Packaged tea brands target footfalls with offline tea lounges

With the opening of Café Coffee Day outlets at multiple cities across India in the early 2000s, ‘café culture’ found its way into Indian consumers’ lives. In the year 2000, Barista Lavazza was established in India and Costa Coffee opened its doors to Indian consumers in 2004. However, the glamorous frothy caffeinated beverage now has competition from the humble Indian chai – filled with fragrant tea leaves and flavourful spices. Increasingly, there are tea brands that are going beyond selling tea leaves on grocery store counters and are diversifying into offering offline tea drinking experiences. The experiences are centered mostly at cafes in the offline world – intricately decorated, offering multiple varieties of tea and also giving consumers the option of shopping for the leaves that went into making the cuppa.

While writing the story, brand Chaayos popped up during the research stage, but we have not talked about it in detail as Chaayos aims to offer a holistic ‘chai-nashta’ experience. They sell tea powders/accessories and such other products at their outlets and on Amazon but for the purpose of this article, we are considering brands that have a presence in a supermarket level, offline.

Here are four tea brands that offer consumers holistic offline tea drinking experiences

1. Society Tea’s Tea Terminal

Karan Shah of Society Tea explains that his team is passionate about tea and every item that they offer in their tea terminal has been carefully researched before being added to the menu. "Coffee is more of a fad that's come to India in the last decade or so - it wasn't a consumption habit in India (except for down South.) We want to give our customers the best chai experience, in the same way that you can walk into a coffee shop for a good cafe/coffee experience," he says.

We had the oppportunity to quiz Shah and ask him about whether displaying products at the retail level helped drive home sales for him. Shah replied "It's not about driving sales, it's about giving the customer a good experience. We don't sell all kinds of our teas at the lounges - only the instant, 1-minute tea (targeted at young adults); since we are expecting our patrons to be those who are working."

2. Wagh Bakri Tea Lounge

Wagh Bakri tea runs 13 tea lounges in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Goa and has nearly two decades of experience in the tea business. Wagh Bakri's tea brand was initially founded in 1998 and they opened their first lounge in India in 2014 Wagh Bakri's lounges offer options to buy different tea varieties, in addition to buying the pots to prepare them in, as well. Wagh Bakri also lets you buy their teas online through a dedicated e-commerce site.

3. Taj Mahal Tea House

Taj Mahal Tea House is owned by HUL and is the company's attempt to give customers a premium tea drinking experience. The lounge is located at Bandra in Mumbai and is artfully done up with pastel interiors. In addition to this, they also regularly organise offline activities and workshops to ensure they keep up the footfalls to the lounge. Like Wagh Bakri, Taj Mahal Tea House also has a dedicated e-commerce site via which customers can make purchases, irrespective of whether they can access the lounge or not.

4. San Cha Tea Boutique

Sanjay Gupta founded the San Cha Tea Boutique company in 1981 and tea drinking in India hasn't been the same ever since. San Cha tea boutiques serve more than 65 varieties of tea at their offline lounge, in addition to also having an e-commerce website offering. The boutique allows users to drop by for tea tasting sessions and in addition to allowing users to choose from tea varieties, they can also shop for designer tea cups and pots and similar accessories.