I don’t blend all of my teas. There … I’ve said it! I haven’t been keeping it a secret. I swear. Anytime someone asks me via email or at a tea event, I am always upfront about the fact that I don’t create every blend. So imagine my surprise when Joy’s Teaspoon got called out for it!
I was recently doing a little late night reading on Steepster. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a community of dedicated tea drinkers that sip together, chat together, and literally mail tea to one another. I enjoy Steepster for a number of reasons. As an avid tea drinker, I like to hear people’s opinions of new teas and products in the marketplace. There are reviewers and contributors on the chat boards that make me laugh and I am always scanning for their latest posts. As a business owner, the feedback from drinkers that have had Joy’s Teaspoon teas is invaluable and I read every single review.
A couple of months ago there was a post about Dethlefsen & Balk on the chat boards that caught my eye. I have been working with them since the day that I launched Joy’s Teaspoon and still carry a number of their teas in my collection. Long story short, the author was upset that there were companies reselling Dethlefsen & Balk teas and claiming them as our own. I was indignant. I was upset. He called me lazy. As you might have guessed, this was the first time I had ever read anything negative about Joy’s Teaspoon!
Once I got over my pity party for one (read: the next day), I started to reread the post and realized that he was really onto something. I had never claimed those blends were blended by me – not on the site, not on my blog, not on my packaging. However, I hadn’t posted anything on the site that said otherwise either. In my personal life, I don’t feed my family anything with high fructose corn syrup or food colorings, we don’t eat anything processed, and we went vegetarian in January. I want to know what’s in my food, where it’s from, and how it’s made. In short, I think that the food industry in general is so shrouded in deception and lobbying that I don’t trust anything. The best part – my own site wasn’t transparent enough! Swallowing crow is so much more painful when you’re a vegetarian.
My action plan: Be More Transparent!
Step 1 – I do still purchase blended teas from Dethlefsen & Balk and a handful of others that I feel are consistent and good at what they do. I buy many of my orthodox and unblended teas directly from growers. At this moment, I am awaiting a shipment of teas directly from the Kenyan growers who have processed them! And then there are a select few that I have blended on my own.
Step 2 – On that note, over these next couple of weeks, I will be adding a “Sourcing” section to each of my teas that will notate whether the tea has been sourced via a third party, is direct from a grower, or was blended in-house. That “Sourcing” information will also include harvest dates where applicable and when available.
Step 3 – In the next month, via social media, I will be launching a chat with tea drinkers to find out what is most important to them, what they want to know, and who they think is doing it right. Based on those findings, I will make changes to JoysTeaspoon.com.
In retrospect, I should have seen this coming. The tea industry as a whole is an ancient one. Here in the U.S., however, it is growing so rapidly that it’s hard to keep up with all of the information and new companies springing up. Consumers are more informed and making decisions based on information, not just on pretty packaging. Those same consumers are beginning to realize that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of tea companies that are purchasing teas from larger wholesalers and reselling them under their own brand. I would love to know who you think is doing it right? What do you like to see when you are interested in trying a tea? What information is most important to you?
Hey, thanks for posting this – we are looking into blending our own teas/getting some blends but it will completely change what we say on our website – that we currently source directly from farmers in China – which IS what we currently do but if we starting getting in blends we will have to think very carefully that it won’t change our ethos, why consumers choose us etc. The more companies there are selling tea – the more choice consumers have which is great for them but the easier it is becoming for tea companies to slip under the radar if they aren’t doing things right! Joy’s Teaspoon looks great though and I think your website is very clear :)
Good for you. It’s easier said than done to take feedback to heart and make changes. I agree that consumers need information in order to make the best choices for themselves. For me, it doesn’t really matter who did the blending, it’s about whether I like the taste. I also want to trust the company I’m buying tea from and know they’re responsible with their sourcing.
