Our customers would know that almost all of our tea products are packaged in a smaller bag size. For oolong tea, one bag is about 7g to 8g of leaves; for black tea and white tea, one bag is about 5g.
This is not our unique practice. In fact, most premium tea products are packaged in small bags. Except for green tea and dark tea, you can hardly find any premium tea that comes in a bag or a container larger than a few grams.
In our store, we’re asked daily why we don’t sell tea in larger quantity/larger bags. Actually, we do sell tea in large quantity. However, tea leaves would still be packaged in those smaller bags. If you want to get more tea, we simple give you more units.
It might seem that we’re very stubborn, but there are many reasons why we stick to this specific package size. In today’s blog, we’d like to talk about 2 major reasons.
1. The nature of tea leaves
Tea leaves are like people, they work collectively to create results. For every single serving of tea, there’s a specific weight required. We package our tea products in these sizes so that you no longer need to weight leaves every time you enjoy tea.
To better help you understand why, let’s compare leaves to people. Different companies have different team sizes and office sizes. For every single office, there is always an optimum number of people required. Too few people would slow down the job, and too many people would make the office crowdy and less efficient.
Tea leaves are the same. The amount of tea leaves required is usually decided by the size of teaware. Interestingly, teaware size is also decided by the nature of tea leaves. In the real world, we cannot simply add more tea when teaware get larger.
Let’s think about the size of your office. In theory, an office can get as big as you want it to be, and we can put an infinite number of people in the office. But as the office gets bigger, the efficiency gets worse because people in the office wouldn’t be communicating and working effectively. This is why most office spaces are divided into similar sizes, and we rarely see a giant, undivided office.
Some readers might wonder if we can put half of the amount tea leaves required and steep the leaves twice as long to deliver the same result. The answer is NO. To explain this, let’s go back to our people/office example. We simply cannot make a team of 10 people to work twice as hard to deliver the result of a team of 20 people.
2. Protect tea leaves from moisture, oxidization, and foreign smells.
A smaller package can better protect tea leaves from moisture and oxidization. Because we only need to open one small bag of tea every time, we can avoid exposing the rest of the leaves to air. When packaged and sealed, tea products such as black tea and oolong tea can be stored up to 2 years. Once the packaged is opened, even if we seal it immediately, tea leaves can lose their aroma in few months.
If tea leaves are packaged in a larger bag, for example an 8oz bag, moisture is more likely to damp dry leaves. Depending on where you live and where you store the tea, tea leaves might become undrinkable within a few days.
Tea leaves are also very sensitive to foreign smells. Most tea drinker tend to store their tea products in the kitchen. If the bags are not properly sealed, tea leaves are very easily affected by all the smells in the kitchen. This doesn’t mean that your tea would taste like your meal, but your tea would definitely lose most of its original charm.
Although buying tea in bulk (in larger containers) seems easier, many tea lovers might find that if they don’t finish all the tea immediately, they’d end up with a turned taste.
As a tea producer, we’ve spent quite a lot energy and effort to produce a perfect tea product. It only makes sense for us to extend that determination to ensure the quality of our tea products is fully delivered.
We hope you enjoyed today’s blog. As always, if you have questions or suggestions, please leave a comment, tweet us @valleybrooktea or email the author directly at zhang@valleybrooktea.com. Please also follow us on Instagram @valleybrooktea and join our mail list to get our daily tea updates and our latest promotions!
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