Tea Trails, a venture of Zone8 Tea World Pvt Ltd is a fast growing tea and café chain in India. The brand has embarked on a pan-India expansion strategy that will be a combination of company owned and franchise outlets in the ratio of 20:80. Tea Trails has a vision to open over 500 outlets by 2020. In the initial phase, the focus markets will be, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi NCR and Ahmadabad. Tea Trails has also raised $ I mn to fund the expansion.
Tea Trails brings the international tea drinking experience for the first time to the Indian consumer. It serves gourmet teas from around the world and has an exquisite range of teas from hot to cold and from desi chai to extravagant variants. The menu offers over 80 varieties of teas–White, Green, Oolong, Herbal and Black Teas. Tea Trails also serves the internationally popular bubble teas.
Tea Trails currently operates eight outlets in Mumbai. The franchise model has been detailed in terms of SOPs, trainings, ambience manual, branding, audits etc. Tea Trails also proposes to merchandise select blends of teas that would be available at premium retail stores and niche online portals, apart from Tea Trails outlets.
India is the second largest tea consuming market (10 X coffee market) in the world and is also famous for producing fine varieties of Darjeeling teas. Coffee chains currently dominate the café space and the Tea Café segment is practically non-existent. Tea Trails caters to this latent demand and will be the locomotive for growth and the category creator. The Indian tea industry and the beverage café market are currently valued at Rs 19,500 Cr and Rs 1800 Cr respectively Tea Trails operates in this space and has a first mover advantage.
