I was a coffee addict when I was younger, but if you open my kitchen cabinet now, you’ll find several packs of Tetley tea bags (standard, masala, ginger, lemon, Earl Gray and green tea), a jar of Dabur honey, several packs of Equal sachets and a lonesome jar of Nescafe Classic coffee.
My usual breakfast routine is to put in two tea bags and three mugs of water in a carafe, put it in the microwave, set the timer for three minutes, add some cut fruits to a large bowl of Good Earth museli, take out the carafe from the microwave, add a sachet of Equal to it, find the book I was reading when I fell asleep and sit down on my dining table for a half an hour date with myself.
At office, the canteen boy has express instructions to bring me a cup of black tea every hour, and I’m not even counting the many cups a day I end up having with my visitors.
Even at coffee chains, I almost never order coffee anymore. I once loved the coffee at Barista, but my usual order now is a cup of Earl Gray tea. The only coffee I could ever drink at Cafe Coffee Day was the Vegan Shake (cold black coffee shaken with cream and ice), which I now order without cream or sugar, on the rare occasion when I find myself in one of their outlets. I visit Mocha more for food and wine than coffee, but I have to say that their Cafe Zabaglione (warm black coffee shaken with with egg-white, wine and cinnamon) is truly outstanding.
I still make coffee sometimes – cold black coffee poured over ice cubes in a long glass on a hot Sunday afternoon, or a coffee martini in a chilled martini glass on a Saturday night – but my days of sipping hot steaming coffee from a brown coffee mug are clearly over.
Our routines describe – and often define – who we are and the absence of coffee from my daily routine probably says a thing or two about me.
If I were to believe Santosh Desai – who gave a fascinating talk on tea versus coffee drinking behavior (amongst other things) at a recent marketing seminar for Tata managers – the shift from coffee to tea should tell me that I’m growing old(er).
Indeed, while coffee conjures up images of young couples sipping steaming coffee from cool-looking mugs at a hip cafe, tea brings to mind images of old ladies fussing over dainty tea cups in their living rooms. Coffee brands have capitalized on this imagery and claimed the “young” positioning for themselves, while tea brands have been more or less satisfied with their “family” positioning.
I’ll be foolish to predict that this will change anytime soon, but let me point out some trends that are worth watching out for.
I see an increasingly strong trend of young people consuming tea in ways that are dramatically different from how their parents consumed it. Black tea, green tea and iced tea are all part of this trend and the tea cocktails that I sometimes serve at my parties are pretty popular amongst my guests.
One reason why tea has the potential to become popular with young people is the perception that tea, unlike coffee, is good for health. I think that there exists a huge uptapped opportunity to position tea as a health drink. Tea as a health drink is not a new idea, but so far trade associations, and not tea brands, have been the ones to promote it.
It is time, I think, for a tea brand targeted at the young, on the health drink positioning.
Even more, it is time, I think, for a national level tea bar chain. All the coffee chains now have full-fledged tea menus and Oxford Char Bar, Camellia (via Yahoo) and Infinitea (via Rediff) have already piloted the tea bar concept.
Coffee might have some serious competition from tea very soon.
