Beyond the Leaf: Timothy d'Offay on Building Postcard Teas, Small Farms and the Future of Speciality Tea
For more than three decades, Timothy d'Offay has explored the world of tea, developing relationships with producers across Asia and challenging conventional approaches to sourcing and selling tea. As the founder of London's Postcard Teas, he has built a business around small farms, transparency and the belief that the people behind tea deserve recognition.
From his first encounters with Japanese tea culture in Kyoto in 1993 to the establishment of sparkling tea businesses in 2000, Timothy has explored new ways to bring tea to consumers for more than three decades. His subsequent collaborations with Michelin-starred restaurants, alongside his commitment to small-scale tea farming, reflect an approach that connects tradition, innovation and entrepreneurship.
In this conversation, we explore the realities of running an independent tea business, the limitations of plantation agriculture, the importance of long-term relationships with producers and the opportunities emerging through hospitality, matcha and new tea-drinking formats.
1. Your tea journey began in Kyoto more than 30 years ago. What first fascinated you about Japanese tea culture, and how did those experiences eventually lead you to establish Postcard Teas?
I was very lucky. I had studied Indian and Asian religions at university, which was one of the reasons I wanted to go to Kyoto. Through Japanese friends, I was introduced to a homestay family with connections in the world of the tea ceremony. One of the sons had a close friend who worked as a tea blender in Uji, so I had opportunities to discover tea through people who were directly involved in the industry.
My homestay sister was also passionate about loose-leaf tea. I had brewed loose-leaf tea as a child, but rediscovering it as an adult was an incredible experience.
At the same time, I was studying Japanese alongside people from Taiwan, mainland China, Korea, India and Sri Lanka. They introduced me to their respective tea cultures. Whenever I travelled back to the UK, I would often stop in Hong Kong, Taipei or Seoul to visit friends, and those journeys broadened my understanding of tea.
I arrived in Japan in 1993. I remember walking through Kennin-ji temple in Kyoto, where tea plants were growing as hedges, and visiting Uji with my Japanese family. These were formative experiences.
I also spent a couple of months studying how to be a good tea ceremony guest with the Mushanokōji Senke family, one of the three Sen families. I quickly realised that I couldn't match the extraordinary dedication of the other students, but it was a wonderful introduction to tea rooms, ceremony and Japanese aesthetics. It also deepened my interest in ceramics, something I had inherited from my mother.
Japan was quite different then. Small local tea shops were everywhere, and people often bought tea from these shops rather than supermarkets. Bottled tea culture was only beginning to develop, whereas today it dominates a significant part of the Japanese tea industry.
There were also far fewer foreigners interested in tea. People were incredibly generous in introducing us to their culture. I experienced the same hospitality in Taiwan and China years later. Those personal encounters became fundamental to how I approached tea and, eventually, how we built Postcard Teas.
2. You were among the early Western tea merchants developing direct relationships with producers. How has the speciality tea industry evolved since the 1990s, and what has changed along the way?
The speciality tea world was incredibly small in those days.
Many of the people importing exceptional teas were originally from tea-producing countries and wanted to introduce their own cultures to Western audiences.
In Paris, for example, there was Madame Tseng, who initially focused heavily on Taiwanese teas. In New York, there were remarkable Chinese tea shops, and businesses such as In Pursuit of Tea and Rishi were beginning to emerge in the United States.
There were also companies like Mariage Frères, which approached tea very differently from us but played an important role in generating interest in tea culture.
What fascinated me was not only the tea itself but also the design of these places. Some of the early tea rooms had extraordinary aesthetics. I remember one in Chelsea, New York, which had a pond inside. In Japan, there were beautiful minimalist tea counters with concrete interiors, ceramics and carefully considered spaces.
These places were distinctive, sometimes eccentric, and they created an experience around tea.
Today, there are many more speciality tea businesses, and access to information has improved
enormously. But I think one thing the industry still needs to learn is collaboration.
I was friends with several people involved in the third wave of speciality coffee in the UK, and I saw how they supported one another. One coffee shop owner even created a disloyalty card, encouraging customers to visit other independent cafés and rewarding them for doing so.
That kind of cooperation is wonderful. In tea, people sometimes become too protective of their own knowledge or approach. Of course, everyone has their own vision, but if we want the industry to develop, we have a responsibility to share information and support one another.
3. Postcard Teas is committed to sourcing from very small farms. What motivated this decision, and why do you believe small-scale agriculture offers a better model for tea?
It actually wasn't difficult to maintain that principle once we had established the relationships. The challenge was finding the right producers, which required a great deal of travelling.
