BRITAIN’S BEVERAGE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 307, 11 December 1936, Page 10

BRITAIN’S BEVERAGE

Campaign to Increase World Tea Sales RESULTS ACHIEVED Five years ago world tea British particularly—bad slumped so alarmingly that planters and merchants co-operated to form the International Tea Market Expansion Board. Under the chairmanship of Sir Alfred Donald Pickford and hy vigorous advertising and publicity, the board lifted the world’s consumption to 990.<U9,99911i5. Sitting in offices nt newly-erected and imposing Plantation House. church street. London.' Sir Alfred Pickford planned by spending neiulv £500,000 to boost sales to a new high level. Sir Alfred spent ‘29 vcars on the sunbaked, raiiisodden plains of Cal ''iitta and Cawnpore, first in a .hank. • ter in commerce, afterwards ns .heriff of Calcutta. Between timc s ho became a Major of Calcutta Light Horse and District Commissioner of •

Boy Scouts. Officially retiring from Indian business 15 years ago at the early age of 50, he toured the Dominions as Overseas Commissioner of the Boy Scouts Association in 1923, 1926, and 1930, and then as the economic depression set in decided to return to business as Tea Board Chief. Under Lis expansionary influence, drives were and are being made in London and the provinces by demonstrations, Press and poster advertising, window displays, films. “Air. T. Pott” uud “The Droops” were invented. ■ Everywhere people were told: “What you ( waut is a cup of good tea.” Sales .mounted, soared. “Tea Fights” are being waged" against coffee in tlrn United States with results that completely satisfy Sir Alfred Pick ford. Further drives are being planned in North America, while Belgium. Holland, Germany and Sweden, where (onsumption has been declining steadily in tho past decade, will experience aggressivo publicity designed to put, them back on Britain's beverage, despite the tact that ,at present 500.00(> hags of surplus Brazilian entfeu aro annually d.umped in the Atlantic. Only ip one respect has the campaign failed. All efforts to introduce

cold tea and tea sundaes—drinks which are always obtainable in the United States —have failed in the United Kingdom. Restaurants which prepared to servo customers with such delicacies last summer were unable to do business simply because of bad weather. But the extra halfpenny per cup recently added to the cost of tea by a number of chain restaurants will not affect sales, thinks the board’s chairman. According to him, the increase was judiciously introduced during tho autumn, when tea is practically a necessity to Britishers. By next summer, improved economic conditions and higher tea sales as a result of intensive advertising will have stirred public imagination to such a pitch that the extra halfpeny will be submerged in the national habit.