Tina's Cafe

When we met with Tina her South Melbourne cafe was doing well; the food was great, the coffee was great but like so many cafe's tea drinkers were being ignored.

It's an all to familiar story for tea drinkers; they queue up and wait their turn watching as the coffee drinkers are treated to a carefully choreographed multi-step process of grinding, mechanical snaps and hissing all topped off with artistic foam pattern then when it comes to their turn they order their English Breakfast tea and are quickly handed a mug of boiling water with a teabag floating in it and then asked to cough up the same $3.50 as the coffee drinkers paid for their handcrafted creation.

Compared to the cost of producing a cup of coffee the profit from a cup of tea is much better for the bottom line so it made sense for Tina to increase tea sales so she reached out to us to help her out.

First we threw away the last of those sad little bags because that's just not how tea should taste. Next we outfit Tina's cafe with some large display tins with nice big labels so her customers knew there was another option.

When it came time to select the range we consulted with Tina and decided on seven options combining the traditional with a few more exotic teas. First up the obvious picks; English Breakfast, Peppermint, Chamomile, Red Leaf Chai and then we opted for Lady Grey as an alternative to a standard Earl Grey for it's sweeter flavour and the floral Zen Sencha in place of a straight green tea.

After the teas were chosen it was necessary to swap out those tired old mugs for some small teapots, ornate teacup and saucer sets and vintage teaspoons sourced from op-shops all chosen to compliment the style of Tina's cafe.

Perhaps the hardest part of all was educating all of the staff to ensure that they always ask customers if they would like coffee or tea when taking table orders and making sure that the process for preparing tea involved just as much ceremony as was afforded the coffee drinkers.

The end result was a small outlay for new equipment, a slight increase in per-cup costs for tea (although not as much as you might think) and a big increase in the number of tea drinkers being served.

If you think your restaurant or cafe could benefit from an overhaul in it's tea service please get in touch and let Red Leaf Tea help.