Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/50871
Paes-Braga taught us to look at the details no one else looks at. Supply chain logistics are essential. We're obsessed with them. At the end of the day, if the guy who's putting the product into the shipping box is kind of careless, that's going to screw the whole system up. And if something does go wrong, how fast is the error fixed? That's key to quality. Q: Your products are available on your Web site and then through your other luxury part- ners. Would it ever be possible for you to expand into something like grocery? Chan: It's hard because hotels can't hide who their supplier is any- more. One well-regarded company's VP of food and beverage told me: "Look, my guests walk into our restaurant, and they pay a lot of money. I don't want them to blog that I'm serving a tea they can get at the corner grocer for $0.10 a bag." I think now a lot of our cli- ents are worried about brand association. Sutherland: End users can Google a brand on their iPhone and imme- diately understand (and calculate) what that serving of tea cost the hotel, restaurant or café. Tea is very vis- ible in a hospitality set- ting—much more so than the brand of vin- egar used in a salad. Q: Are at-the-table Web searches really that big of a deal? Chan: It's changing the nature of the high-end market. The people everyone wants to go after are those who are 40 and under—they are the emerging consum- ers of luxury. They def- initely feel like it's OK to sit in a restaurant and Google everything. They're much more discerning than the previous generation, much more knowledge- able because of smart- phones and mobile Web. And they're the ones who have the expense accounts and stay in the nice hotels. Q: Your tea is avail- able to hotel guests in their rooms in bag and sachet form. How do you ensure the product is going to be produced well in that very non- traditional tea setting? Chan: The hot water situation in a lot of hotels is actually pretty good because we advise them to have electric kettles. They have automatic shut- off switches, which is much more important than people realize. A common error in tea infusion is the over- boiling of water, which becomes flat (meaning lower dissolved oxy- gen) and the subtleties of the tea are lost. But even if the water tem- perature is not optimal, continued on page 58 freshcup.com January 2012 57