Tea is quite the trend. You’ll be seeing more of it in more places—some unexpected. In the past few decades, the U.S. tea market has grown from $1.8 billion to $10.4 billion, according to the U.S. Tea Association. The beverage enjoys a health halo that coffee can never measure up to. Think herbal tea. Or think green tea. It’s easy to recall some news segment or magazine article listing it as an antioxidant super beverage. That may be why matcha tea is enjoying its moment in top-10 lists right now.
I recently talked to a few restaurant operators for a Restaurant Business article I was writing about tea, and Marc Graubart, founder of office building deli chain SubRoc, explained why he believes his Green Tea Matcha Frappe is so wildly popular at the 17 locations. Besides the fact that consumers recognize the healthy matcha word, having seen the green tea at other locales (think Starbucks), the beverage also satisfies the sweet tooth. Graubart is riding the waves created by the big names.
Jamba Juice has offered a Matcha Green Tea Blast smoothie on its menu since 2006. Smoothie King now has a Green Tea Tango made with matcha green tea, choice of one fruit, vanilla frozen yogurt and a few of their popular powder enhancements.
Tea has another sweet mix-in advantage over coffee. It goes well combined with fruit juices. The long-loved Arnold Palmer combo of lemonade and tea is just the beginning. Last July, Max and Erma’s introduced Tropical Green Tea to its beverage menu—a combination of tea with mango and passion fruit juices.
Combining tea and juice allows restaurants to charge more with little added cost. Philadelphia-based Café Fulya centers on Turkish cuisine and sells a lot of apricot, mango, peach and sour cherry juices. Owner Tristan English discovered he could make a new beverage out of the juices by adding tea. He changes the featured tea/juice combination “special” each day, charging an extra 50 cents when combining the two. Some popular blends are raspberry hibiscus tea mixed with peach juice; lavender tea with apricot juice; and lemon ginger tea with mango juice.
What’s next? Savory. I believe we will see more tea-based soup. Actually, this is where the definition of tea could get a little murky. Many Asian cultures already make soup broth from exotic, healthful herbs. So it wouldn’t be a stretch to simply add the word “tea” to the name of an herbaceous soup and attract Americans who are newly in the herbal tea discovery process.
One of my favorite Malaysian dishes is bak-kut-teh, which translated, means “meat bone tea.” It’s a long-simmered soup of pork ribs with a broth made of such ingredients as angelica peppers, cinnamon, star anise, garlic and assorted other unpronounceable herbs. The broth tastes both medicinal and savory, giving the sensation that you’ve just eaten something amazingly healthful.
I think an inventive chef could focus on tea and Asian soup and come up with something appropriately tea-named. Maybe you already know of some.
Let me know what you think.
Jody
