Great Taste means great business for boutique tea blender

Northern Irish boutique tea blender Miss McKeown's has found winningGreat Taste Awards opens the door to greater business success. The small company, established in Bangor, county Down by computer software expert Angela McKeown in 2013, gained gold stars in this year's awards for her Heritage Breakfast and Mint Humbug tea blends. They follow the 2014 award for her Assam Gold and Pear Champagne blend. "Winning three Great Taste Awards is a tremendous boost for the business, " she says. "It is great for us, as we are still quite a new company and we've found the awards give people the confidence togive us a try. It has also opened up new trade opportunities for us as business customers are happier to have award winning tea on the menu!" She gave up a successful software business to pursue her passion for"a proper cup of tea with a great flavour". The business she formed in 2013, Miss McKeown's, now specialises in luxury loose-leaf teas and fruit infusions. She adds that the company blends tea "with a conscience", donating one cup to charity for every cup purchased. She set up the small enterprise because of her passion for tea and also to bring her business experience to bear on "a product based business, rather than the fulfilment and service businesses I have run in the past". She had started her first business aged 18. A fascination with computers and IT led her to set up a small firm custom building computers. "I soon moved into building websites and running an internet caf? from the same premises. "I then left all this at 20 to open an e-commerce site that I had developed myself to sell books. All was going well until internet giant Amazon moved into book sales in a big way. I then spent some time doing freelance web design, and selling creative and non-fiction writing in print and online venues." She's now specialising in the "very brand-led 'Miss McKeown's' - a boutique tea merchant with online, retail and trade offerings, combining my personal passion for really good tea with my existing business skills". "I love tea, and you just haven't experienced tea until you've had loose-leaf. The flavour is so much better. There is so much depth inthe taste and the aroma with really good tea and, like wine, there is a tremendous variety of flavour and character even in plain tea that depends on where it is grown and what the climate is like. "I really wanted people to get to experience this for themselves andto realise what an amazing and luxurious experience good tea can be. That is also what lead me to invest in such rich and evocative packaging, and the careful selection of tea ware that reflects a luxury experience from a proper cup of tea." She's now turned her passion into a full time job and is blending tea for a range of customers including cafes and for sale at local food markets. How does Angela develop her distinctive blends? "The blends come from many ideas - a snippet of a poem, the re-creation of a tradition, a fun idea for a name, or an idea for delicious flavour combinations". "My Afternoon Peach tea, for instance, was born from the desire to give people, who only like regular black tea, a tiny hint of something nice, without spoiling their cuppa. Tesla's Workshop is such a fun name we had to make a blend for it! The latest Great Taste winner, Heritage Breakfast, arose from a lot of research into Irish tea traditions... and so on. Each pack now carries the story of each blend," she adds. The primary outlet for her distinctive teas and infusions is online mail order, but the small business also sells in some local restaurants, cafes and garden centres.