Where do I begin with creating blends?

The obvious starting point would be tea blends already being made. Teavana and David’s Tea would be a good starting point, since you’ve already tried theirs; websites say what both are selling. I can think of a few others that might be a good reference but really there’s no reason to not put a day in on Google search and look at lots, since there are hundreds of blends being tried out now, by people that are making some effort to let potential customers know about it.

I’ve experimented a little with making blends but not much, and I don’t think my experience is going to help a lot. I will mention on context-related issue, rather than getting into what to mix, or how to dry fruit: whatever sounds like a good idea might sound like a good idea to customers, so common sense and originality works, in addition to what other people do and covering existing demand. For example, I saw mentions of Christmas blends last year and tried making an original version of my own (it worked out, just not like I expected). Masala chai is another obvious starting point, or simple floral blends, etc. Inspiration from foods might work; pumpkin spice might finally be getting a bit tired (or maybe not), but something like re-creating froot-loops in a tea blend could work (to me pandan leaves taste like fruit loops, for what that’s worth).

To me, it seems critical to not overlook the tea aspect. I don’t drink much in the way of blends but what I’ve seen is often made (apparently) using low-grade CTC black tea, which could work, but the effect of the blend would change based on the tea. Other tea types could be used, and ground-up tea may not be the right starting point for some blends.

The first thing you need to know is that many flavored teas get most of their flavor from natural or artificial flavors. Anything else in the blend may be there to add flavor, or may be there to add color, or may just be there just to look pretty. Most companies that sell flavors don’t sell to the general public, so tea hobbyists like those of us on Steepster probably won’t have much advice for you there. That said, there are many herbs, spices, grains, etc. that are flavorful. This wikipedia article has a list of those most commonly used for herbal tea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbal_tea#Composition

What you ought to do is start throwing a teaspoon of whatever you want to try into a mug of hot water and brew it for 1-10 minutes see how it tastes. After you find a few things you like, start blending them together to see what blends appeal to you. You might want to start with a chai, since most places have a house blend made with black tea and 4-5 of the following spices: allspice, black pepper, cardamom, cassia cinnamon, ceylon cinnamon, clove, ginger, nutmeg, star anise. Once you have a house chai, you can make different varieties or try something completely different. A coffee chai might work well for you, or a caffeine free version. Vanilla bean, cocoa beans, or orange peel are also popular additions. Citrus peels, hibiscus, and green rooibos make for some nice fruity blends. Most dried fruit doesn’t add much flavor, but I think apple pieces are an exception. You can try others as well, just to see. Rose and lavender have strong floral flavors. I feel like the roasted grains are underrepresented in herbal blends in this country, but maybe they wouldn’t be as popular in stores.

Good Luck!

Most of those fruit and flower pieces that you see in Teavana blends are just vehicles for artificial flavorings. That’s where the fruity flavors really come from. If you really want to get into making blends like Teavana’s you’ll need to do some research into flavoring oils as well as sourcing the tea and dehydrated fruit pieces.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far! So for instance I was looking, one of our suppliers of coffee syrups sells a coffee/tea flavor oil. They are extremely expensive at 1oz for an average of $8. So say we wanted to try a strawberry kiwi tea. Would we flavor the freeze dried strawberry with the oil and freeze dried kiwi with kiwi oil and then mix that with the tea leaves or flavor the tea leaves them self? I was looking at those 2 companies I mentioned and noticed they had tea blends that had no actual tea in them, just fruit pieces and flowers,
Etc

There have been a couple of other threads around this subject lately. I believe a website called www.metrotea.com was suggested but only sells to people with established reseller accounts.

Could tell us about your coffee business, fill out your profile, link to your store or facebook page?
How many years have you been selling coffee? do you roast your own? Flavor it yourself?

People who sell tea put much time, experience and knowledge to create popular and saleable blends/ flavored or not.
Personally, I think there are many prerequisites to being successful with blending your own. Knowledge of tea itself. What to use for the base. You are not going to want to just throw some flavoring and components in with tea and call it good. Why the bias against selling already made? If you look through the many vendors listed on Steepster, there are a great many that sell blends from larger suppliers.

If you are in the coffee business and are aware of food service protocol and responsibilities you know you are going to want to do it properly.
Even if you are not interested in going that far, these course outlines will give you an idea of the complexities involved.
https://www.worldteaacademy.com/pages/class-descriptions

Also, don’t be surprised if at least at first your teas aren’t anywhere near as good as your coffee. There is a local coffee roaster by me who also sells tea. His coffees are really good. His tea not so much because he didn’t source good tea like he did coffee.

Our coffee is now currently made by a commercial roaster and is sold at stores in my area and we have stands at a bunch of Farmers Markets. We also sell spices and that’s how this all started. A lot of customers were buying our orange peel, lemon peel, lavender, editable flowers, etc and telling us they make tea with it. Then they were asking us to start carrying more tea components which we did and now they want full on tea blends and iced tea at all of markets and more of our spices in stores. We just don’t really want to carry premade blends because we would like to use our components in the tea which allows us to help sell more.

Thanks for all advice so far. So I guess my final question is using the oil. I see some of you mention flavor the whole batch for the most consistant. How do you go
About using the actual flavor? Since it’s so small quantities I don’t think a spray bottle would work. Any other suggestions on flavoring a very small
Batch with 2-3 different oils? Thanks