After the Sarasota .NET Developer meeting last month, we started talking about green tea after someone overheard that my wife and I have our own online green tea store.
One of the questions asked was, “How does loose-leaf green tea compare to the green tea you can buy at the grocery store?”
To be fair, you can buy loose-leaf green tea at the grocery store. The question was mainly how the quality / price of green tea bought online compares to the green tea you can purchase at the grocery store?
This is a fair question, since green tea at the grocery store is much more convenient, because you can just buy it with your normal groceries. Certainly there would have to be a good reason to go out of your way and buy it online as opposed to picking it up at the local grocery store.
It has been my experience that the green tea at the grocery store is much, much lower in quality, particularly if you are buying some of the bulk green tea to save a little money. I always look through the green tea section at the grocery store just to see what they are selling, and not only is much of it stored improperly (How to Store Tea), but it is mainly dust and low quality, late harvested, very low on the tea bush broken leaves :) I wish I were exaggerating, but unfortunately I am not. Some of the particles I find in these low quality, bulk bags don't even appear to be from the tea plant let alone tea leaves.
Some of the nationally recognized green tea products are a bit better in quality than the bulk tea mentioned above, but you pay way, way too much for the quantity of green tea you actually get. You are literally paying around $10 for 1.5 ounces of green tea. You can pay the same amount for 1/4 lb of green tea online that is of better quality. Do you want to pay for a fancy box / label with very little green tea at the grocery store, or do you want to drink high quality, healthy green tea at a lower price?
Whether you choose to buy green tea from us or not ( China Green Tea / Japan Green Tea ), you owe it to yourself to buy it online so you can get both better quality and the most for your money. You want better quality green tea, because this is where you get the health benefits of green tea. Unfortunately, not everyone online sells the best quality, but it is bound to be better quality and of better value than you can find at the local grocery store. If you have any questions, please let me know.