Tea quote #15

“The art of tea, whichever way you drink it, or whichever country you are from, has one underlining thread for all of us. It is the cultivation of yourself as you follow the ceremony of preparing your tea, the way in which you make your tea, how and where you drink it, and with whom. Making a cup of tea creates a space for just being.”
― Nicola Salter

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Loose or bagged tea?

I have wanted to write a post about this issue for a while, but felt I had to do some background reading first.  Now that I have, it’s time for this post.

The idea of selling loose leaf tea is a personal motivation of mine.  I am an environmentally and health conscious person who tries to lessen my impact on the world where possible.  I also understand that the world we live in, it’s not always possible to do this all time but by being mindful and doing what I can is a start.

So, I could easily sell bagged tea and I’m sure people would buy it, however the reasons for only selling loose are more in line with my personal, social and environmental concerns which of course influence the type of business I would like to run.  I’m not in this to ‘make a quick buck’ and my social conscious doesn’t allow me to sell items which I feel are causing harm to people or the environment.  It’s a tricky scenario and it can be difficult to avoid affecting something/someone somewhere, however all you can do is try your best to be as socially conscious as possible.

Anyway, the question today that I want to discuss is loose or bagged?  This isn’t even a new topic, it’s been in discussions for years now, but I still get asked why my tea is not bagged and why it’s just loose tea that I sell, so with that in mind I think it’s still a relevant discussion.

There are 2 main reasons why I think loose is better than bagged.

1. It tastes better because it’s a better quality tea.  When I tell people about my tea shop they always assume that the tea is bagged.  I have to explain that all tea begins as loose and is processed to end up bags.  The leaves are initially whole and then packed into large bags to be sold as whole loose leaf tea.  This has a huge effect on the taste, in my opinion.  The whole leaves represent the top quality tea, and as the remaining leaves are picked, processed and bits fall off, are cut and crushed into smaller pieces etc, the remaining bits (fannings & dust) are collected at the end and put into the lower grade teas and teabags.

2. Bagged teas are wasteful and not environmentally friendly.  Think about the packaging involved just to make one cup of tea.  All the paper, staples, plastic and ink.  Just to wrap up one little teabag in an individual bag and then put those bags in a box and cover it in plastic?  Even the new teabags with loose tea inside are not always what they might appear to be.  There have been a few discussions online (here & here) about this issue and it appears a few tea companies have now decided to take out the ‘biodegradable’ label from the teabag description as it’s misleading.  There was also an article in the Guardian which highlighted the issues involved with composting teabags.

Have you had problems composting or what do you think about teabags?

So there you have it.  Two reasons why we only sell loose leaf tea at teageeks.com and I won’t say that we’ll never use teabags and I am looking to find teabags that you can use at home to make your tea and to make tea for on-the-move, but the search continues for a safe and environmentally friendly option.  Do you know of any?  Let me know!

Read more at wikipedia about the different types of grades of tea here.

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Matcha smoothie shot

So for the past couple of weeks I have been making matcha shots and having them in the morning.  So far I’ve noticed that I’m much perkier throughout the whole day (even my supervisor at work said I had been particularly chirpy in the past couple of weeks) and I don’t seem to be yawning as much as I did before.  So I’ll continue to keep it up.

So I make the smoothie by putting in around 200-250ml of milk (I’ve used hemp & soya so far) and then a level teaspoon of matcha into my blender.  This was actually quite strong tasting even for me!  The pic below is proof of how lovely and green it was!  The last time I made it I only put in a half tsp and the taste of the matcha wasn’t as strong.  I’d recommend experimenting and see what strength you prefer.  I then divide this up into 2/3 shots and pop them in the fridge, ready for the next few mornings.  So easy!

I also added a banana one day, but by the next day the shot has seemed quite oily.  Next time, I’d pour out 2 shots and then add half a banana to the remainder and drink it that day.  I think adding some nuts or seeds might be next on the list.

http://instagram.com/p/sR5zlFGJsm/?modal=true

 

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Business: ideas, ideas, ideas, focus, focus, focus!

As much as I would like to write about the wide range of skills and knowledge I’ve learned since journeying into the world of business, I feel that tackling one topic or one small area at a time would be more beneficial and keep me focussed.  So, this post will be about the actual physical setting up of your business (which does of course encompass a great deal of other areas; marketing, research, website development etc etc) however I’ll give an overview just now and tackle each of those other topics in time.  There’s no point in me writing about everything in one post!

So, when I was looking at actually setting up a business, I was swamped with ideas.  I had too many to be honest and no real idea of what would work and what wouldn’t.  I’m still learning this, by the way!  I had about 3 different types of tea shops that I wanted to open and had even more ideas about how they would look, what they would sell and what type of customer I would have in each of these.  This was entirely unrealistic looking back and if I could turn back time, I would definitely have taken more time to focus on what I really wanted to do and why and worked from there.  I think part of me wanted to please every type of customer and stretch out my ideas to cover everything.  When really, I should have concentrated on what I wanted to sell and how to make that happen.  That’s not to say that it wasn’t a good learning exercise and I’ve eventually got where I am today because of the evolutionary style process I’ve been through, but with a bit of planning and organising I should have perhaps spent less time on ideas that I didn’t pursue.

I now have a yearly plan for each area of the business (marketing, research, admin, finances etc) with my goals for each area at the end of each 6 month period and within each month the tasks which will get me to the 6 month goal.  This sits on my wall and can be updated or changed every 6 months.  This means that my tasks are easy to see and I can see easily what they are contributing towards.  So far, this is working out well for me.

Although it’s great to be creative and come up with a million ideas, only one or a few of them is really going to end up being realised.  So, if you’re starting out with some ideas, then sit down and really ask yourself what you want to achieve and how to get there.  The steps might change over time and your destination might too, but at least you know you’re on the path 🙂

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Iced tea…

Well, it’s still sunny outside and while the good weather is still here, I thought I’d share some iced tea ideas with you.  It’s pretty simple to make iced tea (depending on what part of the world you’re in).  For me, just simply adding cold water to the tea leaves and leaving in the fridge for a few hours is usually enough (sometimes overnight).  I would use about a teaspoon or two of tea for about 500ml of water.

Some teas taste much better iced as well!  You could always add some lemonade to the teas to add a bit of fizz or use the iced tea as a base for some sort of fruit punch.  Plenty of ideas and I’ll post any experiments I concoct up so make sure you do the same 🙂