I’ve tried an awful lot of chai over the years.
Some brilliant. Some incredibly sweet. Some that taste more like syrup than tea. And some where you would be hard pushed to find much spice at all.
So, if you are choosing a chai for your café, there is one thing I would always recommend doing first.
Taste it before you look at the price.
It sounds obvious, but chai is one of those products where bottle price, serving cost and margins can quickly take over the conversation.
Before any of that, you need to know if you actually want to drink it.
Start with the flavour
For me, chai should taste like tea and spice.
You should be able to pick out the warmth of cinnamon, the fragrance of cardamom, the kick of ginger and the depth of cloves. There should be layers to it.
In other words, it should have character.
That was a big part of the thinking behind our Jeeves & Jericho Chai Fusion. We wanted to create something that tasted brewed rather than manufactured, with the tea and spices doing the talking.
Because if the first thing you taste is sugar, something has gone a bit wrong.
Get the sweetness right
Of course, customers expect some sweetness in a chai latte. It is part of what makes the drink so comforting.
But there is a balance.
Too much sugar can make the first sip seem impressive, but halfway through the cup it starts to become a different story.
A good chai should keep you coming back for the next sip. The sweetness should bring the spices together, not bury them.
Think about the people making it
Great flavour is essential, but a café chai also needs to work behind the bar.
This is where a good liquid chai concentrate really earns its place.
On a quiet Tuesday afternoon, making an elaborate drink is one thing. During a packed Saturday morning service, it is quite another.
Your recipe needs to be simple enough that every member of the team can make the same great chai every time.
Measure the chai. Add the milk. Serve.
Simple.
Consistency might not be the most exciting part of choosing a chai, but your customers should get the same drink regardless of who happens to be behind the machine.
Speed matters
A drink can taste incredible, but if it takes three minutes to make during your busiest service, it is going to cause problems.
Your chai should fit naturally into the way your bar works.
That does not mean sacrificing quality for convenience. The best products give you both.
A good concentrate lets your baristas make something full of flavour and character without adding unnecessary steps when there is a queue out of the door.
Your baristas will thank you for it.
Try it every way your customers will
Do not just taste a chai once and make a decision.
Put it through its paces.
Try it hot with dairy milk.
Try it with oat milk. MOMA is our favourite.
Pour it over ice.
Add a shot of espresso and make a dirty chai.
A good chai concentrate should have enough character to work across all of them.
This matters even more as customers get more adventurous with chai. The classic hot chai latte is not going anywhere, but iced chai, dirty chai and new flavour combinations give cafés plenty of room to play.
Your chai should be able to keep up.
Look at cost per cup, not cost per bottle
Now we can talk about price.
A cheaper bottle does not necessarily mean a cheaper drink.
If one concentrate requires twice as much product per serving, that attractive bottle price can become much less attractive once you do the maths.
Work out exactly how many drinks you can make from each bottle and calculate the real cost per serving.
It is a much more useful number.
More importantly, look at that cost alongside flavour, consistency and speed.
The cheapest chai on the shelf is not much of a saving if nobody comes back for another one.
Choose the supplier as well as the chai
This is something that is easy to overlook when you are tasting samples.
You are not only choosing what is inside the bottle. You are choosing the people behind it too.
Can they help train your team?
Can you actually speak to someone when you need them?
Can they supply you consistently?
Do they understand cafés and the realities of service?
Can they help you create something new when you want to shake up the menu?
Those things become much more important once chai is a permanent fixture on your bar.
The best way to choose
My advice is simple.
Get three or four chai concentrates together. Use exactly the same milk, quantities and serving size for each one. Make them side by side and taste them blind.
Forget the branding. Forget the bottle price for a moment. Forget what you think you are supposed to prefer.
Taste the tea.
Taste the spices.
Think about which cup you would happily finish and which one you would order again tomorrow.
You will usually know pretty quickly which chai has earned its place on your menu.
And once you have found one with real character, then you can start having some fun with it.