End of year

What an amazing turnaround we've seen in the specialty tea industry. Earlier in the year and throughout most of the summer, sales were sluggish. But Q4 has really turned things around and frankly, we quite optimistic about 2010.

We are looking to make some significant changes to the website over the next 2-4 weeks. More news to follow.

We are also embarking on an upgrade to our inventory systems. We will be conducting a physical inventory over the next 2 weeks. Please be advised that orders placed Dec 21 may not be fulfilled until after Jan 2, 2010.

Enjoy the holidays.

2010 TransFairUSA license fees

Starting in 2010 TransFairUSA is initiating new contracts to shift responsibilities for license fee payments away from the Importer and onto the Manufacturer. Kopius Teas will be acting as the Manufacturer in terms of the supply chain for Fair Trade certified teas and herbs. Therefore we will collect the license fees and pay this amount directly to TransFairUSA on behalf of our clients.

There will be no change in how transactions are conducted on the Kopius Teas website, but you should indicate on your quarterly reports that the license fees were collected by Kopius Teas. These payments are shown as  Fair Trade Certified Tea - USA directly under the qualifying product on your sales invoice.

We encourage you to check with other wholesalers to confirm their policies, as you may still be responsible for other FairTrade license fees that are not collected by those acting as an Importer.

Custom proprietary blends

Customers starting a new internet tea business often wish to build their own identity through packaging tea with their own logo and designs. This process falls directly in line with our bulk tea shipments, which are delivered in large, heat sealed bags. Our customers generally repackage our products into smaller retail canisters and pouches for resale.

But how does one go about extending brand identity through proprietary formulations? For example, if you want to create your own tea blend that no one else offers, how can you initiate this?

For new e-retailers, my recommendation is to consider working with a series of preblended stock teas and tisanes first. Get to know your clients needs and use their input to formulate a new, signature blend. There's really no need to start blending teas from your first day of business. At Kopius Teas and other wholesalers, there are many choices for preblended teas. In most cases, these teas have already some level of established acceptance in the marketplace. Furthermore, the variety and ability to order fresh teas in small quantities can be quite a time saver.

When the time is right (ie when you are consistently reselling a nice volume of product), then you can speak with a contract blender to fine tune a new blend that best complements your existing menu. Equally important, you will have greater confidence that this custom blend will sell rapidly. Maybe you can even progress to selling this blend at wholesale prices yourself.

OneStep Private Label Tea Bags

We have made a minor change to the dimensions of the OneStep Private Label design specifications. The labels are now slightly longer and extend to the bottom of the canister for a more polished look.

Specifications are available by clicking here.

Scalability from your tea suppliers

We see many specialty tea retailers offering wholesale programs. I think this can be particularly exciting, if you can identify a retailer who is importing their own, carefully selected teas. The buyer should know the teas intimately and if they are buying a garden that they have dealt with previously, they will also be aware of the seasonality and how comparable this season's crop is to last year's.

One of the challenging of getting started in wholesale as a supplier or establishing a relationship with a new tea suppler is scalability. As an importer, there is always the risk of buying at too high of a price or in too great a quantity. Alternatively, we experience regret when we find a great buy at a discount price and then can't supply enough product to meet demand. This latter case speaks to scalability and how flexible your current supplier is in handling orders across a broad range of buy sizes.

Take for example the Championship Teas at the World Tea Expo. Once we have an award winning tea or series of teas, the demand immediately escalates. Similarly, once an astute, large scale buyer finds a perceived undervalued tea, they may wish to buy out our entire lot with a single purchase order.

We constantly reassess our buying patterns to minimize in price and supply for our clients. Nevertheless, it should be noted that we are in a truly unique position of wholesaling and distributing conventional and organic tea products for a wide range of clients - everything from 2 lbs to thousands of pounds. Our buying is often made one to four months in advance of the receiving date.

I have a particular interest in business analytics. Certainly we have collected sufficient data on the above to begin modeling and managing inventory more efficiently. Perhaps this can be a good project for 2010.

