NibbleGuru said

Most popular tea companies from our Steepster regulars

As I begin to spread my wings and explore more teas, I became curious what companies are the most popular. Here are my preliminary findings, parsed from the “How much did you spend…” threads from these forums.

Note: This data ONLY takes into account the user of these threads. That’s almost 2000 users, nearly 3000 orders, over the last 8 years. However, this was a quick, fun project with some messy regex, as I just wanted a general indication of popularity. I’d probably need access to the Steepster Database if we wanted a truly unbiased sampling. =)

Most popular by $ spent
Bitterleaf $13541.85
Yunnan Sourcing $7816.36
DAVIDs Tea $6770.88
White2 Tea $5973.80
Crimson Lotus $4164.07
Butiki $3855.46
52 Teas $3270.71
Lupicia $2640.83
Verdant $2451.83
Whispering Pines $2357.25

Most popular by number of orders
DAVIDs 127
Bitterleaf 94
52 Teas 94
Butiki 71
Verdant 66
Chatime 66
DavidsTea 59
Adagio 55
Harney 54
Lupicia 47

Most popular by number of distinct users
DAVIDs 59
Lupicia 46
52 Teas 39
Whispering Pines 37
Butiki 35
Adagio 34
Verdant 32
Teavivre 29
Harney 28
Red Leaf 28

If we weight all 3 categories evenly, pursuing the lowest cumulative “rank” in each category, and presume categories they missed the list were rank 11, we get a Cumulative rank:
#01: DAVIDs
#02: 52 Teas
#03: Bitterleaf
#04: Butiki
#05: Lupicia
#06: Verdant
#07: Adagio
#08: Yunnan Sourcing
#09: Whispering Pines
#10: White2 Tea
#11: Crimson Lotus
#12: Harney
#13: Chatime
#14: Teavivre
#15: Red Leaf
#16: A Quarter To Tea
https://steepster.com/companies/davidstea
https://steepster.com/companies/52teas
https://steepster.com/companies/bitterleaf-teas
EDIT: Butiki no longer in business…
https://steepster.com/companies/lupicia
https://steepster.com/companies/verdant-tea
https://steepster.com/companies/adagio-teas
https://steepster.com/companies/yunnan-sourcing
https://steepster.com/companies/whispering-pines-tea-company
https://steepster.com/companies/white2tea
https://steepster.com/companies/crimson-lotus-tea
https://steepster.com/companies/harney-and-sons
https://steepster.com/companies/chatime
https://steepster.com/companies/teavivre
https://steepster.com/companies/red-leaf-tea
EDIT: Further research tells me Red Leaf Tea rebranded as Matcha Outlet, so here’s that link as well
https://steepster.com/companies/matcha-outlet
Edit: A Quarter to Tea no longer in business

14 Replies
NibbleGuru said

From here, it’s time to dig into the tasting notes all you lovely people have compiled, and figure out where to order next!

I have my share of flavored teas and british-style black teas, and I’m staying away from the wild world of ripe pu’erh for now. Going to be trying to get me some good teas to sample for Gongfu style brewing.

Anyone familiar with these companies have any specific suggestions? Thinking it might be fun to make up a “Intro to Their Teas” list for our favorite companies. I know I could do one for Jolie…

I think giving equal weight to the dollars spent has tipped the scales here. This is just a measure of how expensive the tea is, not necessarily how popular it is. Also this is just steepsters self reporting and not including how many ounces they bought. I’m not sure its fair to include cheap tea and super expensive tea in the same comparison. Maybe a comparison of ounces bought would be better here, though I don’t know where you would get that information.
You could find all the Traveling Tea Boxes and see which is the most shared tea companies, that might be a better comparison, though still a rather small sample size compared to all steepster users.
I look forward to your tasting note investigation, including what are the most rated teas, that’s a top 25 I could get behind :)

NibbleGuru said

My research to this point has already resulted in 2 tea orders from new-to-me companies. So in the fullness of time, I’ll definitely have more personal recommendations. In the meantime, I have to trust what data I can glean from you all. Though if the Steepster team were interested in giving me database access, there’s a LOT more I’d be interested in doing. ;)

You are right about the limits of this experiment: Big Pu-Erh and premium vendors will have their fingers on the scale. Though in fairness, a few of those companies seem to be ‘moderate price intro to looseleaf’ kinds of places.

I did see the TTB posts, but there we have the opposite problem: I imagine just as much put in a tea box is “This wasn’t my cup, but it’d be a shame to see it go to waste” as it is an endorsement of the product.

I wasn’t going for “The best tea as reported by Steeptster”, as I lack the data. This was more “Here’s a good starting point for people who haven’t heard of anything more exotic than DAVID’s tea”. If it results in a few people trying new-to-them companies, I consider it a win!

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NibbleGuru said

Also, in case you were curious, runners up, alphabetically:

Arbor Teas
Bluebird Tea
Camellia Sinensis
Dessert By Deb
London Tea Club
Mandala
Taiwan Tea Crafts
Teavivre
TheOdor

Top 25 seems like a good number. =P

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52Teas said

Wow. I’m humbled. Thank you.

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I hate to think just how many of my orders contributed to those dollar totals… Heh…

(But seriously – very cool project/idea!)

I was thinking of you when I saw the total spent and number of orders for Bitterleaf, and then it didn’t make the list for unique users ba ha ha!

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SpotOfTea said

Yunnan Sourcing was only most popular in dollars spent. So most people buy in bulk most likely.

NibbleGuru said

Yeah, larger minimum size than most, and lots of promos to buy in big orders.

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Courtney said

Butiki is sadly no longer in business (I’m only too sure we would all be happily ordering from them if they were)!

No kidding. Still some of the top favorite teas I’ve tried.

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Skysamurai said

O_O Wow! this is quite impressive!

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NibbleGuru said

Glad you guys like the project, hope this inspires people to try some new tea companies!

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NibbleGuru said

Hmm, @Michelle’s comments gave me another idea: Cross referencing new-to-me companies from this list with the Steepster “Most Popular Teas” list. Gotta scroll through way too many Davids, Harney, and Adagio references, but finding some interesting gems!

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