Just made a pitcher of this at home. It’s another blistering day in Wichita. This is unmistakably banana. I’m thinking the black tea base maybe takes some of that Laffy-Taffy/Runts flavor away and makes it a bit less artificial tasting. To me, it’s just the right hint of sweetness in an awesome black tea without actually BEING sweetened. My wife prefers her iced tea with Splenda and insists this is amazing that way (too sweet for me, but to each their own).
I reallly love the ease of these teabags. I’m getting some samples of different pillow pack bags in to consider for the next round. As cute as these little bags are, they were a bear to get the teabags into.
Thinking about the teabags makes me a little sad. I would love to be able to share our teas with LOTS of people on a much larger scale. The truth is, it is VERY difficult to compete with the big teabag companies. The level of automation they employ and the economies of scale they enjoy are just unbelieveable. At one point I calcluated that to keep my labor costs in line, I needed to be able to produce 80 teabags an hour, weighed, filled and sealed—which was challenging. But if I had $40k, I could buy a weigh-fill-seal machine, fill a hopper with tea and hang up a roll of teabag filter paper and it would make 160 teabags a MINUTE for me. That’s twice my hourly goal in a MINUTE!
Oh well. I spend entirely too much time looking at Youtube videos of industrial equipment. LOL. Maybe someday we could get a bunch of purchase orders from some grocers and take them to the bank and say, “Please, can you help us join the industrial revolution?” Or maybe we’ll crowd source a Form Fill Seal machine though our awesome customers and Kickstarter or one of those sites.
Okay. I’m rambling now. Anyway. The tea is hitting the spot on this very hot day. I hope everyone is having a good Friday and staying cool with some nice iced tea.
