One of the things that has always surprised me about the speciality coffee world is just how much attention can go into the coffee menu, while tea can sometimes end up being treated almost as an afterthought.
A café might spend months choosing a coffee roaster, refining espresso recipes, thinking about water, grinders, milk and extraction and then put six fairly ordinary tea bags in a wooden box at the end of the counter.
I think tea deserves better than that.
More importantly, your customers increasingly expect better than that.
The good news is that you don't need a huge tea menu. In fact, I would argue that a smaller, well-thought-out range is far better than having fifteen teas that your team struggle to explain and your customers rarely order.
For most speciality coffee shops, I would start with a really good breakfast tea.
It sounds obvious, but it is still likely to be your biggest-selling tea. It needs enough body to take milk, but it should also taste good without it. We blend our own breakfast teas with exactly that in mind.
Next would be Earl Grey. Again, it is familiar, but there is a huge difference between an average Earl Grey and one made using good black tea and proper bergamot character.
Then I would bring in a green tea. A clean Japanese Sencha works particularly well because it is recognisable but still feels premium.
From there, I would add two caffeine-free options. Lemon & Ginger is always useful, and something fruit-led gives customers a completely different choice. Rooibos can work particularly well too.
That gives you a strong core range without overwhelming anyone.
But the market has changed.
Matcha has become a major part of café menus, and I don't see that disappearing. Hojicha is following behind it, particularly amongst customers who want something a little less obvious. And chai continues to be one of the easiest ways of adding a genuinely indulgent non-coffee drink to a menu.
So the modern tea menu isn't really just “tea” anymore.
It might look something like:
Bolder or English Breakfast Tea
Earl of Grey
Sencha Green
Lemon & Ginger
Red Berry Burst or Rhubarb Rooibos
Matcha Latte
Hojicha Latte
Chai Latte
That is a very strong drinks offering without becoming complicated.
The other thing I would consider is how the tea fits with your café.
If you've spent years building a reputation around provenance, speciality coffee and independent producers, your tea should tell a similar story.
Customers notice and increasingly, they ask questions.
Where does it come from? How is it made? Why have you chosen it?
Those questions are a good thing.
One of the reasons we developed Jeeves & Jericho the way we have is because I've always felt that the speciality coffee industry needed tea brands that actually understood cafés.
Not just tea companies trying to sell boxes of tea.
The difference matters.
A good café tea supplier should be able to help you with brewing, staff training, storage, presentation, menu development, matcha preparation and even thinking through which teas you actually need.
Because ultimately, the best tea menu isn't the one with the most teas.
It's the one where every tea has a reason to be there.