How will you decide what kind of tea to serve in your cafe?

Your tea line is the foundation of your entire tea program. If you don't carry the right teas, you'll never truly maximize tea sales and reach the full potential your two leaves and a bud tea program represents.

We've spent some time in past articles giving some standard tips for choosing your tea line — but today we devote an entire article to this important topic.

Step 1: Carry the Essentials

Being strategic is smart — understanding your demographic and which teas they're going to demand is clearly integral to planning the right tea line for your audience. The majority of people are going to want and need a core set of teas which we like to call "The Essentials":

• Organic Assam Breakfast Black Tea
• Organic Earl Grey Black Tea
• Jasmine Petal Green Tea
• Organic Tamayokucha Green Tea
• Organic Peppermint Herbal Tea
• Organic Chamomile Herbal Tea

The Essentials represents a wonderful mix of black, green and herbal teas, each that has good awareness and great demand because these are the teas that people know best (who hasn't heard of Earl Grey?). Prove best sellers are never a bad choice for your store.

Step 2: Now get strategic!

Once you're carrying The Essentials, now you can get fancy. Adding to your tea seletion with fun, interesting, delicious teas is a great way to take sales above and beyond your "core" profits. Ask yourself a few questions about your customers:

• What is their age and gender?
• What's their level of engagement with tea? Are they tea newbies or tea connoisseurs?
• What's their lifestyle? Are they busy working professionals, or health nuts?

By answering these critical questions, you can fully leverage tea's wonderful diversity and provide your customers with the teas that are right for them. Now let's run through some of your potential audience types, and which teas are best to offer them:

Busy working professionals:

More caffeine, please! offer these individuals an Organic Mountain High Chai or Organic Darjeeling Black Tea to jump start their  work day.

Health conscious customers:

Offer up an Organic Better Being Tea (Better Morning Blend, Better Belly Blend, or Better Rest Blend) or a green tea packed with antioxidants.

The older crowd:

Less caffeine means more happy older customers! Green or white tea can be a nice, lightly caffeinated option, but don't forget caffeine free herbal teas like Organic Pomi-Berry, Alpine Berry and a red tea like Organic African Sunset.

Two leaves and a bud offers many teas for beginners or connoisseurs

The "Tea Beginner":

Don't be daunting. Offer flavored teas like Organic Tropical Goji Green or Organic Orange Sencha, or a recognizable name like Organic Mountain High Chai. When all else fails, the fruitier the better: Pomi-Berry and Alpine Berry are the beginner tea drinker's best friend.

The Advanced Tea Connoisseur:

These guys you are going to have to surprise a bit. Don't hesitate to offer them the most interesting and quirky of all two leaves and a bud sachets, Gen Mai Cha — green tea with roasted brown rice. if Gen Mai Cha doesn't throw them for a loop, the level of greatness of our Organic Darjeeling won't be lost on the tea connoisseur in your store.

Those are just a few of the audiences we've seen from our experience in the world of tea. What other kind of customers are in your store, and what tea do you offer them?