ed to a number of health benefits.
The country’s growing appreciation for tea hasn’t been lost onto large American food and beverage-makers. Rather, companies nationwide are throwing billions of dollars into the budding industry.
Starbucks, for its part, is hoping to become a market leader for tea much as it as been one for coffee. «I previously shared our intent to reinvent the tea category, just as we did the coffee category, and we are making meaningful progress against our plan to do so,» Chief Executive Howard Shultz told investors in an earnings call this July. Starbucks has been working to expand its tea offerings ever since the company acquired Teavana, which sells high-end teas, for more than half a billion dollars in 2012.
Dunkin’ Donuts has referred to iced tea, which the company sells in a number of flavors, as one of its «key products.»
And Unilever, the biggest seller of tea products in the U.S., has doubled down on its market share by introducing new tea offerings, like instant tea K-Cups. «Tea continues to post solid growth with a pick up in the U.S. driven by the new K-Cups, and this has really taken us into the one of the faster growing parts of this market,» Chief Financial Officer Raoul Jean-Marc Sidney Huët, said in earnings call in April.
The bet is that the domestic tea market will build on its recent momentum, and continue to grow going forward. Tea makers, for one, expect the trend to continue upwards. «The bottom line is that we see continue growth happening in almost every tea sector,» said Peter Goggi, president of the U.S. Tea Association. «We still believe that the market is going to hit 15 billion in the next two to three years.»
Whether Americans warm even more to the habit remains to be seen, but there’s reason to believe Goggi might be right. Despite the country’s growing interest in tea, Americans are very much still amateurs on a per capita basis. The average American drinks just over half a pound of tea per year, which is barely enough to crack the top 35 worldwide. Turks, by comparison, drink nearly seven pounds per person per year; the Irish drink just under five pounds per person per year; and the English drink just over four.
Source: washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/03/america-is-slowly-but-surely-becoming-a-nation-of-tea-drinkers/
