COMMUNI-TEA: Sharing the Knowledge With the People of Edinburgh
- Maria Gran
- Apr 23, 2018
- 2 min read
Over in Tollcross you will find PekoeTea, which has been located on Leven Street for eight years and counting. The shop sells and serves loose leaf teas to the people of Edinburgh.
“Here it’s not your afternoon tea idea of tea,” says Lara Hirst, who has been working in the shop for two years.
“We serve the teas how they’re meant to be prepared. Because we’re a retail shop as well, and not a café, I think that makes us different from other places.”
Because of this, PekoeTea has built up an audience that is always able to have a positive experience through and with tea.
“You’ll drink tea with the costumers and build up relationships with them and things like that. You’re learning from the costumers and they’re learning from you. Tea is entirely a social thing and you gain that knowledge through sharing.”
Lara opens a cupboard behind the counter, where she keeps samples of teas from her costumers.
“My costumers give me samples and ask me what I think, and some come in with tea leaves of which they don’t know what it is and ask me to help them find out.”
On top of this, if you are unsure what tea you like, Lara can help with that too. Many costumers come in not knowing what they are after, but leave with a tea they enjoy.
“You get an idea of people’s tastes, so you try to pick out what it is that they enjoy, and you do that mostly through smell. I always try to pick out a single leaf tea rather than a flavoured one, and seven out of ten times, they’ll go with the first option. It shows that it is just a lack of exposure or knowledge that makes people buy flavoured teas, not lack of openness or lack of appreciation, which is nice.”
Edinburgh is host to a plethora of places where you can get a cuppa, aside from PekoeTea. However, there are only a few places in the city where the main focus is on tea.
“You’re not going to find it hard to find a cuppa, but whether that’s something specialist is another thing entirely. There’s an awful lot of cafés in Edinburgh, but often, their tea is a quick hot water, leaves, out you go kind of thing, which it doesn’t need to be. I think there’s a lot of exciting things going on in tea, and there’s more room for exploring that in Edinburgh.”
Loose-leaf tea is up and coming, but it still has some way to go. Luckily, for the people of Edinburgh, they live in a place where loose leaf tea has great potential to be expanded and explored.
“It being a student city, it’s culturally diverse. Specialist tea is something that, like most of our customers, isn’t Scottish, and they often travel to places and learn from people as well. Tea is a very social produce, and it’s entirely far reaching and accessible. It’s quite a niche thing, but I think it’s growing across the UK.”
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