So you'll be glad to know that we have dropped this completely. I mean... we're supposed to have dropped it completely. I can't speak for any stores other than the one I work at, but... now, we have to do what Teavana always should have done from the beginning:
"Oh hello. What brings you in? Oh, just looking? Well, my name is [name]. If you have any questions, just ask." And leave them alone until they come to you.
And also, we are no longer allowed to upsell and we've been commanded to provide customers with the exact amounts of tea they ask for and no more, or be written up. Which is cool. I'm much more comfortable with this method and apparently I'm really good at it because a lot of customers ask for me, which is nice.
And, we have to take "no" for an answer, period. Plus, if a customer has a specific budget, we are not allowed to go over it, and if they have one thing in mind and want nothing else, we have to accept that and sell them no more than what they want.
And if they are interested in engaging, we have to ask open-ended questions to find out exactly what it is they're looking for, and help them find it... if they want us to. And if we want to show them anything, we have to ask for permission, and if they say "no", we have to accept that as the answer and let it go.
I guess the number of complaints about the old, horrible, pushy, "don't take no for an answer" sales tactics piled up too high for Starbucks, and they finally made the changes they should have made back when they purchased Teavana.
On the downside, we're still sampling, and we're still telling customers there's less sugar in the sweetened samples than there really is (only the chai blend is "lightly sweetened"... the rest are much more than "lightly" sweetened).
But... you know... baby steps...
Sweet, sweet, sickly sweet. No thank you... Here in Philadelphia I believe we have this new chain Capital Tea that has chased some other tea stores around here out of business... but they aren't that bad. Although, I recently noticed they seem to be doing the whole sample thing like Teavana outside of the store. I can only imagine from the flavors they choose to highlight that they are sweet, sweet, sickly sweet as well. However, they remind me more of a David's Tea, from whom I bought a Korean tea which was decent. I also had a cup of dong ding oolong there as well which was not bad at all. I went to Capital Teas once with some friends and had a cup or two of some teas and they weren't necessarily bad either. However, I have never tried any of the teas outside of that sample from Teavana. I never even stepped foot in the store. Anytime I see a Teavana I immediately run away. I suppose the moral of the story is that I'm not interested in big tea stores, but I'm not completely averse to all the tea they sell. However, Teavana completely scared me off due to such a strong first impression. If I had skipped the samples and tried a cup of something of decent quality, I surely would not want to gag everytime I see the word Teav... well, on second thought, I'll spare myself the further nausea.
).
I don't know that I have ever had lipton green... I don't really know what lipton tea in general tastes like actually, and I have had my fair share of bagged teas. Some not half-bad, some gag worthy. Green tea bags are probably the worst of the lot, though I've managed to have two or so that weren't so bad. Certainly, most people would agree that Teavana is a step up from bag, no? Although sometimes loose leaf can be much worse than bagged, if it is fresh it usually isn't the case.
I've been to most of the tea shops in NYC at one point or another, but have not really found one I consider worthwhile (at least as far as tea quality is concerned). The only exception is the small Ippodo shop on 39th, but this isn't a sit-down-and-drink type of place unfortunately.