Chai spices up beverage segment: coffeehouses and bakery-cafes brew up new ideas for hot or iced tea drinks

Nation's Restaurant News, August 4, 2003 by Jack Hayes

"If I were a coffeehouse, I'd be carrying a variety of chai flavors, but as a full-service restaurant with an espresso bar, we took it on because so many people were asking for it," Martin says.

Product manager Keighly Appel of Golden-Colo.-based Einstein Bros. bagel bakery-cafes sees chai sales growing as a direct result of product exposure. With the exception of approximately 20 locations that do not have espresso machines, all 371 Einstein Bros. Bagels locations are serving what she calls traditional hot chai latte, she says.

"We see a lot more chai awareness in college and university towns and on the East and West coasts," Appel reports. "We're looking at eggnog chai for the holidays, and other flavors as popularity increases."

Unlike other chains that are featuring iced chai this summer, Einstein Bros Bagels will bypass that option until next year when product knowledge and demand will propel even greater growth for chai drinks, according to Appel.

Chris Toll, spokesman for Minneapolis-based Caribou Coffee Co., agrees that customers generally are ordering hot chai as opposed to iced. Nevertheless, Caribou offers both drinks at all 220 stores.

"We know that chai sales have been growing, although off a smaller base," Toll adds. "Last fall, when Caribou changed its menu boards to include a dedicated tea presentation, chai drinks took a more visible place on our menus, and that partly explains the growth," be says.

Another chai destination, W Hotel in Seattle, part of the White Plains, N.Y.-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. group, offers chai in all of its restaurants and also developed a highly popular bar drink called the Goldfinger, it is a mix of steamed chai with Goldschlager, the cinnamon-based schnapps liqueur from Switzerland, according to sommelier Marc Papineau.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco's Haight-Fillmore neighborhood, organic raw-food devote Stephanie Bernstein is brewing both traditionally caffeine-rich as well as caffeine-free chai at her 6-month-old concept called Urban Forage.

"We're serving chais and herbal teas in place of coffees," says Bernstein, who chooses suppliers that specialize in sustainable products and environmentally sound practices. Urban Forage is one of a growing number of venues that are beginning to offer a Central and South American product that is closely related to chai and is called yerba mate.

R. Thomas Deluxe Grill in Atlanta and Southern California-based Real Food Daily, with units in Santa Monica, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, also specialize in the yerba mate beverage.

"I'd say at least 30 percent of our customers are ordering chai latte or mate latte," says the Santa Monica Real Food Daily's unit manager, Moreen Adi. Real Food also is mixing green, black and herbal teas, including chai and mate, with fresh juices, she says.