In East Asia, I had become accustomed to working with very small farms, often only a few acres. The average farm we work with is around five acres, and the largest is approximately fifteen acres.
With modern machinery, the owner can often manage much of the production independently, sometimes with help from family members or seasonal workers.
When I began travelling to India in the early 2000s, I encountered a very different agricultural model. Some plantations were well managed, but others were not. Even plantations with Fairtrade or organic certification could have workers living in poor housing, earning very little and having limited control over their lives.
I began comparing these conditions with the small farms I knew in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China. The difference was striking.
In India, I started looking for groups of small farmers. Some owned their own processing facilities, while others used factories belonging to tea estates. Many lived in comparatively comfortable houses, grew some of their own food and had other sources of income. They had much greater independence.
As a British person, I also had to confront the history of plantation agriculture and the extractive systems established during colonialism. Those structures still influence tea production today.
Personally, I believe Fairtrade should have taken a different approach to tea plantations. The movement was originally developed around small farmers, but when it came to tea, it largely accepted the existing plantation system.
I think there was an opportunity to do something more ambitious.
Our philosophy is to identify exceptional producers, develop long-term relationships and understand the conditions in which they work. Some of our relationships have lasted for 27 years.
We know the prices farmers receive for their green leaves, and they are generally considerably higher than those paid by conventional bought-leaf factories.
The quality also benefits. When you work with an outstanding tea maker, you can often trust them to produce excellent tea year after year, even when conditions are difficult.
In fact, I buy around 95% of our teas without first receiving samples because I trust the people producing them. That trust is built over decades.
4. Establishing direct relationships with producers across Asia must have been challenging, particularly before international tea sourcing became more accessible. How did you overcome the cultural and logistical barriers?
It was certainly challenging, although in some ways being among the relatively few foreigners interested in these teas helped.
Sometimes producers wondered why they should send small quantities of tea to someone on the other side of the world. But others were interested in developing a relationship.
Language was essential.
I spoke Japanese, and my wife, Asako, who joined the business in 2007, played an important role. Our colleague Lu, who is Chinese and has a strong interest in tea and ceramics, was equally important. Without them, we couldn't have achieved what we have.
Asako D'Offay & Zhou Lu
It wasn't simply about translation. Producers often needed reassurance from someone who understood their culture and their way of doing business.
The logistics could also be extraordinary. Some producers had to carry tea down mountains in backpacks because there were no roads.
Another important point is that many of the world's finest teas are not produced for export.
In China, for example, some of the best teas are consumed within their own regions. The local market for exceptional Long Jing around Hangzhou and Shanghai is enormous, and wealthy Chinese consumers are willing to pay substantial amounts for the best productions.
Why would those producers necessarily want to export?
People sometimes assume that visiting a large tea trade fair will give them access to the finest producers. But many of the people I want to work with don't speak English and have no particular reason to attend an international trade fair.
They're making tea for a relatively small group of knowledgeable local customers. That's why relationships, language and spending time in the producing regions are so important.
5. Postcard Teas has built a distinctive identity in central London, where tea bags dominate everyday consumption. What have been the biggest challenges in introducing consumers to loose-leaf tea and communicating its value?
When we opened in 2005, I believe we were the only specialist tea shop in London that didn't sell filled tea bags.
For me, tea bags have been a major hindrance to people's understanding of tea. They obscure the product itself. You don't really see the leaves, and the relationship becomes more about the brand than about the tea or the person who produced it.
That happens in other industries too, including coffee. We wanted to do something different.
At Postcard Teas, we tell customers who made the tea, where it comes from and, wherever possible, show them the people behind it.
If you drink a tea you love, you should be able to understand why it tastes that way. Perhaps it's the producer, the location, the season, the cultivar or a combination of all these factors.
Without that information, how can you really learn about tea?
This was also part of the thinking behind the name Postcard Teas: the connection between tea, people, places and travel.
In the beginning, tasting was essential. We would invite customers to sit at our table and try teas because it was difficult to persuade someone to buy an expensive tea without experiencing it first.
Today, the shop is too busy to offer that experience continuously, but we organise tastings twice a week. Those sessions allow people to discover teas in a relaxed environment and learn something about what they're drinking.
I have always wanted Postcard Teas to be an excellent tea importer, occasional blender and retailer rather than primarily a tea room.
Hospitality is a wonderful discipline, and perhaps we'll explore it further in the future, but it requires a very different set of skills.
6. Postcard Teas was also an early advocate of tea in fine dining, introducing ambient and sparkling tea into Michelin-starred restaurants. How did these collaborations develop, and what potential do you see for tea in gastronomy?
