Where do YOU buy your tea?

Where do you buy your tea?  Do you order it on-line from retailers outside of your own community?  Do you buy it from retailers in your community?  Are those retailers large corporate stores such as Teavana or David's Tea?  Or do you support your local independent retailer?  Perhaps you shop at numerous locations and have identified favourites at each location.

In my community we have a Teavana in our shopping mall.  We also had, until about one month ago another chain type in the same mall.  It was called Tea Desire.  Tea Desire is a Canadian corporate store, that has not expanded as quickly as David's Tea (also Canadian).  The pressure from having a Teavana open up in the same mall I am suspecting lead to the closure of Tea Desire.  Now I hear that David's Tea is going to be opening up in the mall in the old Tea Desire store, and going head to head with Teavana.  Yes Davids Tea has a significantly larger following than Tea Desire has, but at the end of the day our community is only about 100,000 strong, maybe 160,000 if you include the outlying areas.

We also have two independent loose leaf stores in town.  I'm not sure how successful they are but my feeling is that they may just be 'making it', or worse managing to 'hang on' despite the facts.  Up until about 6 months ago we had another independent tea and spice store.  I think it had a store front for about 1 to 1.5 years before they also closed their doors.  All the reviews that I read on this store were good.

Just for the heck of it I roughly counted about 25 coffee shops in my town.  11 of them are Starbucks.  Not that there is anything wrong with Starbucks, I go there sometimes myself, but I also make a point of frequenting our local independent stores and services.  Downtown there is a Starbucks, a Blenz and an independent coffee shop all within close proximity to each other.  It bothers me that when I do the walk by, Starbucks has a line-up out the door, and both Blenz and the independent shop have available seating.  Especially if you do a side by side taste test, Starbucks does not necessarily come out on top.  But we seem to be pre-conditioned to follow trends.  Maybe we desire acceptance?  I'm not really sure why we all flock together. . .

Some of the best teas and coffees come from the local independent stores, and not from the large corporate organizations.  The corporate stores come with the fancy store fronts, and the fancy names and I think the fancy prices, for some of the really not so fancy teas.  Their tea descriptions tantalize, and make the tea sound better then they could ever really be, and we all buy into it.

I'm not saying don't ever buy tea from the large corporate store.  I do and have found some teas there that I love.  But I also give the local independent guy a chance to show me what he has.  Usually their knowledge is better, and the teas are more honest.  This post is simply a reminder to give the local guys in your community a chance.  It's good to shop local, and that includes all products, not just tea!!