As a tea retailer, how do you find the right blend for your customers? Do you and your sales representatives engage in conversation with them to gauge what their flavor profile might be?

Flavor profiling is an effective method of determining what the right tea might be for a customer based on their interest in popular tea samples that lure them in at the front of the store.

An effective store set up for flavor profiling is setting up a sample cart at the entrance of the store with a popular tea or tea blend. Encourage your sales representatives to take turns standing in front of the store entrance with a tray of samples — -engaging the potential customer in friendly banter and offering them a sample. The sales representative should offer samples to the customer and ask them if they’d like to come inside and try more samples. The sample cart should have three or four different tea flavors set up. A floral, a spice, a fruit, and a traditional tea. Ask the customers their input on the flavors. The flavors they respond to will help the sales representative figure out what kind of flavors they like. After sampling the teas, engaging the customer a little bit more by showing them the ease of using an Ingenuitea to brew their loose-leaf tea, or help them pick up a pouch of teabags of the tea they enjoyed.

🌸 Floral Teas 🌸

Floral tea is perfume-y and sweet. Guests that enjoy floral teas will enjoy a cup of Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearls, Chamomile, or Summer Rose. Floral tea lovers might not respond well to spice tea flavors but some people love all sorts of flavors.

🔥 Spice Teas 🔥

Spice tea flavors are generally chai teas. A Masala chai, or Vanilla Rooibos Chai would be a good sample choice. If they are into the spice flavors invite them to explore more spiced teas. A Thai Chai, or a White Chai for more variety.

🍉 Fruit Teas 🍉

Fruit tea flavors would go over well iced, but a Rooibos Peach, or a Strawberry Black tea would be a good sample to have for fruit lovers. Fruit teas tend to be the most popular amongst everyone, and served as an iced tea sample will lure customers that may not normally be tea drinkers. Fruity teas generally sell themselves but once you’ve captured the customers tastes, suggesting Rooibos Lemon Cloud, or a seasonal tea like White Fuzzy Navel might pique their interest to explore the different flavors.

🍵Traditional Tea 🍵

A traditional tea sample would be a vegetal Sencha Premier, or a Darjeeling Sungma Summer. Customers that aren’t normally tea drinkers might not enjoy the traditional teas, but the tea connoisseur will be hooked immediately. Traditional tea samples is also a good way to introduce the history of tea and discuss the growing regions with the customers.

The allure of a retail tea shop is to craft a memorable experience for the customer. Learning about the different teas and regions where they come from is often thrilling for the tea connoisseur or beginner connoisseur.