3 Easy Ways to Quickly Boost Your Tea Sales

Here’s one of the coolest things about selling tea you might not have known:

It has one of the highest profit margins of all beverages.

It takes only a few pennies to make a world-class cup of tea, but you can charge several dollars for it. (Those are phenomenal margins!) And you can’t do that with sodas, you can’t do that with coffee drinks, and you can’t do that with food.

We’re going to show you a few powerful tips we’ve learned from years of listening to our best clients and discovering what works and what doesn’t. The best part about these ideas is that they’re easy to implement and have made a massive difference in numerous tea programs around the world.

Sit back, have some tea, and read on.

1. Share More Information With Them

Often, restaurants, shops, and cafes will proudly advertise that they have “coffee from _______ company,” “meat from _______ farm,” or “beer from _______ brewery.”

But when it comes to tea, they’ll just put, “Tea.”

We’ve found that it can help boost sales significantly by simply adding the supplier’s name and 1–2 extra lines of description. For example, something like, “Tea by Art of Tea,” and adding a sentence or two about the tea being organic, hand-crafted, local, direct source, and high-quality can measurably drive more sales.

Also, another thing we’ve discovered is that naming the individual teas boosts sales. Instead of saying you carry teas, mention that you offer Earl Grey Crème, Green Pomegranate, White Coconut Crème, and others.

It makes the experience more meaningful and special and it also allows you to give descriptors behind each specific tea. Just doing a light menu edit can make all the different.

2. Promote a “Tea of the Day”

After talking to some of our top customers, we learned that their number-one selling item — day over day, week over week, and month over month — is the “tea of the day.”

What’s the tea of the day?

Whatever you would like!

It could be Passionfruit Jasmine, a matcha green tea latte, or an Organic Darjeeling tea — it’s up to you! The secret lies in promoting it as a “tea of the day.” Why? Because you’ve built loyalty and credibility with your customers over the years and they trust you to guide them to new, amazing drinks that they’ll love.

For some of our customers, this one little tweak increased sales by 30%.

To promote it, you could invest in a little sign that says: “Ask about our Tea of the Day” or “Our Tea of the Day Is: ___________”

3. Price It Right

We’ve found that it’s critical to match coffee prices with tea prices.

Sure, coffee requires a lot of beans to make a good cup of coffee. (And tea, by comparison, requires very few leaves to make a great cup of tea.)

But it’s still important to match the prices.

Ideally, the price of tea should sync up with drip coffee pricing. Thus, if your drip coffee is $3.50, we recommend charging something similar for a cup of loose-leaf tea.

This also works for finer coffee options. Let’s say you offer a premium beverage — like a single-origin coffee — that sells for $6 and you mention things like its elevation, region, etc. You could do the same with our incredible rare and single origin teas. Then, you can note the specific features about the tea… like our Fukamushi Tea, which is grown on the foothills of an active volcano in Kirishima, Kagoshima in a region known for its thick cover of fog. The forest green of the leaf is further enhanced through a deep steam process that brews to a cloudy, green nigori (turbidity) and offers a pleasant aftertaste with fresh aromatics.

Give Life To Your Tea Leaves

Ultimately, these three recommendations boil down to perception. (Pun intended.) How are you presenting tea to your customers and, thus, how do they perceive it?

It can be seen as leaves and water — or it can be seen as a custom-made and invigorating experience for your loyal customers.

Give these tips a try and see how it boosts your tea sales.