We are retailers, not blenders. I have stated on our website, and to customers and tea bloggers/sites who have asked for samples to critique that we are not blenders… we are actually one of them..tea tasters. We spend inordinate amounts of time finding the best blenders in the world, then picking about 10% on average of their offerings. That’s our job. Blending is a time-consuming art that most people shouldn’t attempt unless they’re gifted and want to make it their full-time business. I’ve tasted enough bad blends to know that’s a fact! Recently, Jen Piccotti of an International Tea Moment wrote about our Irish Breakfast Blend, which is the only in-house blend we do, and gave it high marks and ‘bravo’d’ us for limiting our blending to that. We know where our strengths are and concentrate on those. With the thousands of teas and hundreds of blenders/importers, there’s just alot of not good and average out there…we look for the needle in the haystack and then concentrate on moving it quickly to keep it really fresh. For us, that’s tea retailing..finding the best, limiting selections to those that move quickly and knowing how to brew what we do have so it tastes phenomenal.
P.S. I should have led with ‘I’m really sorry that happened to you”…obviously, you had absolutely no intentions to being deceptive!! And I’ve only heard good things about your company :)
Recharging my batteries at World Tea EXPO this weekend and feeling better. Lots of great information from the growers here. Hannah. Michelle and Diane…thank you for the kind words!
Here’s the rub Naomi.
Ironically, many of the tea accessories we sell can only be bought wholesale. Customers can go online and see the products and get information but ultimately they have to buy from retailers. We can be completely transparent about their products.
With teas we do not blend or import directly, the wholesale companies are engaging in both wholesale and retail. They sell their teas retail direct to any customer on their website, on Amazon, and everywhere else in between. They are controlling the wholesale product cost to us and at the same time competing against us and making better retail margins than we do.
Like you, we’ve never claimed to blend all of our teas, and for some we have created the initial blend and then turned the formula over to a blender for large volume production. It is a bit of a game but not unique to tea. Food products that are branded and have private label versions of the same product sold as other retailers “brands” have the same lack of open identification of sourcing to the customer.
All of which is to say that the overlapping of producer and retailer roles creates a transparency problem. We honestly list grower location, ingredients, brewing information and certifications but we would only shoot ourselves in the financial foot if we listed the original blending source for some teas, directing customers to an alternative retail option.
Of course, whenever you talk to a blender/importer/wholesaler about this conflict, they don’t perceive it as a “problem” for them. You certainly weren’t being deceptive or misinforming the customer. Beyond that, it’s a fine line between transparency in an ideal sense and the realities of protecting your business. Retail is certainly a shifting ground underfoot and tea is no different than many other food specialty products in that regard.
Thanks for the post!
Naomi, I appreciate your honesty. Your ability to take hurtful criticism and turn it into something constructive for yourself speaks volumes of your good character.
As a purchaser, I don’t really care all that much who created the blend. I do, however, care about what is IN the blend – not only ingredients, but I like to know if any or all of the ingredients are organic and/or fair trade. I love it when, on your website for example, I get information about the tea estate. This is, of course much more difficult for a blend, but it would still be nice to know a few details of the tea/teas that are blended.
I have always assumed, when I buy tea, that the blend is NOT original to the retailer I am buying it from, unless it is specifically stated that they created a specific blend. So when you do create a blend, be sure to emphasize that. It’s fun to know.
But all in all, I like your sourcing tab idea!!
One thing that bothers me a lot is when there are not clear steeping suggestions for a tea. You seem to do that well.
I am often confused on how to do a good steep for blends that have both black and green tea because they require such different water temps. Maybe you could write a blog about that since you have several such blends?
Last thing – I LOVE Joy’s Teaspoon!! I love the taste of your teas, I love your website, and I love that so many of them are organic, fair trade and support small community based growers. I love the “Orthodox” tea section.
Thanks Guy and Melanie! I just have to keep reminding myself what the focus is and stick to it. I don’t ever want Joy’s Teaspoon to seem misleading so anything I can do to keep that from happening will be done. I feel like that movie “Short Circuit”. “More input, more input”…lots of great information coming from us in the future!