The Household-Name Brand Responsible For Making Tea Affordable

Looking at the shelves and shelves of affordable tea bags in the grocery store that we all take for granted, it's hard to imagine a time when a cup was a luxury. While tea isn't America's most popular beverage ( coffee and soft drinks are more widely consumed), the rest of the world drinks quite a lot of it. And, while it's not as popular as in the rest of the world, tea is quite affordable in the U.S., with dozens of tea brands available at prices many wouldn't think twice about. But the affordable cost of tea didn't come about by accident. Outside of Asia, tea was once the exclusive domain of the middle and upper classes. The main company that helped turn tea from a luxury to a staple is still one of the biggest today: Lipton.

Lipton teas took its name from its founder, Thomas Lipton. Born in Scotland and the son of a grocer, Lipton got his start in the family business. After working various odd jobs in the U.S., he returned to his hometown of Glasgow in 1870 and opened a shop. Using knowledge and tricks he had picked up in the American business community, including advertising, Lipton's shops were a major success and expanded throughout Britain. But as someone who sold tea, he saw a bigger opportunity in making the desirable drink available to the large working class community that still couldn't afford it.

Tea drinking had been part of Britain's national culture for around 200 years by the time Lipton decided to enter the business. Tea drinking originated in China, and it had been brought to Europe by Dutch and Portuguese traders in the 17th century. Tea had been popularized in England and among the aristocracy by Queen Catherine, who was part of the Portuguese royal family. But despite becoming a craze among the rich who were trying to copy the royals, the price was prohibitive for almost everyone else. The combination of the cost of shipping tea from China and high taxes meant that one pound of tea cost as much as a working class person made in an entire year.

By Lipton's time tea had become more affordable. Britain had brought tea plants to India, breaking China's monopoly on production, and cheaper Indian tea started to flow into the country. Along with a cut on import taxes, this led to a surge in tea drinking among regular people, but it was still quite the expense for poorer working classes. One pound of tea cost 50 cents , and the average person only made only $10 a week. In today's terms, that's like a bag of coffee beans costing $60. But as a grocer, Lipton knew a big part of that cost was going to middlemen. He thought he could cut the price of tea in half by cutting them out and growing tea himself.

In 1890, Lipton traveled to the island of Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), where tea plantations had started to be introduced several decades earlier. Sri Lanka had once been a large coffee producer, but a coffee blight killed off production and Lipton was able to buy plantations at a discount and turn them over to tea production. By selling his own tea, he was able to drastically lower the price.

But that wasn't all. Lipton also developed new forms of packaging for stores, with tea being sealed in pre-measured containers of a quarter, half, or full pound. This made selling the tea easier and helped increase customer trust. Owning the production of the tea he was selling and making the containers meant he could advertise the Lipton name on every package, making his name synonymous with affordable quality tea. He was so successful so quickly that he was able to bring over one million pounds of tea to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

Lipton took his company public in 1898, making him incredibly wealthy, and his tea became a household name. The brand is now owned by Unilever after it was purchased in the 1970s, but even with the huge popularity of drinking tea in Britain and other Western countries few shoppers probably understand what a revolutionary brand Lipton was 130 years ago.