Tea Time in America

“How are you spelling that? Pee… Gee… Tips?” asks Renika, a cashier at the WholeFoods store on 7th and 24th Street in Manhattan.

“I don’t know it but if it’s special tea, it will be near the ‘erbal teas at the back of the store,” she adds.

The Times this morning has an interesting article looking at the rise of England’s No 1 tea in America. For many years expats have been able to buy PG tips in New York specialist teas shops but now the brand will be found in ordinary supermarkets across the whole country thanks to a deal between Unilever and World Finer Foods.

History has taught has that Americans have not always welcomed this traditional English drink with open arms. Unilever will hope that the tea crates shipped from its Kenyan Brooke Bond planatation to the East coast of America will get a different reception to the one recieved in 1773, when the Boston tea party prompted the American revolution.

Why the sudden surge in demand for tea? Well English tea is no longer seen as a sign of oppression, but as an aid to health.

The American tea market is now worth $6.8bn (£3.4bn) a year and has quadrupled in 15 years.

Joe Simrany, president of the association, points out that “Americans never used to even think about tea. It was the drink consumed by old women. There were no young people involved in the industry. Thirty years ago we either drank coffee or iced tea and consumed 60 gallons per head per year of soft drinks, much to our detriment.”

He added that America’s health drive over the past two decades has triggered a boom in the specialty teas, credited with lower caffeine levels and antioxidants. Unilever’s other big tea brand, Lipton, occupies more than half of the US tea market, followed by Tetley, Bigelow, and Reily, the New Orleans iced tea specialist.

This is an excellent example of how even an established and successful brand can find new markets into which it can expand. And it is good news for the British economy. It may surprise you that the economy is now a strong net exporter of processed tea and coffee products as our chart below indicates.

For further reading see:

The Guardian on Saturday had an excellent article looking at the rise of another drink in America, Vodka.

Unilever