It's interesting because we didn't originally set out to work with hospitality. We were a retail business, and we still are.
Around 80% of our business is retail and only 20% wholesale.
My experience with sparkling tea actually goes back much further than many people realise. I established my first sparkling tea company in 2000 and launched a second sparkling tea brand in 2002, long before the current interest in non-alcoholic alternatives.
I continued promoting sparkling tea as a preparation technique over the following years, including in my Japanese tea brewing book in 2009 and in publications such as Wired in 2014.
Our collaborations with fine-dining restaurants came much later.
When we began working with great chefs, I became fascinated by how they wanted tea to interact with food. Restaurants were looking for sophisticated non-alcoholic pairings, and many were relying on fruit juices or other drinks that contained a lot of sugar and lacked the complexity required for fine dining.
Tea offers something very different. I would argue that tea can have even greater complexity than wine in terms of flavour, colour and aromatic diversity, although certain foods, particularly red meats, can be challenging.
Alongside sparkling tea, we also developed what we called ambient tea.
The advantage of ambient tea is that it is brewed and served at the same temperature, so the flavour remains stable. That makes it particularly useful for food pairing.
I worked with wine and fine-dining professionals to develop the approach, and we introduced it at a natural wine fair. Many of the restaurants we supplied were immediately interested.
We subsequently presented ambient and sparkling teas in Michelin-starred restaurants in Asia, including an event at Amber in Hong Kong in 2017. Around this period, we were also working on The Life of Tea, a book that gave us another opportunity to share our approach to tea.
Working with chefs who genuinely appreciate tea makes an enormous difference.
People such as Heston Blumenthal, Isaac McHale and Anne-Sophie Pic have shown real curiosity about tea and its gastronomic possibilities. Isaac is someone I've worked with particularly closely.
The challenge is finding the right tea for the right dish. For example, we discovered that shu pu-erh worked particularly well with red meat, while a roasted black tea we developed was better suited to lighter meats.
I am very pleased to see the development of bottled and sparkling teas today. Some of the products I've tasted recently have been very good. But I do think that if you're charging €30 or €35 for a bottle, the quality needs to justify the price, and the tea producer should be acknowledged.
I am also cautious about using ingredients such as grape juice concentrate, which can introduce too much sweetness and dominate the flavour of the tea.
The beauty of tea is its complexity. We should preserve that.
7. Despite your work with prestigious restaurants and chefs, retail remains the core of Postcard Teas. Why have you chosen to prioritise direct relationships with consumers rather than expanding wholesale?
I genuinely enjoy retail. I still spend quite a lot of time on the shop floor because I like meeting people, helping them discover teas and seeing regular customers.
Some of those customers eventually become friends.
My earlier experiences developing sparkling tea products also taught me something important about the business. Some of those products reached health-food shops and were relatively successful, but I discovered that I didn't particularly enjoy wholesaling.
Retail suits me much better because I genuinely enjoy meeting customers, helping them discover teas and building lasting relationships.
It also makes more sense financially for our business.
We get paid immediately, and the margins are better than wholesale. Of course, there is a certain prestige associated with supplying famous chefs, fashion designers or other well-known clients. And those relationships can be creatively rewarding.
But prestige alone isn't necessarily a good reason to build your business around wholesale. For us, wholesale makes sense when there is an interesting relationship and when the collaboration works both financially and creatively. Otherwise, I would rather focus on building a loyal customer base.
Our online business is also important, although international trade has become more complicated. Brexit and the growing number of trade barriers have made selling into Europe more difficult, while other markets have become easier in certain respects.
I find the direction of international trade rather strange after so many years of being told that the world was moving towards greater openness.
But fundamentally, I believe a strong relationship with your customers provides a more sustainable foundation than simply trying to expand distribution.
8. Having built Postcard Teas over several decades, what advice would you give to someone starting an independent speciality tea business today? Is the traditional tea shop still a viable model?
My first advice would be to start with teas you genuinely love. If you can combine physical retail with online retail, I think that can be a very good model.
But I would be cautious about focusing too heavily on wholesale unless it offers a clear commercial advantage.
E-commerce is becoming increasingly important, and we're also seeing more producers in East Asia selling directly to consumers.
I think that's positive because it can help producers achieve better prices and develop closer relationships with their customers.
However, it also raises questions about the future role of people like me—the intermediary. If customers can buy directly from a producer, why should they buy from a tea merchant?
The answer has to be that they trust your judgement, your selection, your knowledge or the products you create, including blends.
