Soon, your tea can be as complicatedly named and over priced as your coffee.
Famous for its mind bogglingly complex menu offering the
most specialised service man has ever heard of (eg. The Non Fat, Half Caff, Tripple
Grande, Quarter Sweet, Sugar Free Vanillia, Non-Fat Lactaid, Extra Hot, Extra
Foamy, double shot of Caramel Macchiato with chocolate syrup… and hey, since
it’s coming up for Halloween, why don’t we throw a little Pumpkin Spice on
there, make an occasion of it) and painfully hipster reputation, super-brand
Starbucks is opening… a tea shop.
More specifically, the global café chain is debuting a new
Tea Bar in New York ,
hoped to be the first of many to launch globally. Here, the specialty will be
the worlds other favourite brew, tea.
It will open under the Teavana brand, purchased by Starbucks
in 2012 for more than $600m. This will be in addition to the 300 locations
already functioning in the Us, Canada
and Mexico ,
all under a similar style to the coffee chain.
Selling the idea as offering “a wide range of unique hot
brewed and iced teas, tea lattes and distinctive sparkling and tea fusion
beverages”, this new venture sounds not dissimilar to their current service of
offering obnoxiously titled coffees that take longer to order than to drink.
Lately, specialty teas have been seen in the hands of geek
spec wearing, skinny jean clad teens and suited and booted business type folk,
as much as the bitter black stuff. Growth in commercial tea has been
exponential in recent years and this move is one expected to be followed by
other coffee chains.
It is thought that similar stores will be launched in the UK if the idea takes off in America , with the UK being the worlds seventh most
enthusiastic tea drinkers.
It seems that the humble days of milk and two sugars may be
gone, now that Starbucks menu planners have got their hands on the simple tea
leaf.
Words by Gemma Clark
