Taste the teaBy rdevon for Pickwick

An avid loose tea drinker I dislike the trashy flavorless quality of tea bags. This largely because of the small amount of low quality tea inside the bag - even true of well reputed teas like Twinings. 

Recently my wife found gourmet teabags on sale in the US for $2.99 for 15 bags (Wegmans China Tea). The usual price is $4.99. The flavor is better than almost all loose leaf teas I buy, even the most expensive (up to $50/lb or Euros 80/kilo). I was astonished.  The tea is a relatively large quantity of very high quality tea in a silk pyramid bag - in a large foil pouch with beautiful art on the pouch.

So as a lead user I would say forget the innovations in packaging and use and go for the quality at a competitive price. Wegman's has come up with the right product. Someone needs to find a way to get the price down. 

I can find decent loose leaf teas in Middle Eastern and Asian markets in the US for about $5 a pound/ Euros 8/kg. I paid 5 times this for the gourmet tea when on sale and 4-5 times this for Twinings tea bags or loose leaf tea. So there must be away to do this. The sale price for the Wegman's tea is close to the tipping point for price at about 30% above Twinings.

So the innovation is back to basics with a Taste the Tea brand of reasonably priced gourmet teas - in silk pyramid bags with generous quantites of tea. The gorgeous art used for packaging adds little to the price.