Retail Discount Pricing

We manage both a retail tea shop and wholesale tea distribution business. In both ventures, we find continual challenges in analyzing sales data to identify price sensitivities and appropriate price points. This holiday season, in particular, brings with it a very astute, savvy consumer who wishes to confirm value above ultra-premium, short term sparkle.

Tea is in a unique position as a consumable. No matter the cost, it will be consumed over time, with a very moderate per cup price. What helps establish a higher price point is a shared appreciation between the buyer and seller - an appreciation of both what makes a tea special on paper and how it cups over time. While the buyer will only keep a few essential facts in mind when enjoying a tea, it is really the repeat, reaffirming cups that will keep the buyer loyal. And frankly speaking, loyalty to a seller's brand or reputation is what offers greater variability in discretionary pricing.

When we do guided cuppings in our store, we always have the goal of giving the customer a positive enough experience that they will return. We try our best to build loyalty over the long term. That loyalty is personal and long lasting - we believe it is much more forgiving than the disappointment from purchasing a "grocery branded" off product.

So in our desire to offer 10%, 20% or even greater discounts to bring customers in the door, we will do that by demonstrating our compassion for our clients and our commitment to serving our tea community in the long term. The greatest challenge now facing a retailer is knowing this has been a difficult sales year and yet looking primarily at discounts as a core motivator for the consumer to act now.

The day after Thanksgiving is really about the big box retailer. What small business retailer would want to open at 4am anyways?!!! Nevertheless, we do share in the trying times with our clients and we are kicking off this holiday season with broad based discount programs at both Infusions of Tea and Kopius Teas. We hope our clients will take advantage of this sales opportunity, as wholesale prices will most definitely increase early 2010. 

We wish everyone a joyful and loving Thanksgiving. For us, we are most grateful for the single day off we will have before Christmas!

Updated flowering / display tea photographs

We just updated the photographs for our display teas. Some people refer to these as flowering teas. Whichever name you prefer, they are a class of hand tied teas which blossom in your cup.


This Christmas Tree display tea reminded me of the holidays. Very festive colors and the shape is triangular, like an actual Christmas tree.

Temporary removal of minimum cost per order

We have noticed there are situations where clients do not wish to order a minimum of $100 per order. While there are operational and financial reasons for imposing a minimum, we are testing the elimination of this requirement in exchange for a higher shipping and handling fee.

Starting today, you can submit orders for less than $100 through our shopping cart. Nevertheless, we recommend you consider whether it is possible to increase the size of your order to over $100, as this will likely reduce your overall shipping and handling charges significantly.

To estimate your shipping and handling charges, enter your country, state/province, and zip/postal code in the shipping rates section of your cart and click "recalculate". This will display your alternative shipping methods and costs.

We will continue to monitor the demand for sub-$100 orders and do our best to continue this policy next year.

Wholesale Iced Tea CTC - loose or restaurant food service tea bags

Sometimes we move so quickly we forget to mention an entire product line that's been added. Such is the case with our wholesale CTC flavored blends, available in loose, 1 and 3 gallon (cello) tea bags. The loose option lets you portion the tea to the precise strength you wish for your iced tea program. The 1 and 3 gallon tea bag sizes are pre-portioned for use in commercial iced tea brewers, such as Bunn, Bloomfield, Cecilware, Grindmaster. Perfect for commercial kitchens. Minimum quantities are 1000 tea bags per order. Please call for pricing.

Flavors include:

• Acai Berry Iced Tea Loose CTC
• Chai Iced Tea Loose CTC
• Foundation Iced Tea Loose CTC
• Lemonade Iced Tea Loose CTC
• Mango Iced Tea Loose CTC
• Pomegranate Iced Tea Loose CTC 
• Rose de Jamica Iced Tea Loose CTC 
• Peach Decaf Iced Tea Loose CTC  
• Pineapple Iced Tea Loose CTC
• Vanilla Earl Grey Iced Tea Loose CTC 

As we enter the colder seasons, we all think of Florida, California, Hawaii, where iced tea is enjoyed all year long.

Case Quantities of Teas

If you've viewed our warehouse video, you may have noticed our teas most often arrive on pallets. These pallets contain multiple cases (or chests). When you purchase in quantities less than 50 lbs, you are often purchasing in less than case sizes. Essentially we break the case open to weigh the amount of product required to complete an order.

