The Food Scout

In many ways, 2008 was the coming out party for tea - both iced and hot - and now the question is how much hotter the tea trend can get. 

Tea has long been the “alternative” beverage: It was just the right compromise when you didn’t want just water or a sweet beverage with your restaurant meal. And if you weren’t a coffee lover, but wanted to partake in the coffee culture, tea was there to provide a cup of status that was more drinkable than a stout cup of java. 

But thanks to the time-honored tradition of pre-sweetened iced tea in the South, which was institutionalized and spread by McAlister’s Deli chain originally, then rolled out by McDonald’s gradually over the last couple of years, the industry has seen a huge spike in iced tea servings, and now chains like Wendy’s are following the lead. 

In another camp, the smoothie category saw the introduction of frozen tea-based beverages by Caribou Coffee, Ben & Jerry’s, and Tropical Smoothie. Though I challenge anyone to distinguish a tea flavor in a frozen beverage full of pureed fruit or fruit-flavored syrups, tea is nonetheless the hot flavor callout in the frozen category. 

And though green tea lattes and other novel tea selections have been around for a number of years, Starbucks recently pulled it all together and found a way to charge more for a cup of tea with milk by adding cool names and other barista mystery to the program. I mean, who can resist trying a London Fog latte, now that London Fog jackets are no longer the vogue. And now that I know how to say Rooibus (that is roy-bus), I can try the latest red tea trend in a more palatable vanilla-flavored latte version that has “more antioxidants than an 8-ounce glass of orange juice (I hope it’s very healthy, because it tastes like medicine, by the way). 

Chai, of course, is old news, and something that never really appealed to me. But mix it with hot berry juice or apple juice, and visions of Christmas and wassail come to mind. Same with green tea. But add melon flavoring to make a “matcha” style drink, and now you have something worth swallowing for all those antioxidants. 

So, tea is off to a good start and perhaps turning some heads. And so the question is, what’s next? Can tea keep the show going?