Moving onwards and upwards

I can't believe how long it has been since I last sat down and blogged! It has been a busy few months, as we are in the process of relocating our office and warehouse to a more modern and properly suited facility.

After careful searching, planning and lots of days and nights of hard work, we are making our final push towards the big day. On October 27th, we will be moving from our home of 32 years to 14-A Craig Road, Acton, MA. Many of our local customers will note that this move is only a few miles down the road from our current location. So we may be changing zip codes, but we haven't gone too far.

Many people have naturally asked us why we were making our move. Well, to be blunt, our lease was up, our landlord has visions of luxury condos where our office is and we need to run our business with out the day to day hassles of "patching up" our old building. We welcome our new space with great excitement and can't wait to be up and running soon. We were able to find a location that was designed for our operating needs. Over the past few months we have been creating a tea blending and packing room, building new warehouse racking and shelving, creating more efficient office space and developing a product display area for visiting customers.

Over the years I have heard people complain about moving out of their house or having to clean out their parents house when they decided to "downsize". I really didn't give it much thought until now. Our company is 105 years old and we have been out our current facility for over 3 decades. So, you can imagine some of the artifacts we have found along the way! I take great pride in our history and have a detailed collection of old MTW tea tins, letters and catalogs, as well as antique printing devices and equipment. During our "deconstruction" of our Beharrell Street location, I found several fairly cool items to add to our archives. Here is a list of some of the items:

• An old wooden tea chest that has "IT PAYS TO BUY GOOD TEA" stamped on one side.
• A hand crafted oak table that was used by the Tea Tasters that sampled all tea entering New York City during the early-mid 1900's. It is very unique. This large table spins on it's base allowing the tea taster to stand in one spot, sipping the brewed tea cups as they turn by.
• Several of Mr. Wendell's press plates for catalogs and letters printed in the 1920's - 1950's.
• A tea tin from an upstart Seattle based coffee and tea company (circa. 1970's) called Starbucks. This one is my favorite. It has the old school Starbucks mermaid logo on the front and just looks like your everyday run of the mill tin of tea. It is hard to believe what they have turned into over the decades!

After we settle in, I will post some new pictures of our great new space. The modernization of the Mark T. Wendell Tea Company will allow us to continue providing our customers with the finest teas available for many years to follow.

Our Big Screen Product Placement

I wanted to let all our blog followers know that our classic tea tins have made it to the big screen in the new movie, "Julie and Julia"! I blogged about the props department for this movie calling us to try to get some of our tins last summer. Time flies

As some of you may know, Julia Child was a dear customer of ours and loved her Mark T. Wendell teas. She would call and personally order her teas when my family started running this company back in the 1970's. My father jokes that she was unmistakable on the other end of the telephone! Everyone always asks us what her favorite teas were. She and her husband would always order China Keemun, China Jasmine, China Lapsang Souchong, Cheericup Ceylon and of course, Hu-Kwa from us.

In her kitchen she had a collection of our vintage pale blue, black and gold tins on her counter. They are vi sable briefly in her Cambridge kitchen set in the movie.

It is interesting to point out that the actual kitchen that Julia used in her Cambridge, MA home was donated in 2001 to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. It has been re-built there in its entirety. I have not seen it personally, but have heard that it is an interesting exhibit. There is a great interactive website that allows you to view the kitchen and to learn more about the cooking and personal items that are displayed. At this site, you can see the original tins that she bought from us.

To visit this website, click the following link: http://americanhistory.si.edu/juliachild/default.asp

Once on the homepage, click Enter. To locate our tea tins, go to the top of the page and click the “view selected objects” link. The MTW aqua and gold tea tins are located as item #46 of 66. They are also classified under “personal objects” in the ‘sort objects by” pull-down menu. Enjoy!

Our newest custom tea blend is now available!

This summer, we are pleased to introduce our latest custom tea blend to our customers. We have carefully blended this tea in memory of a dear friend of ours. He liked his tea strong in character, yet smooth enough to enjoy after that perfect meal. Our Manhattan Tribute Blend is the perfect combination of Indian, Formosan and Ceylon teas, devised for late day and after dinner consumption when the palate is satiated. When brewed, it produces a bold cup with a slightly floral note.

