Tea - United States

The Hot Drinks market segment, Tea, consists of black tea, green tea and mate sold in tea bags or as loose-leaf tea. This segment does not include herbal tea, instant tea, iced tea or similar tea-derived Ready-to-Drink beverages. Ready-to-Drink variants are instead aggregated into the segment Ready-to-Drink (RTD) Tea in the Non-Alcoholic Drinks market. Unilever (Lipton), Associated British Foods (Twinings) and Tata Global Beverages (Tetley) are globally the most important players by revenue.

The market for Hot Drinks is structured into retail sales for at home consumption and on-premise or foodservice sales for out-of-home consumption. The at-home market, also called off-trade market, covers all retail sales via super- and hypermarkets, convenience stores or similar sales channels. The out-of-home market, also called on-trade market, away-from-home market or HORECA encompasses all sales to hotels, restaurants, catering, cafés, bars and similar hospitality service establishments. Both the at-home and the out-of-home market are valued at retail selling prices including all sales and consumption taxes. The price per unit in the out-of-home market always references the total price over the amount of tea consumed, regardless of the other components of the finished beverage. One cup of tea is assumed to contain 2 grams of tea. One kilogram therefore represents 500 cup equivalents. The valuation of the out-of-home segment at retail prices means a significant change of the market definition in comparison to earlier iterations of the Consumer Market Outlook, as out-of-home consumption was valued at wholesale prices before. This means, market totals are not comparable to published data from prior years.