LIPTON TEA

‘Oooh a nice cup of tea.’ Imagine the number of times you’ve heard that said around your workplace. It’s almost code for ‘just what I needed’ and ‘that’ll be lovely’. At UKVending we have a wide range of teas available in a number of formats and the one we’re having a look at today is our Lipton Lemon Tea, or more preciously the history of the company behind this deliciously tangy hot drink.

Lipton Lemon Tea, although now owned by the multinational companies Pepsi Co and Unilever, started off extremely small and probably as far from the tea plantations of the world as possible in a back street of Glasgow. In 1871 Thomas Lipton gathered up all of his savings, which was not a great deal, and started a small shop selling teas. Lipton infused his teas with subtle flavours, one of which was his, now, world famous lemon tea. By the middle of the 1880’s Lipton’s tea’s had become big business with over two hundreds shops across the British Isles. Thomas Lipton was a canny individual and he could see that the British taste for tea was not a passing fad. He also realised that the price being charged for tea imports was too high. In a wise move Lipton bought his own tea gardens in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). His next move was to arrange local packaging and shipping of the tea which he sold by the pound, half pound or quarter pound. This led to the famed advertising slogan for Lipton Tea of “Direct from the tea gardens to the teapot.”

In 1929 aged 83 Thomas Lipton’s company merged with a number of other companies such as Home and Colonial Stores, Templeton’s, Galbraiths and Pearks to form a group with more than 3,000 shop fronts.

Our Lipton Lemon Tea is tangy and satisfying as well as also providing the drinker with 53 percent of the daily recommended allowance of vitamin C.