Contents of Fresh Cup - JAN 2012

Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.

Page 58 of 70

THE WHOLE LEAF
BY DAN LEIF Are your tea and service Four Seasons-worthy?
NICE ACCOMMODATIONS: The St. Regis in San Francisco is one of the high-end hotels carrying products from Tealeaves, a company that has grown through its involvement with the hospitality industry.
ancouver, B.C.-based Tealeaves began as a small tea
packer and retail shop in 1994. While many tea brands have grown retail or moved into mass-market sales over
the last decade and a half, Tealeaves took a different route: tailor- ing its blends and products specifically for the luxury hotel and restaurant market. Today, the company's list of clients is packed with sterling
hospitality brands, including Four Seasons, St. Regis, Mandarin Oriental and Grand Hyatt. The partnerships allow Tealeaves to put its product in front of quality-focused consumers, often in the comfort of their own $400-a-night hotel rooms—and company reps say many of those influential consumers have become regular Tealeaves customers. Fresh Cup talked with Tealeaves CEO Lana Sutherland and strat-
egy chief Garret Chan to learn more about how to approach and satisfy the demanding world of high-end hospitality.
Q: Did you aim to enter the hotel/restaurant segment when you first started the company? Sutherland: No. We were convinced we would have dozens of tearooms throughout North American within a few years. But instead, fate intervened. Ruy Paes-Braga [of Four Seasons] discov-
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ered, taught, mentored and encouraged us to showcase our tea- blending skills in the hospitality space. I still remember the first time we tasted our teas with chefs and how they were so excited to taste very different tea palate profiles. Chan: Paes-Braga is known as the godfather of Four Seasons. He was the first general manager of the first Four Seasons and trained something like half of all the other GMs across the world. He wandered into our tearoom one day and liked our tea recipes. He encouraged us to get into the wholesale business—starting with his hotel in Vancouver. He basically taught us the business, establishing the standards we still follow today. We owe a lot to Four Seasons for giving us our start.
Q: What did you learn from him that's been so vital to working with Four Seasons and other luxury brands? Sutherland: In addition to making the best teas, we learned our job requires us to have impeccable supply-chain logistics, quality assurance and quality-control standards. Making world-class tea is only one aspect. Chan: At Four Seasons, you'll never hear the door slam one room over and you'll never hear the toilet run, and that's because everyone in the company is so diligent about quality control.
©WENDY MACLAURIN RICHARDSON