” Smith says. That can lead to frustrated customers if it doesn’t live up to expectations. “You want to make sure the person selling you the gadget knows how you can use it,” she says. (For a thorough look at tea and coffee gadgets, see “The Missing Links,”)

Whatever teaware and gadgets you’re employing in your shop, make sure you’re not just using them, but also selling them to your customers for home use. “If you are retailing as well as serving, you need to sell what you use on the tables,” says Gregg DesRosier, executive chef at the Anaba Tea Room in Milwaukee. “That’s really going to help facilitate your retail sales. If you use a good pot, they’re going to want to buy it.”

Any teaware you sell should be touchable. “The best way you sell anything is to put it in the customers’ hands and let them play with it,” says Cason of Tavalon. “We always have one out as an example that usually has tea in it, or we’re making tea in it. Its like you’re picturing yourself in your own kitchen, and you’ve got half the sale already.” He also advises to ask wholesalers for free floor samples. “Especially if you have a good relationship with them, a lot of them will do it,” Cason says.

Once you have teaware samples, set up attractive displays or groupings. “At Crate and Barrel, you’ll notice they might have a margarita end cap with the pitchers, syrup, salt and a book,” Malkasian says. “Everything is there, and a customer can visualize using the products in their lifestyle. If you have the teapots on one end of the store and the tea somewhere else, it doesn’t have as much visual impact as if you pull it together.”

One such display might be for traveling, as portable products and on-the-go infusion systems are a growing trend for home tea use. Consumers who prefer loose-leaf tea are looking to brew that tea in the office or when they’re traveling. Bodum makes a travel tea press, and Steepware offers the Tuffy Steeper, a collapsible silicone steeping basket. “For people who travel a lot or are on the go, it’s a way to replace that tea ball that everyone has but no one uses because it’s a pain to clean and it’s a pain to fill,” Harbour says.

Tea-specific pots and infusers are also growing in popularity on the retail end. To show people how to use different pots with different teas, Samovar Tea Lounge in San Francisco recently debuted a teaware video on its Web site. “My philosophy is that tea is very simple, and it should be made more widely available,” says owner Jesse Jacobs. The video explains, for example, the highlights of using Yixing teapots made out of Yixing clay, which is porous and absorbs the flavor of the tea as it’s used. “The value of the pot increases with every use,” he says.

Jacobs expects the teaware video also will increase sales and expand his customer base. “Education is a huge foundation of what we do,” he says. “We make it approachable. People taste tea, and they end up bringing the tea home and then ordering our teaware.”

Purchase this issue

Back to Top