The Tea Association of the USA, Inc.

Before jumping into the promotion of National Hot Tea Month, take a look at your tea program’s current marketing plan. How aggressively do you promote your tea throughout the year? Do you offer a wide range of tea products that you can incorporate into the campaign? Check your inventory. If you’re going to gear up for this promotion, make sure your stock is fresh and up-to-date. Check with your supplier to make sure you have current information on recent tea trends. Educate yourself about your product and be prepared to pass that knowledge and enthusiasm on to your customers. Nothing could be worse than promoting and selling a bad experience.

Look at National Hot Tea Month as an opportunity to fine-tune your tea selection. Do you offer enough high-end teas for your staff to up sell? Bringing in some monthly specials may help make your campaign more appealing to employees and customers. Ask your supplier if there are some obvious upgrades to teas that already sell well in your shop. “National Hot Tea Month is a great chance for retailers to introduce higher-end teas they may have been wanting to add without dramatically changing their menu boards on a hunch,” says Shashank Goel, chairman of the Specialty Tea Institute, a division of the Tea Association.

“Having a separate, additional menu for the month of January will give retailers another tool to highlight the fact that this is a special promotion, and it will provide a chance to take a look at some sales figures before permanently adding any items to an existing tea program.”

If you create promotional fliers by the end of November, you’ll be ready to begin promoting National Hot Tea Month in December, when you’ll want to capture important holiday sales. During the busy holiday season, your customers will appreciate quick and easy ways to take care of their Christmas list. For the month of January, offer several tea classes in the evening and pre-sell the seats as holiday gifts. Or offer a 10-cup Tea Card to be used throughout January for a special discount. The holiday season is a busy time for everyone, and the idea of taking on yet another promotion may seem like bad timing. But think forward two weeks into January and you’ll be glad you have an exciting promotion in your corner.

Touting the health benefits of tea is the most recent trend in marketing the beverage, and this can become an interesting part of your National Hot Tea Month campaign. The Tea Association has some wonderful pamphlets listing many of the healthful benefits of drinking tea. Having these pamphlets available for your customers to read or take home may help your staff sell more tea. Another way to sell more tea depends on your knowledge of the flavor and unique characteristics of the teas you stock. Break your menu down for your staff using categories. The first category is all of your teas that have a green flavor profile. Next are all the teas that have some type of flavoring or scent. Keep breaking these down until every tea in your list is covered at least once. Often you will have the same tea in multiple categories. Once you have broken down your list, your staff can determine the best way to cross-sell your tea program. Customer One has always appreciated your Dragon Well teas. By finding some of the other teas in that same category, you can help your customer find their new favorite tea. How much you want to talk about the health benefits versus the differences in flavor and characteristics depends on your market. It won’t be a bad idea to have some information on both.

Don’t let this year’s National Hot Tea Month pass you by. It’s a wonderful opportunity to promote your shop, support the industry and get your customers energized about drinking premium tea. For more information about this campaign and other special retailer programs, contact the Tea Association of the USA and the Specialty Tea Institute at 212/986-9415.

Jeff Bacon is directory of marketing for The G.S. Haly Company, an importer of fine teas based in Redwood City, California. He can be reached at 650/367-7601.