Country Style, the donut shop that has steadily trailed Tim Hortons for a place in the national fast food fabric, has seen the future in tea leaves.
Participating locations in the chain will hold an “Afternoon Tea Party” on Nov. 7 — giving anyone who walks through the door a free Tetley bag dunked in hot water and accompanying biscuit.
Riches surely await the company that manages to figure out how to give tea the national cachet of a double double. Tim’s added a loose leaf steeper to the contraptions behind many of its counters in 2004. Last month, steeped tea was added to its menu in Quebec.
Yet all the well-intentioned promotional efforts of the Tea Association of Canada haven’t generated a tipping point at which the masses start making the switch from coffee.
Starbucks bought teamaker Tazo in 1999 and has attempted to incorporate its new-agey branding into its stores ever since. Yet only now has it gotten around to launching a separate coffee-free shop — the first Tazo location is expected to open any day now in Seattle.
The concept will include a tea bar in which customers can blend their own with help from a “Tea Partner.”
When it came to attempting to conquer India, though, Starbucks has made no concerted effort to compete with all the chai in Mumbai.
Rather, coverage of its opening there last week focused on the effort to make a Frappuccino breakthrough, along with an attempt to sell India on the concept of buying lunch there.
Much like Starbucks has struggled with the ability to sell customers on food that is more complex than a muffin, trying to blend coffee and tea under the same roof could be like apples and oranges, which has opened up the marketplace to contenders who think they can specialize in the more soothing stuff.
David’s Tea has now expanded to 85 locations across the country after launching in 2008 in Montreal. Teavana, which launched 15 years ago in Atlanta, snapped up its seven-year-old Canadian counterpart Teaopia this summer for $26.9 million. A battle for long-term loose leaf loyalty has begun.
What they both can agree on is that widening the appeal of tea will require more than an orange pekoe bag dunked in a paper cup.
