This really started with discussing this topic with my brother. He's an economist, more or less, with a phd in policy analysis from a very well regarded school, and many years of consulting related to that. Not a tea drinker though, really. He tends to see things a lot differently than I do, which I'll fill in as background.
First, did the US specialty tea industry already develop, so I'm way off in describing this context? Let's consider some stats:
Market size of tea in the United States from 2013 to 2021, by segment
And then there is this:
New Report Covers Specialty Tea Market (in World Tea News, in 2019)
There are 1,607 specialty tea businesses in the U.S. of which 255 outlets are chains with five or more locations, according to State of the US Specialty Tea Industry(2019), a newly released market research report published by SinensisResearch.
The total U.S. specialty retail market grosses between $690 million and $1.2 billion annually, according to a nationwide survey of tearoom owners and managers.
Those two claims don't match, since 2019 specialty segment was identified as worth 2.68 billion USD in 2019 per the other source, but it's close enough. Let's place that against a reference value, for coffee:
Coffee - Worldwide: Revenue in the Coffee segment amounts to US$433.60bn in 2022. The market is expected to grow annually by 7.64% (CAGR 2022-2025).
It seems likely that is comparing apples and oranges, in terms of different kinds of stats, even beyond the drink / commodity being different. But still comparing $13 billion in total 2022 market value to that $433 seems clear enough; there is a difference in scale. I don't know what "specialty coffee" would even be, so let's leave off there, and accept that specialty tea demand is still limited. 1 to 3 billion USD isn't bad, but in a different sense it's also not significant. Higher quality tea interest never really did "take off."
There are more vendors now than a decade ago, considerably more, and some of their businesses thrive. Related to pu'er White 2 Tea and Crimson Lotus were both founded around a decade ago, and Bitterleaf and regional sources like Kuura more recently. So awareness and demand did increase, just not on the same scale as specialty coffee or craft beer, or even matcha and bubble tea.
My brother's explanation
For background context, I don't agree with almost anything he says, but his input always seems to have some value.
His take: Americans appreciate foods that are easy to access, simple, and approachable, but intense in flavor and dietary input, at least in terms of providing calories, fat, protein, or a stimulant effect. Coffee works as an example; someone hands you a cup, or maybe you brew it in a machine, and a lot of standard to-go versions contain 150 - 200 mg of caffeine, quite a jolt. Then a minority loves the messing around, pour-over forms or whatever else, as is more the rule with tea. Beer is like that too, either plain, simple, and cheap, or else more complex, varied, and expensive, but still not exactly something related to working through a learning curve. A preference curve sure, but you only need to sit at a bar or buy a six-pack.
His guess at whether or not that couldn't shift, and people couldn't begin to demand less straightforward, more foreign-associated, more diverse, and healthier drink choice options is no, just no. His reasoning is that the trend for this demand pattern change over the last 3 or 4 decades has been very consistent. There was a craft foods sub-theme that ran counter to this pattern a decade or so ago, but it came and went fast enough that it doesn't necessarily seem like much of a counter-argument. Craft beer, craft chocolate, and bread making all became popular, those hipster themes, but it never really impacted specialty tea as much. I was there as a tea enthusiast across that time period; I don't really need the stats, since plenty of online discussion hearsay filled in lots of varying perspectives. Specialty tea was seen as growing, as the potential next big thing, but everyone could agree that it was about to really happen, but hadn't yet.
According to that main graph reference specialty tea sales have doubled in the past decade; that's something, right? My brother commented that even if inflation had been taken into account marginal gains could also relate to the marginal growth of the population and economy. Of course our main discussion was about the larger level, about why growth seemed slow, not so much moderate, and whether or not it could increase. I think that demand could shift and increase, past some unknown tipping point, but that hunch is not based on much.
Next we discussed what it should mean, or at least might mean, that social media group member counts have really blown up over the last half dozen years. There are 26k+ in the Facebook group I co-founded and moderate, and 600k+ in r/tea, the main Reddit group (689k now). His take: exposure to all sorts of social media groups has exploded, so that may relate to people initiating such contact now, not so much a shift in preference or awareness. Anecdotal accounts continually describe consumers being new to better loose tea, moving on from blends or tea bag types, but those are impossible to place, probably impossible to pin down decent related stats, for "tea enthusiast" counts.
His arguments and perspective don't reflect some sort of deep inner knowledge of social trends, or consumer interest shifts, but he seemed to make some decent points. Really only that Reddit group is on that scale for high user or member count, although multiple tea groups including 25k members is something. Youtube channels related to tea still haven't exactly blown up, and it's hard to get any feel for Instagram, since there are surely hundreds of tea enthusiasts there posting, but it's not clear how much change that's causing.
I just moved to Honolulu, back to the States, and ran across two or three people online who are interested in tea, and a number more on the big island, Hawaii. It's nothing like Bangkok interest levels, or Seattle or Portland. Even Chinatown here barely sells any tea; it's strange.
To summarize what is probably already clear, his main point is that tea is seen as foreign oriented, as difficult to find and explore, and probably tricky to brew, but people aren't even getting that far. He explored loose tea at a specialty grocery store at one point, but talked about now buying medium range--bad quality, basically--English tea as tea-bags. As a tea enthusiast it's familiar how putting any leaves in hot water in a remotely appropriate proportion and time could make decent tea, but it's not really about that fact of the matter, more about perceptions.
