Buying Tea By Weight

While working at Urbana Cityspa & Teabar and Takashimaya NY, I sold a LOT of loose-leaf tea. Along with caffeine inquiries, the most common questions are about buying by weight. In the U.S., we are used to buying things by the package rather than by the ounce, pound, or gram, so it can be a little daunting at first. Here’s a rundown on how it works at most teashops in the U.S.

You need to figure out a few basic things before you know how much tea to buy. First, how long will the tea keep (see Storing Your Tea)? Second, how often do you plan on drinking it? Take those two answers to figure out how much tea you’ll drink before it goes bad:

Multiply the months by the cups by 3. If you drink 2 cups a day and the tea lasts 6 months, you’d want (about) 36 ounces, or 2.25 pounds. (There are 16 ounces in a pound.)


(THE MATH--I calculated 0.1 ounces tea/cup (based on average yields) and multiplied it by 30 days per month (to simplify), which is where the 3 comes from. Tea recipes are actually based on weight, not volume, so there isn’t too much variance in the average yield. The reason you use 2 teaspoons for most white teas and only 1 for most green teas is density.)

An easy way to do the mental math is to remember that you get about 10 cups of tea per ounce of leaves. On a side note, that kind of yield makes most teas very inexpensive. I once had a customer describe tea as "the affordable luxury." That’s an apt descriptor for something indulgent, healthy, refreshing, and often priced as low as 20 cents for a good-quality serving.

Many teashops pack their tea in preset sizes (often 4-ounce bags for green tea) because they do not have the ability to customize tea to each order. You have two options when this happens. You can waste time and energy getting mad OR accept their terms of sale and buy a pound and half, or 22 ounces, or whatever. Personally, I prefer the latter.

Many vendors require a minimum purchase. If you’re thinking, "But I don’t WANT 4 ounces," remember it’s a simple matter of economics. It costs the shop a fixed amount to buy the packaging, pack the tea, and ring it up for you, regardless of how much you’re buying. For example, if it costs them $3 for the labor and packaging for a tea they buy at $1/ounce and sell at $2/ounce. If you want to buy only 1 ounce of a tea then they would LOSE $2 every time they sold it to you. Once again, you have two options. You can buy the minimum order and either give the extra away or let it sit in your pantry. Or you can shop at a more expensive teashop, where they don’t care that it’s costing them x amount to package the tea and talk with you, because their markup is still 100% (like the other place), but they’re retailing a tea that’s $12/ounce instead of $2/ounce. Of course, the product and service may be better at the more expensive shop, but I’m not going to tell you where to shop . . . unless you ask me! In the meantime, enjoy your tea!