Has Britain fallen out of affection with tea?

It’s that quintessential British custom that we’ve been having fun with for a whole bunch of years.

The reply to each disaster, a bonding ritual if you welcome somebody into your property and the primary drink many individuals get up to.

“Fancy a cuppa?” and even merely “Tea?” is music to your ears, proper?

Nicely, possibly not for everybody.

“I suppose there’s sort of an affiliation with tea as an outdated particular person’s drink,” says Gillie Owen, aged 20.

The scholar from London says he and his mates desire water or weight-reduction plan soda drinks.

Layba, in the meantime, would not drink tea in any respect.

“I’ve by no means appreciated tea,” the 20-year-old says. “I simply assume it tastes actually off, like, actually bizarre.”

It is a stark distinction to her dad and mom who, she says, “actually love” tea.

So is it a generational factor? As a nation, are we falling out of affection with tea?

Final week, considered one of Britain’s oldest tea corporations, Typhoo Tea, collapsed after a drop in gross sales.

The 120-year-old firm has been rescued by vape maker Supreme, whose boss says he desires to develop new merchandise below the model.

Sandy Chadha instructed the BBC the tea market was in decline however stated Supreme would look to enchantment to the youthful technology who most popular “issues like iced tea and more healthy drinks”.

Tea gross sales volumes have fallen by 4.3% in contrast with two years in the past, in keeping with analysts at NielsenIQ.

And a current survey by Mintel prompt lower than half the nation, 48%, now drink tea at the very least as soon as a day.

Kiti Soininen, food and drinks researcher at Mintel, says conventional tea is dealing with “intense competitors” from fruit, natural, inexperienced and specialty black tea.

Twenty-one-year-old scholar Dylan says he drinks tea, however not the same old builder’s tea – black with a smidge of milk – and prefers to go caffeine free.

“I drink much less tea than my dad and mom undoubtedly. I drink Redbush tea and different much less ‘tea’ teas,” he says.

Shayma, 18, says she additionally prefers natural tea, whereas most of her mates drink espresso. She says there are “so many drinks now” and he or she hasn’t even heard of Typhoo.

Ms Soininen factors to the large distinction between gross sales of tea and occasional.

“Gross sales of extraordinary tea stood at £377m in 2023, leaving it far behind on the spot espresso, at [almost] £1bn,” she says.

Even on the spot espresso’s recognition is being challenged by the fast-growing ready-to-drink espresso market, she provides, which has seen gross sales greater than double during the last 5 years.

Polina Jones from NielsenIQ says whereas individuals “usually are not falling out of affection with tea per se”, the panorama is altering with enormous choices from bubble tea, natural teas, kombuchas and vitality drinks attracting the youthful technology.

If this pattern continues, she believes manufacturers ought to reinvent themselves and determine find out how to get into the ready-to-drink house. Twinings, for instance, has began to supply canned glowing tea, whereas bottled kombuchas enchantment to college students and younger professionals shopping for a meal deal, she says.

Supreme’s buy of Typhoo consists of two natural tea manufacturers, Heath & Heather and the London Fruit & Herb Firm, in addition to specialty tea model Ridgeways. Analyst Susannah Streeter from Hargreaves Lansdown believes Supreme will incorporate these into wellness manufacturers it already owns.

One other problem for black tea is that even for these for whom it’s a staple, prices are rising and so they’re shopping for in smaller volumes.

In 1974, the typical household bought 68g – about 30 tea luggage – of tea per particular person, per week. By 2023, that had gone right down to 19g – about 10 tea luggage – per particular person, in keeping with authorities figures.

“What’s notably telling of the potential long-term menace for black tea is that whereas all age teams have equally excessive utilization of tea within the early morning and with breakfast, youthful teams are a lot much less doubtless than older ones to succeed in for the drink later within the day,” says Mintel’s Kiti Soininen.

She concludes with a stark warning for conventional tea makers – if youthful generations proceed with these habits as they become older, this may finally “chip away” on the dimension of the market.

And as one BBC reader commented on the Typhoo collapse story: “You realize issues are unhealthy when a tea firm within the UK goes bust.”