Guesses about why tea really is about to take off
This direction is tougher, no better speculation than what my brother was saying, even with a decade of exposure and continual discussion to draw on. None of the conventional references or data seems to clearly define plausible causes for why this trickle of increasing demand would ever increase faster. Something not currently happening would seemingly need to happen. I doubt that it will, in the next decade, but I think it will at some point, when the conditions are right for it.
Beyond that skeptical take, that specialty tea just isn't something Americans are likely to take up in large numbers, then it's also clear enough that the early ventures into boxed tea-bag products has led to increase in offerings and sales in that range, that even at the low quality end tea interest may be diversifying. It's not easy to see in the summarized table stats shown, but Unilever selling off their Lipton branch seems a potential indication of that. Probably standard offerings like Lipton have suffered instead of benefitted from this diversification, even though it's as likely competition from a very broad range of other beverage choices that are impacting tea bag sales. The plausible, but very uncertain, model for rapid increase looking forward is that earlier demand for Tazo teas, for a time switched over to Teavana brands, and now any number of others, could lead on further to higher quality specialty tea demand.
When though, and why not yet? Up until 4 or 5 years ago we kept hearing from specialty tea interests that tea was really about to take off, or the process of that was already underway. Sales stats always seemed a little underwhelming, the odd 10+% claim of annual growth, but anecdotal accounts always went with that, stories of new channels and forms, and spread of awareness. Of course some vending businesses are very successful now, more so than was probably possible a decade ago, at least related to many formats. Social media group and related app development all continue.
Maybe it's not yet clear why I have faith that tea awareness and interest probably will change, or how I place my own skepticism. In order to shift people would have to take a fundamentally different approach to food. Not all of them; I mean it would help if the general pattern shifted a little, since plenty of people span a broad range of ways of relating to food. Many people must have moved on from fad diets, and instead of "throwing in the towel" and have moved on putting focus and energy into eating a basic, balanced diet. Probably lots more still take a fad-theme approach, shifting from paleo influence to eliminating carbs, or intermittent fasting, and so on. That could be fine, if any one approach is balanced and positive, but in general it seems the wrong direction to me, to sift through and adopt trends.
Eating a simple, balanced diet based mostly on carbohydrates, with some limited meat, dairy, and eggs, and plenty of fruits and vegetables, would work well, without the input of the latest ideas or a guru's input. Living in the US again brought up how expensive and problematic it is to do that; bulk goods that aren't healthy are cheap, but lots of forms of fruits and vegetables aren't.
That's not as off-topic as it might seem, related to this all really being about a specific beverage choice. It's fine to drink water or juice, for a healthy beverage replacement for soda or beer, but tea takes a little more doing. Not so much RTD tea or bubble tea, but brewing decent tea takes practice, and a limited degree of extra equipment. Health concerns are one driving force for that, beyond curiosity about a new food experience, or some other interest in a foreign culture practice. General approach to food also factors in.
This line of thought keeps switching back to supporting what my brother said better. People taking up cooking is too problematic, and emphasizing optimum dietary input over food experience is too broad a shift. I don't see most Americans as curious about foreign cultures, or really open to importing aspects of others. That might seem a bit ironic, given the older "melting pot" theme, but that related to people already here sharing their own experience, not a more indirect or abstract import. Thai food is well accepted; that's about where it typically begins and ends, related to that sort of scope.
The latest practice I'm checking out in relation to diet highlights just how far I've drifted from standard approach to diet, and behavior in general: I'm on my second day of a fast, trying to take a four or five day break from eating or drinking anything but water. I could write more about that separately, but it seems a clear enough parallel to show why outrageous and potentially beneficial diet practice on my part is probably coming way out of left field. Putting tea leaves in hot water is different; it's not very hard, expensive, complicated to source, difficult to sort out in relation to options, and so on. But good tea isn't going to turn up right there in a grocery store aisle.
Oddly this is a big part of what got me into tea: that's exactly what happened, Thai oolong suddenly appeared in front of me in a grocery store aisle. It's not so much better accepted here than in the US but it's definitely easier to find, for very moderate quality versions. Thailand started producing significant amounts of Taiwanese style oolongs back in the 90s, per my understanding, so it was more likely to filter out into broad commercial availability. I just bought quite good Hawaiian tea in Honolulu, which cost over $1 per gram, and required drawing on existing tea connections to find, asking people by message versus online search. Even in the local health food store there, Down to Earth, tea just wasn't there, beyond a few standard form boxes of tea bags.
I will personally continue to try to make this shift happen, even though at this point it feels a bit like tilting at a windmill. As an example I've long since written for a Quora Space about tea, Specialty Tea, which some people must have been exposed to, but in terms of feedback or significant online traffic which came to nothing. I first wrote for a now-defunct food news online source many years ago, out towards a decade. I'm not sure what the next attempt will look like but I'll keep going. But why?
This is a main point: I see better quality tea as a healthier, far more pleasant, and more interesting alternative to standard beverage choices. Spreading the word is aimed at helping others. A bit foolishly idealistic, right? I should at least be trying to sell something. I might be more effective in spreading ideas if I were, if commercial support was a part of it. If that communication form ends up changing I'll mention it here, or if I see signs of this change coming, that I'm questioning will happen any time soon in this writing.
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