Kopius Teas is now expanding its operations to handle the sale of intact case quantities. Intact cases are easier to redistribute and customers enjoy considerable discounts over our sub-case pricing. Please contact us for more information or a quotation.

To facilitate ordering, you will find the case quantity of our wholesale teas and tisanes listed on the individual product page's "case size" tab (found underneath the product photo).

Rainforest Alliance Certified Teas

The Rainforest Alliance works to conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihoods by transforming land use practices, business practices and consumer behavior. Rainforest Alliance Certified farms have reduced environmental footprints, are good neighbors to human and wild communities and are often integral parts of regional conservation initiatives.

Under the auspices of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN), an international coalition of leading conservation groups, the Rainforest Alliance works with farmers to ensure compliance with the SAN standards for protecting wildlife, wild lands, workers' rights and local communities. Farms that meet these rigorous standards are awarded the Rainforest Alliance Certified seal.

Kopius Teas (www.kopiusteas.com) purchase tea from three plantations that produce Rainforest Alliance certified teas. These include Korakundah, Chamraj, and Allada. We ask that you support the Rainforest Alliance by purchasing these certified teas or asking your local tea merchant to offer these products.

Fair Trade Pricing

Just a quick note - we changed how our Fair Trade teas, herbs, and rooibos appear in the shopping cart.

These fees now appear incorporated into the product price, but there is a new line item for the fee itself. This change was made to expedite our order processing and to be consistent with how we report these fees to TransFair USA and TransFair Canada.

If you have any questions on these modifications, please contact us at 858 764 1981

Conversation with Manik Jayakumar, Qtrade Teas & Herbs

You can listen to an archived recording of a recent interview with Manik Jayakumar, President, Qtrade Teas  & Herbs. The broadcast is featured on our internet talk radio channel, TeaCast.

Many of us buy and sell organic, fair trade, and biodynamic products, but we don't always have an opportunity to see or understand its impact on the actual tea gardens. Manik discusses changes on the tea plantation when they convert from conventional to organic farming methods. In addition, he notes the range of activities and products that Qtrade Teas & Herbs now performs. We think this is a unique opportunity to feature one of the true pioneers in the specialty tea industry.

Kopius Teas is a distributor for Qtrade. We have streamlined the ordering process to allow small to mid-tier companies to purchase from Qtrade's extensive range of conventional and organic teas, herbs, spices, fruit, and flowers.

Tea Art

Kopius Art

Pyramid Tea Bags

We just added photos of the pyramid tea bags with white tag and string. We were reminded of how elegant these bags are and how they can make such a nice, see-through presentation of loose leaf tea. Quite elegant and convenient. As a reminder, we sell these tea bags in bulk for quick service restaurants and private label packaging for gifts and gift baskets.

Berry Rooibos Pyramid Tea Bag

Six New Premium Teas

Organic Jasmine Pearls - NEW shipment!

Slightly larger, darker leaf than our standard organic jasmine pearls. Steeps with a strong essence of jasmine. Light liquor color. Easily steeped multiple infusions.

Gurance Hand Rolled

Exquisite leaf presentation, very sweet aroma and taste, with lingering fruity notes. High quality. The most outstanding of these six new additions.

Jasmine Needle Guangdong

A jasmine white tea. The jasmine is slightly strong for a white tea, but some may prefer this. Good quality leaves. 

Namring First Flush Darjeeling

Bold first flush with heavy body and texture. Very appealing, well balanced.

Organic Dragonwell Special

Light and dark flat, pan fried leaves. Lighter body in the liquor, but still a classic, distinctive green dragonwell with medium astringent finish.

Imperial Spring Green

Misty green, young leaves, reminiscent of a huang shan mao feng in its woodsy character. Beautiful steeped leaves deliver a wonderfully full aroma.

