“Less-fuss” crystalized tea innovation
02 Jan 2019 | Tea-Pop Ltd
Tea-Pop presented its “innovative crystalized tea in a fuss-free and easy to make concept” at Food Matters Live in London. According to the company, Tea-Pop is the result of a collaboration with Chester University which seeks to offer a traditional tea experience wherever, whenever. Speaking to FoodIngredientsFirst, Tan Diep, Managing Partner at the company says: “We developed Tea-Pop because we thought there was a gap in the market for on flight tea beverages. The idea came about when we were traveling and we could never get a good cup of tea.” This innovative tea solution is shaped like a lollipop and, according to Diep, “contains all the antioxidants and vitamins of tea.”
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Exhibited their newest innovations.
And sandwiches.
Tell me a bit more about this.
Yeah, hi.
We've, we developed teapot because we, we thought there was a gap in the market in terms of like, you know, the on-flight.
So when it, it came about when we were actually traveling, you know, we were traveling in flight, there was, we can never get a nice decent cup of tea, , in flight.
So we thought, what if we do that, develop an ultimate tea that can, you, you can, drink, in flight that, you know, has, less fuss.
So we came up with the idea of teapot, and, which is, a, a product that, it's, you know, it's shaped like a, a, a crystal-shaped, lollipop.
It's all the, essence of tea, you know, all the antioxidants, vitamins, minerals of tea.
We encapsulate that into sort of like a crystal form, shape, and you put that in water, it fully dissolves into a perfect cup of tea.
And, we find that, you know, when we sort of introduce.
To the airline, they, they, they thought the idea was very novel, and we sort of started to sell into sort of airport lounges, and now we have interests in firms in terms of like department stores and so on that are interested in this as a novelty gift also as , but, originally it's more for sort of like B2B business, commercial product.
Yeah, fantastic.
So , obviously this is quite an innovative concept, but what are the kind of challenges.
Yeah, we spent about a year and a half working with Chester University to try and develop this product, and the and the difficulty was the extraction process.
How do you actually extract all the goodness of tea, you know, out from the leaves and then have it solid enough to basically form into a a product like that.
So we've developed a patented way, a process in, in doing that and which helps us to easily to sort of like, you know, make it bind it all together, and now it's the process is actually freeze dried at the end so that the lifespan of the product can actually last for 1.5 years to about 3 years if we actually seal it correctly.
We, we, we have different blends.
Some of our sort of like more popular blends are sort of the lemon, ginger or lemon honey tea, which you can actually put into cold water as as as hot water, and, if, if you put that into sort of cold water, it takes a little bit longer to dissolve, but it, you know, but the, the aroma and the taste and the intensity is still there in, in the pot.
Yeah.
So where did the inspiration.
Tea flavors come from?
I think it's, it, we've, we've, we've traveled around a lot, so, we were just in Singapore last week, and, the, the idea from there was basically from, , customers that, , in Asian customers where they like sort of more traditional teas as , , and, also like the lemon teas and the herbal health wellness tea, and, we, we also in sort of like the North America where they like sort of like the more fruity.
The wild berry tea and such.
So, so this is where it's come from, but we, the, the, the, the way we make it, we can actually produce it in almost any blends of tea, so which is, which is exciting for us.
Yeah, we, we can, we can, so for instance, we can do almost any blends of tea into this format, and it, you know, and it will dissolve instantly as.
Yeah.
OK, thank you, bye bye.
