International travel is at an all-time high after three years of the pandemic, and folks are exploring well-known and unknown places with great enthusiasm. If some of your customers are not quite up to world travel but would like to engage in worldly experiences, we suggest some of the following ways to satisfy their wanderlust, especially the vast world of tea.

All these ideas are easy to showcase wherever you’re selling tea, whether in a tea shop, restaurant, or famers market stall. Add a touch of your imagination and watch your sales rise!

And, like all events or promotions, use every platform and avenue available to you for promotion: social media like Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook; your own website, in-store, or booth flyers, and of course, the all-time most valuable promotional tool, your email list. Signage in windows, on counters or flyers in shopping bags all work, so let the world of current and potential customers in on the secret of worry-free traveling, exploring the world of TEA with YOU with carefully selected accoutrements, teas, teaware, kettles, and more!

CLEARLY ENCHANTING: If one cannot travel to Morocco, Beijing or Tokyo, the aura of such places is easy to replicate in their tea service. Moroccans offer spearmint or mint tea served in pretty decorated glasses into which servers pour the tea from at least two feet up! It’s dramatic, fun to watch, and adds to the experience of drinking this refreshing tea, especially as the seasons warm up.

DISPLAY IDEA: On a counter space or pedestal display stand, place a tray sprinkled with pink lentils. This gives you all the flexibility of sand with none of the mess, is inexpensive, and adds a lovely contrast of pastel to the items you have for sale: glasses, packages or teabags of mint teas or green teas, and if available, a teakettle or teapot with a long, elegant spout. Add a little tent card with a mini story of Moroccan tea. Better yet, offer a taste of some brewed mint tea to entice the customers even further.

CLASSIC CHINESE: You might not have the space to hang birdcages of chirping finches so popular in Chinese tearooms, however, a cozy table setting featuring the classic Chinese guywan service equipage will make dreams of visiting the Great Wall or visiting a tea farm something to add to anyone’s bucket list.

DISPLAY IDEA: Set up a table, preferably one of polished wood. Set out an electric water kettle, a small heatproof water pitcher, a small bowl for your favorite Chinese tea e.g. Dragonwell green, Keemun black or Yunnan puerh, and two guywans. Use these accoutrements to demonstrate how easy and elegant this service is and pour a taste in small, disposable cups for customers to enjoy. Offer them an opportunity to handle the guywan, holding it in one hand while they paddle the tea with their other hand. Add a tent card with a mini description of how to use and where to find them, and the sample teas, in your shop. P.S. temperature-controlled kettles are a great add-on for sales for this display!

MERRY OLDE ENGLAND: Some customers may have missed seeing the coronation in person yet would love to imagine tea with the royals, and you can help!

DISPLAY IDEA: Set up a card table with a pretty pastel or white tablecloth and add, add, add. The key word is pretty! Pretty floral patterned teacups and saucers, teapots, complementary napkins, and tiered trays for tiny petit fours, finger sandwiches, and mini scones. The tea? Earl Grey, a hearty Assam, or the crisp clean taste of a fine black tea from Sri Lanka, referred to as Ceylon. If you sell food, this is a spectacular way to offer a bite of pleasure that sure to sell visitors on your foods, and of course, a sip of your finest teas brewed to perfection. Everything used in the display should come from your shelves or from shops with whom you cross-market.

CHANOYU (Japanese Tea Service): Timeless, peaceful, and highly-choreographed, chanoyu is definitely a way to “travel” in place and time to another world where all the daily cares evaporate as one concentrates on the selection, preparation, and enjoyment of luscious matcha, the powdered green tea that is the star of this adventure.

DISPLAY IDEA: If space permits and you can carve out a corner for a tatami mat and cushions for seating to show off accoutrements for the Japanese tea ceremony, fabulous! If not, a pretty fabric cloth on a display counter will do. The point is to display glazed or unglazed iron kettles for hot water, a gorgeous wabi-sabi matcha bowl and accompanied bamboo whisk, and the brilliant bright green powder of matcha, all beautiful to behold.

ROOIBOS for the REST OF US: For those aficionadas of herbals or a caffeine-free lifestyle, nothing fits the menu better than the South Africa herbal tea, rooibos (from the red bush tree.)

DISPLAY IDEA: In either stark white or deep black bowls, show off green rooibos and the rusty-red color of traditional rooibos. Got some space? Add displays of flavored selections to entice customers with a sampling to show off the variety of this delicious and healthful herbal. Rooibos has as much if not more of the antioxidants and flavonoids of true teas from Camellia sinensis! P.S. Add some selections of yummy honeybush for added samples of tasting pleasure … and more sales!