Starbucks discovers that Chinese people like tea

With Starbucks entering China in 1999, you would've thought it would have realized before now that actually, tea is the local drink of choice here. Better late than never though. Tea will now sit on Starbucks' menus alongside the coffee staples. 

ChinaRetailNews reports that Starbucks will launch nine new tea drinks in China including “three original-leaf Chinese-style tea drinks, four original-leaf foreign tea drinks, and two handmade special tea drinks.” 

“The launch of tea drinks is in response to the demands of local consumers,” says Huang Limin, the vice president for market, product, and communications in Starbucks Greater China. “After a long period of market investigation, Starbucks decided to first launch the nine kinds of tea products and it expects to expand its tea drinks product line in the future.” 

China is the world's biggest tea market, with around 200 million regular tea drinkers. 

This is not the first time that Starbucks is trying to (slowly) localize in China. China Daily points out that there is already a tea-themed Starbucks location in Shenzhen and over the past few years, Starbucks has taken to selling their own mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival and zongzi during the Dragon Boat Festival. We’re just surprised that tea is such a late addition to their localization strategy. 

Although Starbucks has good intentions and masses of tea-toters waiting for their brews, the China Tea Marketing Association points out that even though there are more than 60,000 teahouses around China -- mostly based in Chengdu, Hangzhou and Beijing -- many are small scale tea houses. Will Chinese consumers welcome a huge international chain into what so far has been a very local teahouse culture? 

And are locals, even the coffee shop loving 小资 (xiaozi), ready to pay upwards of RMB20 for a cup of tea?