Tea strike skirmishes and new boba frontiers

Tea news you can use from Canada to China.

Due to unforeseen puppy healthcare circumstances (good news: the dog and human in the Falkowitz household are okay), today’s scheduled Leafhopper edition is on hold until next week. To keep your cup filled until then, I wanted to share some tea stories that are worth a read. Stay hydrated, and see you October 15th!

• 150 workers at a Tetley factory in England are on strike over wage cuts. Tetley brand owner Tata has responded by calling the cops to break up the picket line over “trespassing.” [Food Manufacture]

• A rare pleasure to see deep tea appreciation get its due in Grub Street’s Grub Diet, featuring writer Nigel Slater. [Grub Street]

• A Vancouver-based startup is selling mail-order kits for DIY Hong Kong milk tea. A lot of packaging considering the kits amount to tea leaves, sugar packets, and cans of evaporated milk, but I see the vision, and the founders seem appropriately neurotic about how to brew it right. [South China Morning Post]

• Barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn explores the importance of sweet tea to Texas barbecue joints. [Texas Monthly]

• Canned drinks manufacturers all want a piece of alcohol-avoidant Gen Z consumers. Could nitro cold brew tea be their ticket? Probably not, but let’s give it a shot. [ABC Australia]

• Trekkies: Glassware maker Bodum is re-releasing Jean-Luc Picard’s favorite vessel for his tea, Earl Grey, hot. I could do a whole Leafhopper entry on Star Trek prop designers’ approach to teaware. Should I? [Trek Movie]

• Speaking of going where no one has gone before, companies in China are pushing the frontiers of boba tea-commerce, complete with corporate philosophizing. “‘It’s different from being really happy or thrilled, which is a rush that comes fast and leaves fast,’ Ni Tingting, a brand manager, said. ‘Joy, on the other hand, is like a slender stream that runs steadily. If you love life, you have joy in your heart. You are in a state of ease, and don’t need material goods to stimulate happiness.’” [New Yorker]