Best selection of organic loose leaf teas at extremely competitive wholesale prices

Kopius Teas (www.kopiusteas.com) offers a tremendous range of loose leaf teas and tea blending ingredients. Our specialty is in offering organic, fair trade, and sustainable agricultural products for the retail beverage industry. We believe our buying power and overall range of products originating from more than 35 countries puts us in a very special class of vendors. Logical, fair, targeted buying, with respect for our business partners and our clients are our basic principles for long term growth.

Most of our clients purchase in smaller, sub-case quantities, where freshness, selection, value, storage, service and quality are major supplier characteristics. Kopius Teas strives to adopt new technologies wherever feasible to reduce overhead expense and continually improve quality.

You will see most of our interactions, including trouble tickets, are handled electronically. Nevertheless, we are only a telephone call away.

Let us know how we are doing.

Canadian customers

Kopius Teas (www.kopiusteas.com) ships wholesale to Canada. There are a few special points you may wish to keep in mind when placing your order.

1. Your teas will arrive via UPS Standard. The shipping calculator will include all customs and duties to your door. Prior to submitting your order, check the shipping subtotal. You might be better off ordering in larger quantities to offset the total shipping expense. Furthermore, it is better to order a few pounds extra of the blending ingredients, as we stock some of these items in smaller quantities compared to tea.

2. We encourage you to request samples at the time of your order. This makes it easier to include in a single shipment.

3. If you intend to purchase and resell Fair Trade Certified products, please select the Fair Trade option marked for CANADA. This reduced fee is extended because you are expected to submit licensing fees directly to Transfair Canada (www.transfair.ca).

4. You should allow 6-12 business days for transit, as customs may take several days to process your shipment.

Loose Leaf Tea in Corporate Cafeterias, Dining Facilities, and Break Rooms

Several corporate dining facilities directors have approached us with an interest in bringing higher quality loose tea into their on-site campuses - break rooms, dining facilities, and meeting rooms. As I have mentioned previously, tea is an excellent sign of health and hospitality. In a corporate / business setting, it is also an opportunity to discuss a neutral topic prior to getting onto business.

International business travelers will also enjoy the chance to sample something that either is of a quality similar to what they have at home or at the very least something that they typically encounter at an airport coffee shop. What a pleasant way to distinguish yourself and your organization from the crowd. Serving high quality tea is basically a very inexpensive gesture that will likely put your clients in a better mood, too.

On another business application, we know annual performance reviews can be quite challenging and contentious. Start the review by sharing a pot of tea between managers and staff. I'm sure you'll immediately notice a difference in attitude.

In England and elsewhere in the world, afternoon tea is a tradition, even in business settings. We have seen many companies use afternoon tea breaks for impromptu meetings or just bonding between work associates.

In short, there are many corporate settings which simply invite the tradition and graciousness of tea. At Kopius Teas (www.kopiusteas.com) we are prepared to discuss your corporate tea program for your on site food managers, as well as offering tea in your employee break rooms and corporate gift giving.

CoffeeFest 2009 presentation on analytics

Ronald Eng will be presenting at the CoffeeFest Seattle on Friday, September 25, 2009 at 10am. The presentation will focus on the use of analytical methods, including scorecards and dashboards, to improve menu selection and profitability.

Premise: As a small business owner, how do we make informed business decisions when time and information are at a premium? What performance parameters are important to track and how can this information be summarized for rapid assimilation and management oversight?

Methods: Come to the talk for details!

Conclusions: Point of Sale systems are excellent instruments for data collection. This transactional information, when used in conjunction with financial statements, combine to provide an ongoing, visual monitoring of your business, both its recent history and projected future.

Restaurant Demand for Specialty Wholesale Bulk Tea

When speaking with friends or even business associates, we are frequently asked who our customers are at Kopius Teas. Mostly we explain the retail tea merchants, coffee roasters, coffee shops, restaurants, Internet-based tea distributors, and specialty applications where tea is packaged and used as a branding tool.

The one area I'd like to address today is restaurants. The restaurant use of specialty loose tea or tea bags can be a little bit more challenging than the other sectors listed previously. The main reason for this is because tea is one of many products that are prepared and served in a typical restaurant. While nearly all culinary professionals would agree that loose leaf tea steeped properly results in a beverage far superior to teabag tea, they're certainly an added hurdle of training and logistics required to ensure the proper amount of tea temperature of water and time of steep are optimized for the restaurant patron. Add to this the fact that the turnover rate in restaurants is typically higher, and you can see why many restaurant owners and operators favor teabags to loose tea.

