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Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/139019
on doing a good job with all the traditional offerings but also offer some of these new things." Among those new things is Organic Spring Sprout, a tea Kilogram unveiled in June from a city in China's Hubei province called Baokong. "It's a place that I don't think a lot of people are sourcing tea from," says Palas. NEW LINE: Kilogram's product line will include tea in pyramid bags, which Intelligentsia did not carry in its previous offerings. Another change to Intelligentsia's tea approach manifested in Kilogram is the addition of pyramid tea bags. While the company previously had a loose-leaf-only approach, Palas says Kilogram will offer tea in pyramids. "The new machines are able to do larger bags with coarser mesh material, and these are providing much better extraction," he says. "We can use whole-leaf teas and they have plenty of room to expand and give us good surface contact with the water." Kilogram's pyramid offerings are currently available to Intelligentsia's restaurant and hotel customers, and Palas says they will soon be more widely available. "We'll be retailing it so people can take it back to their homes or offices and brew it there," he says. "But we'll continue to use loose-leaf tea in the Intelligentsia stores." As far as the branding goes, Palas says he chose Kilogram not just because of the obvious association with tea—the product is traded in kilograms—but for a deeper meaning. "There's actually a physical kilogram, and all mass measurements are based off of it," he says. "It's a standard of sorts, and we want to be a standard of quality tea." Palas says he expects specialty tea to take off domestically in the coming years, and he wants Kilogram to be positioned at the forefront: "I'm of the belief that tea is going to be a more important beverage here in the United States, and we wanted to create something distinctly American and contemporary." —Chris Ryan light food options to folks on the go. | Stay up on all the latest headlines with our Weekly News Tasting, posted each Tuesday at freshcup.com freshcup.com July 2013 21