Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005
Issue link: http://baristamagazine.epubxp.com/i/804825
"A café can have great coffee and great service, but if you offer something that isn't up to par with the level of coffee you're serving, then it says something about your brand and what you do," he says. "If you have a certain level of quality, then everything should be of that level of quality." Developing a quality-minded tea pro- gram seems like an important step for a café: Tea is an essential element of any coffeehouse menu, a more mellow comple- ment to the lively coffee offerings. It be- comes a complicated topic however when you acknowledge that tea really isn't that popular in the United States. Sure, it has been a staple of households around the world for many thousands of years, and it's the world's second-most consumed beverage (water is fi rst). Still, while tea may not be the sole reason people come into your café, it is in fact a steadily grow- ing market—and a high-margin item, at that. So how do you make the most of tea in your café? Let's explore the basics of the category, what you need to know to offer a quality-focused tea program, and what the future may have in store for tea in the United States. COF F EE REIGN S SU PREM E at Temple Coffee's fi ve Sacramento, Calif.–area locations, where quality-intent baristas serve coffees sourced from the company's farm-to-cup program. But while the utmost detail goes into Temple's coffee service, the company's cafés also feature a thoroughly crafted tea program. Teas are sourced loose-leaf from an importer, blended in-house, and served seasonally. For Eton Tsuno, Temple's director of coffee and also head of the tea program, this excellence in tea is necessary to refl ect Temple's overall quality dedication. 87 www.baristamagazine.com