Over the past 10 years the emergence of pure see-through teabags containing larger leaf teas and herbal tisanes has brought greater awareness to the premium nature of a whole leaf product. Mighty Leaf, Revolution, Two Leaves and a Bud, and many other provide viable, quality options for restaurant use. Furthermore, these products are individually wrapped, attractive, and enjoy strong, brand recognition.

On the other hand, if a restaurant is interested in building its own brand, representing natural, unique, novel concepts and dining experiences, then they might consider putting the effort into serving whole loose tea at their establishments. And if restaurant management decides to pursue this leve of quality, I would certainly encourage them to develop their own custom blends and offer them as private label, branded teas. Tea is associated with health, rejevenation, and a soulful meditative state of well being. The products store well and can be packaged to desired specifications. Compared with t-shirts, mugs, and other branded products, I would suggest that specialty tea when brought home or share with others, can help enforce the values of a restaurant's target dining experience.

Kopius Teas at CoffeeFest 2009

We will be attending CoffeeFest 2009 in Seattle, WA. Ron will be giving a talk on the use of analytics in tea menu selection. The talk is scheduled for Friday, September 25, 10am. Please visit www.coffeefest.com for more information.

Kenya Tea Auction featured on NPR's Morning Edition

NPR’s morning edition featured a podcasted interview at the Mombassa Tea Auction by Gwen Thompkins – In Kenya, Tea Auction Steeped In Tradition, Gentility.

This gives you a feel for the traditional method of auctioning teas, which has occurred weekly for many years.
While many teas from Kenya are CTC, they do offer some limited, high quality, whole leaf tea, including oolong and black teas. Kenyan teas are bold and distinct from teas from India and Sri Lanka. In our retail environment, we felt it was beneficial to offer teas from a variety of countries to demonstrate its true international appeal and heritage.

Kopius Teas (www.kopiusteas.com) has brought in some excellent Kenya oolongs and blacks. We think the oolongs are quite rare and would make a good talking point at the point of sale.

Another resource is the Kenya Tea Board.

Searchable Knowledgebase

We are continually improving the content of our Searchable Knowledgebase at www.kopiusteas.com. The searchable knowledgebase can be found on the left navigation panel. In particular, we are constructing a series of FAQ's to address many of the more common questions we encounter among start-up tea programs. These are collected not only from our wholesale experience, but our direct experience as retail store owners. If you have questions of general interest that do not appear, please let us know by commenting on this entry.

Is Tea a Recession Proof Industry?

Tea continues to show all the characteristics for long term, consistent growth. Tea is healthy, naturally unsweetened, minimally processed, portable, delicious, and high in antioxidants. But is this enough to power the industry through a downward global economy?

We'd like to hear your thoughts.

At Kopius Teas (http://www.kopiusteas.com/) our goal is to continue to offer the best selection of organic and fair trade certified teas and blending ingredients at industry leading prices. This is a tall order for us, but we constantly try to keep our costs down by utilizing the web, relying on automation whereever possible, and purchasing quality products when prices fluctuate downwards.

Our marketing is straight-forward. We hope we can add value to your business through informative articles, accurate tasting notes, and, more recently, our comparative tasting blogs. If you haven't done so, we ask that you contact us for a wholesale account so we can demonstrate how we can improve your profit margins across an entire range of premium teas, tisanes, and blending ingredients.

Comparative Tasting: Jasmine Pearls and Organic Jasmine #4 DZS

We often are asked to recommend jasmine scented green tea from Kopius Teas (http://www.kopiusteas.com/) Our first primary recommendation is Jasmine Pearls. These hand rolled green tea leaves are scented with the essential oils from jasmine flowers. The Organic Jasmine #4 DZS is an organic jasmine scented tea in loose leaf form.

