Exploring the Tea Food Industry: From "Drinking Tea" to "Eating Tea," Unlocking a Second Growth Curve for the Tea Sector

Traditionally, tea is brewed and consumed as a beverage. For centuries, the tea industry has centered on whole-leaf tea: cultivation, processing, and sales of dry leaves, with consumption primarily in homes, tea rooms, and business gifting. However, as consumer habits evolve, transforming tea into food ingredients is becoming a key direction for China's tea industry upgrade. Tea is no longer limited to cups; it now serves as an ingredient in snacks, cold drinks, pastries, and ready-to-drink beverages, shifting from "drinking tea" to "eating tea." Leading this transformation are varieties like Fuding White Tea. The industry is actively exploring this path while facing opportunities, contradictions, and real-world challenges.

1. What is Tea Foodification

Tea foodification involves using tea leaves and tea extracts as raw materials, combined with food processing technologies, to develop various tea-derived products that are ready for direct consumption or drinking. These products fall into two main categories: ready-to-drink options such as cold-brewed tea and bottled tea beverages; and ready-to-eat items including tea ice cream, tea pastries, tea candies, tea cookies, tea-infused alcoholic drinks, and pre-prepared tea-based dishes.

It doesn't aim to replace traditional brewing methods but rather extends the whole-leaf tea category. Consumers don't need to master complex brewing techniques or understand aging years and vessel types. They can enjoy tea flavors anytime, anywhere—lowering the barrier to entry for tea consumption and tapping into younger demographics and the mass market.

In Fuding's Bailin Old Street, the century-old Tongshuntai Tea House has launched innovative products such as white tea ice cream and cold-brewed white tea. Visitors can explore the historic tea shop while enjoying aged white hair silver needle tea or sampling modern tea-based snacks. These tea treats serve as a key entry point to drive sales of whole-leaf tea and enhance the tea space experience, effectively implementing the "selling tea, space, and time" business model. However, most of these products are currently limited to experiential offerings at cultural tourism locations, produced on a small scale, and still fall short of industrial-level mass production.

II. Industrial Value from Exploring Tea-Based Food Products

1. Expand the consumer base and break through the rigidity of traditional tea circles.

Traditional whole-leaf tea has a high barrier to entry, requiring expertise in brewing and the ability to identify age and origin. Many young people are drawn to tea but feel intimidated. Tea-based snacks and cold beverages now appear in supermarkets and convenience stores, fitting seamlessly into daily consumption habits. By trying white tea ice cream first, young consumers can gradually explore the world of tea. These innovative products serve as an engaging entry point for traditional tea, helping the industry cultivate a new generation of potential customers.

2. Improve comprehensive tea utilization and help tea farmers increase income.

Tea production generates significant byproducts such as tea dust, broken leaves, and summer/autumn harvests, which traditionally hold low market value. By applying advanced processing techniques like extraction and milling, these materials can be transformed into tea-based food products. This approach converts low-value inputs into commercial goods, enhances the entire industry chain's profitability, absorbs excess capacity, mitigates risks from tea market fluctuations, and advances the goal of using "one leaf to enrich one community."

3. Diversify industrial structure and strengthen industry resilience against risks.

Heavy reliance on sales of loose-leaf dry tea leaves makes tea companies vulnerable to market speculation, inventory fluctuations, and price volatility. Advancing tea foodification opens a second growth curve for the industry, establishing a dual-track model with "loose-leaf tea as the core and deep processing as the wing." Even if the loose-leaf tea market experiences volatility, the tea food segment can act as a buffer, enhancing resilience across the entire supply chain.

4. Tea-tourism integration empowers the creation of signature souvenirs.

Tea-based foods are a natural fit for the cultural tourism market. After visiting tea mountains and historic teahouses, tourists can take home tea cakes and snacks as souvenirs to carry the aroma of tea with them. At the same time, these cultural tourism settings serve as ideal testbeds for new tea products. For example, heritage tea brands like Tongshuntai, which operate in a living, dynamic manner, become windows for product testing and gathering market feedback—effectively converting tourism traffic into product sales.

