DAVIDsTEA is known for its unique and exclusive loose leaf tea blends. In just over four years, it has rapidly expanded to 106 retail locations across North America, including one in every Canadian province. In Vancouver, we are lucky with four colourful locations – Oakridge Centre, West 4th, Pacific Centre and now Gastown. It was at their Gastown location that Modern Mix Vancouver had the opportunity to meet and chat with the David of DAVIDsTEA. For a tea fanatic like me, it was super cool to meet the face behind the name, the man whose name has changed the Canadian tea market.
DAVIDsTEA was founded in 2008 by David Segal, a McGill business graduate, and his cousin and business partner Herschel Segal. By the way, Herschel is also the founder of Le Chateau. As saavy entrepreneurs they recognized a niche in the market and capitalized on bringing loose leaf tea in a “fun, fresh and un-intimidating” environment to the average consumer.
As David described to me, back then, the only places to get loose leaf tea were typically either Asian inspired or zen-like, or a fancy British tea shop where you felt like you had to already understand tea in order to know what to buy. At the time, there wasn’t really an approachable, affordable middle ground, and that’s exactly the niche DAVIDsTEA filled.
In four and a half years, this colourful loose-leaf tea chain has expanded to over 100 locations across North America with over 150 types of loose leaf tea to choose from. This includes limited edition seasonal collections, traditional straight teas and exotic infusions from around the world. Teas are categorized into eight colourful tins at the store by tea type: white, green, oolong, black, pu’erh, mate, rooibos and herbal infusion.
The DAVIDsTEA summer collection is now available in stores with fruity and fun flavours including Pink Passion Fruit, Tropicalia, and my favourite of the season, Mango Fruit Punch. This seasonal collection retails for $25.50 and contains 25 grams of five flavours of refreshing, limited-edition teas.
For more tea related content on Modern Mix Vancouver, read about this monthly artisan tea subscription service or this Rare Tea Bar & Gallery in Kitsilano.