Leaf:

Due to their round shape, Jasmine Pearls are a distinctive staple of any tea menu. To a novice tea drinker, the full natured round ball shaped leaves separates them from anything they've seen before - especially when compared with tea in tea bags.

Organic Jasmine #4 DZS is fairly good size, medium dark leaf and, as expected, led to a darker infusion than the Jasmine Pearls.

Infused Leaf:

The aroma of fresh jasmine offers instand appeal. Jasmine historically has been an excellent complement to green tea. We liked the overall softer aroma of the Jasmine Pearls to the Organic Jasmine #4 DZS.

Fans of Jasmine Pearls will note that a little tea goes a long way, as the leaf slowly unfurls in your cup. This allows one to infuse the leaves multiple times, each infusion imparting a gentle loft of fresh jasmine.

Infusion and Taste:

The Jasmine Pearl imparted a bright, relatively light green infusion, whereas the Organic Jasmine #4 DZS yielded a much darker liquor. You have to be more careful to watch the infusion time of the Organic Jasmine #4 DZS, as longer steep times will overpower the jasmine and produce a stronger astringency that will hinder your appreciation of the jasmine.

These a vastly different teas at different price points. We would recommend the Organic Jasmine #4 DZS for coffee shops, bookstores, and special tea merchants looking for a little more color in an iced jasmine tea. Overall, we think the Jasmine Pearls is a better buy which, even at a higher wholesale price, will enjoy greater turnover rates than the Organic Jasmine #4 DZS.

Jasmine Pearls is also available as an Organic Jasmine Pearl. Later we will include comparative notes with this varietal.

Key selection in any tea menu - Jasmine Pearls

Every day we are asked to make recommendations on new and existing tea menus. The single more frequent recommendation we can offer (based upon reordering and direct retail sales figures) is Jasmine Pearls (also known as Dragon Pearls). These hand rolled, green tea leaves are quite captivating to new and experienced tea drinkers alike. The gentle, calming aroma of fresh jasmine entices both female and male shoppers. Furthermore, the leaves represent an excellent introduction to loose leaf teas, as the pearls slowly unfurl in your cup - meaning, you can get several excellent infusions from one set of leaves. Don't have an infuser yet? Not a problem with Jasmine Pearls. you can easily remove them from your cup with a simple tea spoon.

We price our Jasmine Pearls at $20/lb wholesale. You just can't beat that for this quality of product - anywhere.

So whether you're a coffee roaster, coffee retailer, specialty tea retailer, or internet retailer, we hope you'll strongly consider incorporating Jasmine Pearls into your tea menu.

Thinking about a Web Based, Tea Business?

We speak with people every day who want to get into the business of tea. Most are interested in starting a web business. Certainly, we experience the full range of "I need it now" to "I'm just looking", but whether your are well versed in aged pu-erh or the finest high mountain Tie Kwan Yin, to me, the greatest indicator of web success is your ability to translate your passion for tea into an indexed language that the search engines will find and rank highly. Those in the know just refer to this as SEO.

As much a building a knowledge of tea, I strongly encourage nearly all the new web-based, tea entrepreneurs to have a clear strategy for how they intend to build traffic. A pretty website and unique products isn't enough. It's like a small emerging fern in a vast forest of giant redwood trees - you just won't get noticed.

Having said that, I hope those of you who've built a successful web presence will share your ideas. The tea industry has always been very supportive and encouraging, with the exception of one large tea retail franchise beginning with the letter, "T".

Comparative Tasting - White Teas

We tasted three Kopius Teas (www.kopiusteas.com) White Teas side by side in a comparative tasting.

Silver Needle 1st Grade

Silver Needle Extra Special

Organic White Bai Mudan Ex Special

Leaf

The Silver Needle 1st Grade features a smaller, younger bud than most I've seen. The contrast of the silvery tips and greener leaf is well balanced.

Silver Needle Extra Special is a more traditional, bolder, larger white needle than the 1st grade. 

Organic Bai Mudan Extra Special. We enjoyed it's smaller, more subtle leaf size than other commercial grades.

All white teas above were very uniform in size, with little breakage or dust.