III. Practical Challenges on the Path to Tea Food Innovation

1. Flavor retention challenge: risk of losing the tea's natural taste.

High temperatures and the addition of auxiliary ingredients during processing often mask the natural characteristics of tea, such as the downy fragrance of white tea or the rocky rhyme of rock tea. Many tea-based products possess only a faint tea flavor, reducing them to mere "tea-flavored artificial food" that fails to reflect the true quality of the raw tea leaves. This undermines the core competitiveness of tea products.

2. High entry barriers deter small and medium-sized tea companies.

Industrializing tea food requires extraction equipment, production lines, food manufacturing licenses, and R&D teams. Most small-to-medium tea farmers and enterprises lack the capital and specialized R&D talent needed for deep processing. As a result, innovation remains limited to boutique offerings in teahouses and estates, making large-scale mass production difficult. The industry currently relies on a few leading companies to drive progress.

3. The standard system is not yet comprehensive, and market education remains insufficient.

Tea-based foods span both the tea and food industries, but standards for certain sub-categories—including product specifications and raw material usage guidelines—remain incomplete. Market offerings vary widely in quality. Ordinary consumers have limited awareness of tea foods and have not yet developed stable consumption habits, resulting in a long market development cycle and significant short-term profitability pressure.

4. Development priorities have been reversed.

Some business operators blindly chase food-related trends, obsessing over novel products while neglecting the quality of traditional tea cultivation and primary processing. If the industry abandons its foundation in whole-leaf tea to focus solely on deep processing, tea-based foods become a sourceless stream. Balancing heritage with innovation is a challenge facing the entire industry.

IV. Future Development Pathways for the Tea Food Industry

1. Uphold dual-track development: Whole-leaf tea as the foundation, food processing as the wing.

Tea-based food products must remain rooted in the core tea industry. We need to continuously uphold traditional practices in tea cultivation, withering, and processing to maintain quality standards. Whole-leaf tea remains the foundation of the industry, while tea foods represent an extension for growth. Both should develop together; new products should not undermine traditional tea-drinking culture.

2. Leverage advanced tea technology and pursue a differentiated strategy.

Strengthen industry-academia-research collaboration and optimize tea extraction and low-temperature processing technologies to maximize the retention of natural tea aromatics. Pursue two distinct strategies: leading enterprises focus on standardized, large-scale mass production for supermarkets and nationwide distribution channels; cultural tourism entities, such as century-old tea houses, specialize in unique experiential tea snacks tailored to tourist flows. This ensures differentiated development between the two paths.

3. Strengthen standard-setting and safeguard the food safety baseline.

Accelerate the development of local and industry standards for tea-based foods, standardize raw material usage and production processes, strengthen oversight of food production qualifications, prevent "fake tea products" from disrupting the market, protect consumer rights, and promote standardized industry growth.

4. Lead with tea tourism scenarios and cultivate the market.

Leverage tea estates, historic teahouses, and cultural tea scenic areas to create immersive spaces for tea food experiences. Drive consumer awareness through hands-on tasting—let people savor the flavors of tea foods first, then naturally encourage them to explore whole-leaf teas. Use new media channels to educate the public about tea foods and gradually cultivate widespread consumption habits.

5. Collaborate across multiple parties to lower the threshold for transformation among small and medium-sized entities.

Government and research institutions should promote technology adoption, provide training programs, and mentor entrepreneurial talent. Encourage leading enterprises to establish shared deep-processing platforms so that small and medium-sized tea companies can participate in tea-based product development without building their own factories, sharing the benefits of industry upgrading.

V. Conclusion

Tea food innovation represents a major opportunity for the tea industry driven by evolving consumer demands, yet it also presents significant challenges. It is not simply about turning tea into snacks; rather, it redefines what a single leaf can become. Tea can be enjoyed slowly on the tea table or seamlessly integrated into everyday meals.

For key tea-producing regions like Fuding White Tea, advancing food-grade innovation while preserving traditional craftsmanship, leveraging technology, and balancing heritage with innovation will enable this ancient Eastern tea to transcend the teacup and reach a broader mass market. This approach will truly integrate tea culture, industry, and agriculture, driving regional prosperity through a single leaf.