In the ongoing fight to conquer cancer, 10% of proceeds from the sale of this item will be donated to the Cancer Research Institute.

To learn more about the Cancer Research Institute and its groundbreaking work, please visit online at: http://www.cancerresearch.org

To visit this tea on our website, click here: http://marktwendell.com/ManhattanTribute.htm

We invite you to enjoy a great cup of tea and help out a worthy cause in the process!

The Continued Health Benefits of the Tea Leaf

For many years now scientific researchers have been finding a positive correlation between tea and the body's overall health. Although, it has not been listed as scientific fact, the determination of numerous studies is that tea is good for you! I recently saw a few interesting articles on the Internet that further outlined these healthy benefits of tea. I have listed key excerpts and direct links to the original Internet postings below. So, reach for another cup of tea today and drink to your health.

The first article discusses how a chemical found in green tea may shrink lymph nodes and reduce white blood cell counts in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a new study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology shows.

Click the link below to view this article:

http://www.cancerpage.com/news/article.asp?id=13472

The second article discusses how tea could prevent heart attacks, due to the naturally occurring compounds in tea known as flavonoids. It is believed that these tea components may control inflammation in the heart.

Click the link below to view this article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1186073/Three-cups-tea-day-cut-heart-attack-risk-70.html

PG Tips embarking on higher sustainability standards

For close to two decades now, we have been importing PG Tips from England. It has always been a hot seller for us, primarily sourced by ex-pats looking for that famous cuppa that they grew up with in the UK. Established as a tea brand in the 1930's, Arthur Brooke launched his tea in the UK market under the name of 'Pre-Gest-Tee'' - suggesting that the tea could be drunk before food was digested. Grocers quickly abbreviated it to PG, and the company adds 'tips' to highlight the fact that PG uses the top two leaves and a bud to make its tea, hence the name that is still in use today.

Over the decades, PG Tips has been at the forefront of forward thinking regarding their products. In the 1950's, they introduced "The Tipps Family", a creative ad campaign that focused on a family of chimps taking tea! Since 1956, it has become the longest running advertisement campaign in the UK. In the 1960's they introduced the teabag to what they refer to as "the stunned British tea drinker" and in 1996, they revolutionized the simple teabag by creating a pyramid bag. This style teabag, with more room inside it, acts like a miniature teapot and gives the leaves more room to move when brewing. This has allowed for an overall better cup of tea.

But perhaps their biggest accomplishment in the tea community was started in 2007. At that time, they began a revolutionary partnership with the Rainforest Alliance to make sure that by 2010 all PG tips tea suppliers meet a new high sustainability standard. The core of this program is to ensure that the thousands of farmers who grow their tea must make sure that their hard-working staff are getting a decent wage as well as access to housing, education and health care. They also have to commit to protecting the environment from which they make their living, by introducing environmentally-sound farming techniques.

By 2010, all the tea plantations where PG tips buy their tea will be Rainforest Alliance Certified™, which means the tea inside every single PG tips tea bag will be sustainably harvested. By choosing PG tips, you and I will be supporting them in improving the incomes and livelihoods of tea farmers and their families.

This is an amazing undertaking by a large company and one that should act as a blueprint for all other tea manufactures around the world. It is an undertaking that would not be feasible financially for many, but it is a goal that all others should strive to meet.

Tea Memories

One of my favorite tea blogs is by one of our customers, Katrina. She writes a great blog called Tea Pages, where she reviews all sorts of teas from every vendor and local tea purveyor she can find. It is fascinating to see the varying teas above and beyond what we carry. She wrote a great article about our company last year and I have been viewing her work on-line ever since.

I recently noticed that she was undertaking a new venture that seems very interesting. Katrina is writing a new anthology, "Tea Memories: Living Life One Cup at a Time," and is in need of original, non-fiction essays to add to her anthology. If you are interested in contributing, here are the specifics:

"Have you "taken tea" in a unique place or under unusual circumstances? Do you have a story about sharing tea with someone special in your life? Have you made an important decision over a cup of tea? Whether humorous or touching, serious or inspiring, your stories of events, experiences, and transformational moments are welcomed. The most important criteria is that the stories be true and that tea plays a role in your essay.