Infused Leaf / Aroma

Silver Needle Extra Special was not the typical bright green infused leaf we have become familiar with. Both reviewers gave higher marks to the Silver Needle Extra Special for both color and aroma.

Taste

Neither of the Silver Needles were particularly sweet in terms of white teas, but we did enjoy the Silver Needle Extra Special more than the Silver Needle 1st Grade (goes to show we aren't easily swayed by price or appearance). The Extra Special had a cleaner taste profile than the 1st Grade, which had just a very slight hint of a dusty finish.

The Organic Bai Mudan Extra Special was surprisingly good. Excellent plum notes. We recommend a briefer steep time of only 1.5 - 2 minutes.

Conclusions

Ron - "I was pleasantly surprised with the uniformity of the leaf sizes, with all leafs in the set on the smaller side of the scale. Among the three, I enjoyed the Organic Bai Mudan Extra Special the best. When I taste a Bai Mudan, I'm looking for the plum notes, without the heaviness on the palette or overly dark infusion.

Notes on Product Availability

We are in the process of simplifying our line of loose teas, tisanes, and blending ingredients. Currently, the products shown on the website are those that we currently have in stock, which at last count was over 500 items.

Discontinued items will be shown in a separate navigational category - look for this in the weeks ahead.

Once this is complete, we will move quickly to updating the products with greater descriptions and photographs of our wholesale teas.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy our vast selection of teas, herbs, spices, flowers and fruit. We could not have envisioned working in such a wonderfully uplifting and fragrant environment.

Kopius Teas on Twitter

Today we are officially launching timely communications through Twitter. There is a link from our website, www.kopiusteas.com or you can find us on twitter under "kopiusteas"

Robert Wemischner - Cooking with Tea

TeaCast is pleased to announce our next guest, Robert Wemischner, accomplished chef, instructor, writer and speaker. Mr. Wemischner will join us to discuss using tea as an ingredient in both sweet and savory recipes as well as how to pair tea with food. We invite you to call in and participate on Wednesday, July 8, 2 pm - 3 pm PDT.

Mr. Wemischner is currently a Lead Instructor in Professional Baking and Entrepreneurial Studies at Los Angeles' Trade Technical College. He has appeared on two Public Broadcasting television shows, Regina's Vegetarian Table and Breaking Bread with Father Dominick, NBC’s Bay Cafe, “Canada AM,” and segments for TV Food Network and CBS News-Los Angeles and radio shows including “The Splendid Table” (National Public Radio), The Restaurant Show, Los Angeles, and many others. He has also been the subject of numerous articles in trade publications including Food Management Magazine, Nation’s Restaurant News, Chef Magazine and others.

TeaCast is an internet based talk show, broadcasted live every Wednesday, 2pm PDT. By dialing 347 237 5676, you can listen to the show or select option '1' to indicate to the host that you wish to participate in the conversation. (Please note that area code 347 is in New York, and local and long distance charges will apply). Those with high speed internet access can hear the show broadcasted live at www.blogtalkradio.com/teacast or via podcast about an hour after the show.

For more information, visit our blog at teacast.org.

Mr. Wemischner's Publications

The Vivid Flavors Cookbook, (1994). Lowell House-NTC Contemporary Books.

Gourmet to Go: A Guide to Opening and Operating a Specialty Food Store (1997), co-authored with Karen Karp. John Wiley Publishers.

Cooking with Tea (2000), co-authored with Diana Rosen, Tuttle-Periplus Editions, publishers.

The Dessert Architect (2009), Cengage Learning, a book about multi-component plated desserts, geared to professional and serious amateur alike

OneStep Video

View our OneStep Private Label Program Introduction

Beatrice Hohenegger on BlogTalk Radio

Just recently completed a TeaCast radio talk show broadcast with Beatrice Hoehenegger, author of Liquid Jade. Beatrice is also a curator at the upcoming "Steeped in History: Art of Tea" exhibition at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, http://www.fowler.ucla.edu/incEngine/

You can find more information on Ms Hoehoenegger at http://www.beatricehohenegger.com/

If you have any comments about this week's radio show or wish to offer suggestions on future shows, please blog us here.