Starting a serious speciality tea business also requires more investment than people sometimes realise.
When I began, I sold something very valuable to me personally to finance approximately nine months of travelling and sourcing. That investment allowed me to visit producing regions, learn about tea and develop relationships. It was expensive, but it was fundamental to building the business.
I also think there is an opportunity for new tea-service businesses.
Someone will eventually develop a successful model that combines excellent tea preparation, food and the sale of loose-leaf tea. It doesn't necessarily have to revolve around matcha.
I worked briefly for Seattle Coffee Company when I returned from Japan in 1996, before it was acquired by Starbucks. At that time, selling coffee beans directly to customers was an important part of the business model. Perhaps tea could develop something similar, where customers enjoy a beautifully prepared drink and then purchase the tea to make at home.
Our tastings are a very small part of our revenue, but they create relationships and help people understand tea. There is definitely potential in combining service, education and retail.
Most importantly, though, I would encourage people to start small.
Test your concept online, at a local market or through small-scale events before making a major investment. See whether people respond to what you're offering, and only then consider scaling.
9. Matcha, powdered teas, cold brews and ready-to-drink beverages are attracting new audiences. Do you believe these trends can benefit the wider speciality tea industry, including traditional loose-leaf tea?
They already have.
Matcha has done a great deal to change the perception of tea, particularly among younger consumers.
For much of my life, speciality tea wasn't considered particularly fashionable unless you were already interested in Asian cultures.
Coffee was cool. Tea was often perceived as something for older people. Matcha has changed that. It has introduced tea to people who might otherwise never have explored it, and it has encouraged interest in other Japanese teas, including hojicha.
I think that's extremely positive. The interest in matcha also reflects broader changes in how people think about their lifestyles and the drinks they consume.
But I don't believe innovation should stop with matcha.
There is enormous potential in other powdered teas, roasted teas and new preparations. In 2016–2017, we experimented with powdered roasted green tea, oolong and black tea because we believed roasted teas could work particularly well with milk.
These formats can introduce consumers to different flavours and change their perceptions of what tea can be.
I also think we're seeing a convergence between speciality coffee and speciality tea.
The more successful independent coffee shops are increasingly focused on creating welcoming environments where customers want to spend time, rather than simply buying a drink to take away.
Tea is particularly well suited to that approach.
There is an extraordinary variety of possibilities: traditional loose-leaf tea, matcha, cold infusions, sparkling tea, powdered teas and even bubble tea.
Different formats can suit different times of day, foods and occasions. I think someone will eventually bring these elements together in a compelling hospitality concept.
And I don't think it will take very long.
10. Looking ahead, what do you believe the speciality tea industry needs to change to become more sustainable, both for producers and independent businesses?
I think we need to work together much more.
Tea is an unusual industry because many businesses are founded primarily out of passion.
People fall in love with tea and want to share that passion, sometimes without thinking sufficiently about whether the business will be financially sustainable. That's understandable, but it can also create difficulties.
Compared with coffee, the speciality tea industry is still relatively fragmented. There are fewer large independent businesses, and we don't always collaborate as effectively as we could.
I would like to see more sharing of knowledge and more support between businesses. We also need to recognise the importance of the people producing tea.
For us, working with small farms and maintaining long-term relationships has always been fundamental. I think transparency around producers, prices and working conditions should become much more important across the industry.
At the same time, I am optimistic about the opportunities emerging through hospitality and new ways of serving tea.
Tea has enormous diversity, and we're only beginning to explore what that could mean commercially.
But I would also caution people entering the industry that it isn't easy. An exciting idea doesn't automatically become a successful business. Start small, understand your customers, build relationships and make sure there is a viable business behind your passion.
And perhaps most importantly, remember that the future of speciality tea will be stronger if we build it together.
Closing thoughts
What makes Timothy d'Offay's perspective particularly valuable is that Postcard Teas has developed an independent business model around principles that are often discussed in the speciality tea industry but not always implemented: direct sourcing, producer transparency, small-scale agriculture and long-term relationships.
His experience also raises an important question for the next generation of tea entrepreneurs: can passion for exceptional tea be translated into an economically sustainable business without compromising the values that inspired it?
From the challenges of sourcing to the economics of retail and the emergence of new tea-drinking formats, our conversation illustrates that the future of speciality tea will depend not only on the quality of the leaf, but also on the business models, collaborations and consumer experiences built around it.
Perhaps the industry's greatest opportunity is not simply to convince more people to drink speciality tea, but to develop a more transparent, collaborative and financially sustainable culture around it.
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