We all know it — tea has fantastic margins. The more you sell, the more profits you can enjoy at the end of the month. The problem? While tea might be the most consumed beverage worldwide next to water, chances are the demand for more expensive coffee products is what keeps you stressed during the day. Nevertheless, if you can take certain steps to grow your tea business, you'll capture new customers. Here are five ways we recommend doing it.
- Understand your customer base.
First, let's get our ducks in a row. If you want to sell more tea, you need to understand your customers. Ask yourself these questions:
- Who are your customers?
- What is their age and gender?
- What's their lifestyle? Are they busy working professionals, or stay-at-home moms?
- Are they health conscious, or do they enjoy a sweet treat?
Once you've analyzed your customer base, you can start to plan your tea line. Have an older set of customers? Be sure to offer some caffeine-free herbals teas like Chamomile or Peppermint. Serving the morning crowd? Caffeinated teas like Assam or Earl Grey should do the trick. If you have a health-conscious audience, a green tea like Energize is your best bet, but your customers will also be well-served with Turmeric Antioxidant or Hydrate. Overall, diversifying the tea you are carrying is a sure way to please everyone, but a more strategic approach means better profit margins at the end of the month.
- Use your point-of-sale
If you want people asking about tea, use point-of-sale to generate awareness. People walk into a coffee shop generally thinking about coffee, and walk into a grocery store thinking about a whole wealth of different products. Point-of-sale is the subtle nudge someone needs to think, "maybe I should have some tea today." Whether it be posters or display racks, put your point-of-sale in a prominent place to grab people's attention. And don't forget to give tea a place on your menu board — they are more likely to order it when they see you offer premium tea.
- Educate your customers
We know it all too well — people fear what they don't know. While tea is a fascinating beverage that encompasses all sorts of history and fun facts, consumers can find it intimidating and don't know where to begin when making a purchase. Give your customers the opportunity to learn more about tea, and they will buy more tea. Education can both help build relationships with your customers while also making them more confident in their tea purchases.
- Educate your staff
Wait — but how do you educate your customers? By starting with your staff. Your employees need to be prepared to field questions and provide fun facts about teas that people are interested in. Inquire about Two Leaves and a Bud's monthly educational resources. Or, simply educate yourself as much as possible and spread the knowledge to the rest of your personnel. In a few hours, you can have enough knowledge to bring great value to your customer base and hold tea tastings of your own.
- Create samplers
One special attribute of tea is its diversity — its endless variety of aromas and tastes. Customers love to discover new tea, but they often don't have enough information to shell out dollars for a tea they've never tried before. Sell our gift-worthy tea sampler boxes in your cafe or create your own sampler pack of tea for purchase. This will excite your customers, create customer affinity for different tea, and will vastly increase your tea business.
Anything we missed? Do you have a trick you want to share?
