From Humble Beginnings: China Mist Then & Now

Flavor First

As our company grew and we began to set up distributors around the U.S., we sought further differentiation in the form of favors and blends. We reasoned that restaurant patrons would want flavored iced teas and iced green teas, so we set upon flavors with Passion Fruit as our first. Essential to our thinking was that tea lovers would want to taste the tea, not just the flavor. So our effort went towards flavoring tea leaves such that one would get a fruit flavor that would not dominate the tea’s flavor and therefore would not overpower our customer’s cuisine. Our Passion Fruit was a big hit with restaurants and especially food stylists and chefs and over the years we have brought out more diverse blends of flavors. To this day, our Passion Fruit remains one of our top sellers. Some years later as green tea was beginning to make its way out of Asian restaurants into the mainstream, we made a decision to create two green teas for foodservice—an unflavored green and a flavored green. We were the first foodservice iced tea supplier to market iced green teas in restaurants and our China Mist Blackberry Jasmine Iced Green Tea was such a hit that today, in some markets, it is our number one seller.

Onward

2015 is going to bring big things for China Mist Iced Tea. From the very beginning, Dan and I have made it our mission to provide an exceptional product that we feel good about producing and you feel good about serving. Moving forward, that mission is going to drive China Mist to the next level. I can’t wait to share the news with you. Stay tuned.