Our intent is to show that tea is far more than something that quenches your thirst. Tea provides comfort, a time for reflection, and a starting point for conversation. Tea plays a supporting role in the stories of our lives. "Tea Memories" aims to share the ways that tea has changed our lives, one cup at a time."

Published and unpublished authors of all ages are encouraged to submit essays for consideration. The best essays will be selected for inclusion in the "Tea Memories" anthology.

Please visit http://teamemoriesbook.googlepages.com/ to learn about the submission process.

A glimpse of the Mark T. Wendell Tea Company warehouse operations

With so many of our customers located all over the country, a small portion of our fan base is actually located near our warehouse and offices in West Concord, Massachusetts. Those that live near by tend to stop by and purchase their tea requirements directly from us. Unfortunately, our current office space does not allow for a stand alone tea shop dedicated to walk in customer traffic. Since we sell our packaged products right from the shipping departments main room, those that come in for their tea fix get to see our operations up close and personal. For all our other customers, here is a glimpse of our facility.

Our offices and warehouse are carved out of part of what used to be a large lumber mill that chiefly manufactured split rail fences back in the early to mid 1900's. We moved here from the Boston waterfront in 1977 and have been packing our fine teas in this historical community ever since. The images above show one of the main bulk tea storage areas that dot the old, wooden planked warehouse floors. Almost all of our loose teas come in a sturdy packaged corrugated box, bag or sack of some kind. They can range from a kilo (2.2 lbs) all the way up to the big 120 lb bags! Many of the green, scented and white teas come to us in a vacuum sealed foil bag placed inside a corrugated tea chest. Long gone are the days of bulky wooden chests with metal edges, steel strapping and lots of sharp nails holding it all together! While these types of tea chests may be romantic and make a great conversation piece, they were very tough to ship and dispose of. Once our loose teas are opened, we store them in the large gray food storage buckets shown above and then pack the tea into our specialty tins as needed. This allows us to manage our inventory very carefully so our customers receive only the freshest teas available.

The rest of our warehouse is filled with shipping boxes, tea tins, all our pre-packaged imported teas, teapots, tea brewing accessories, sugars and some great old tea packing equipment. You can also see above the stocked shelves from where we fill our daily orders. Always filled with the great smells of whatever tea is being packaged that day, our warehouse is an aged commerce center that has been thriving for decades.

The Elegance Of The Tea Tin

As our need for more usable work space in our warehouse keeps growing, I was recently forced to make an effort to clean out some old files and boxes of antiques that have been tucked away for years in the back of the warehouse. I was pleasantly surprised to find some unique looking tea tins that we had lost track of over time. They have made a great addition to our ever expanding tea tin archives.

Our longevity has allowed us to really create a modest collection of tins from varying tea blenders and merchants. Some of these tea merchants are still in business and some have been gone for decades. We have tins from Lipton, Ridgway's Jackson's of Picadilly, Twinnings, Monarch, White Rose, Melrose's, Tetley, Chase & Sanborn's and one from a small Seattle tea company called Starbucks! Yes, that Starbucks. Before it became a coffee giant, it was a small company called Starbucks Coffee and Tea. During an era where tea was a luxury, the tins used for packaging were very colorful and very elaborate. Many of them had hinged lids and were available in unique sizes. Today, it is rare to find such hand crafted details on tea packaging's. The cost is simply to great.

Since our company has been packing tea for over 105 years, the style in which we have presented our teas has changed significantly. What was once packed in carefully hand crafted wooden boxes with ornate decorative painting on all sides has evolved to decorative tins with sealed lids for ultimate freshness. A common theme on all of our company's tea tins and containers over time is our simple black, gold and red color scheme and depiction of Chinese fauna and birds. If you look carefully at one of the first Mark T. Wendell wooden Hu-Kwa tea containers from the early 1900's and we find the same logos we use today on them. It is a great continuity for such an old, luxurious product. We have tins in all varying sizes for each decade we have been importing teas. We are thankful to those before us for the foresight to save these simple Mark T. Wendell Tea containers for future generations of employees and tea drinkers. So, whenever I see a great looking tea tin, I put it on display or stash it away. Who knows what it may represent in another 105 years?