We challenge you, Britain! Drink loose tea everyday (not just when the Queen’s invited for tea)!

Here at Lahloo this spring, we’ve been challenging you and you’ve been great tea ‘guinea’ pigs. Take a look at some of the other challenges and how you got on: challenge no. 1 and challenge no. 2.

Now it’s that time again! We’re challenging you for one last time. Are you ready to give a new twist to an old favourite tea habit?

Think of loose leaf tea – what springs to mind? Don’t tell me, Lahloo! Of course! Now, joking aside, do you think of it as tea for ‘special occasions’? Posh tea? Something to drink in your twin sets and pearls (that includes all our male fans too)? Feel you need to get out Granny’s bone china and feel guilty at the idea of drinking it from your favourite mug?

Well…..there’s always a time and a place but we say unless you’re hosting a ‘Royal Wedding Will & Kate’ celebration street tea party, put away the delicate tea cups (although they are lovely), relax those pinkies and put those doilies away! Forget pomp and ceremony and learn to enjoy tea as it should be. This is what Lahloo is all about!

Simply put, we’re challenging you to enjoy our sensational tea as an everyday indulgence. We need volunteers who have decided loose tea is for Sundays,birthdays and special occasions only! We want volunteers who want to embrace the Lahloo way. We want you to develop your own way to enjoy our tea, your own routine and to discover Lahloo tea in your own way. You can even use your favourite old mug if you like!

If you’d like to take part, email Vicky here ➨

So, was our ‘Tea and Tovolo Challenge’ enough to persuade you to give up a tea bag habit for good?

Have you changed the habit of a life time to enjoy delicious loose tea all-day-everyday yet? If not, why not? What have you got to lose!

We are on a mission to encourage you to enjoy Lahloo Tea, all-day-everyday! We want you to enjoy Lahloo Tea as an everyday indulgence, not ‘just on special occasions’. Life is too short not to!

To help us on our mission we enrolled the help of our first set of lovely tea volunteers and asked them  to go ‘loose leaf’ for a week. Now we love our loose leaves and we don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t, but we needed to test our leaves on real hardened tea bag drinkers. We sent them all a Tovolo tea infuser and a pouch of Lahloo Breakfast tea. Then we simply waited for the results…

Was our ‘Tea and Tovolo Challenge’ enough to persuade our readers to give up their tea bag habit for good?

So have their habits changed? Are they sticking with loose leaf and enjoying it every day? Of course they are! Here’s their first hand experience…

Volunteer No 1:  Sophie

Self Confessed:  “tea slurping, biscuit eating working Mum and wife”

Pre challenge:  “tea infusing is rather decadent, naturally slower.” “tea bags are quicker and easier.”

Overview:  “instructions were simple. A triumph of making ‘proper’ tea in a modern simplistic way”.

Experience: “it was a pleasure to spend a week using my Tovolo and the Lahloo Breakfast tea was just divine. I’m using at home now but with a view to convert work colleagues, to use it on the tea round-not brave enough yet!”

Overall: Thumbs up! She’s sticking.

Volunteer No 2:  Sarah

Self Confessed: “tea fiend”

Pre challenge: used tea bags “mostly out of habit!” And “loose leaf would be messy and somewhat more complicated”.

Overview:  “the Tovolo tea infuser makes the process very easy, less than a minute to use it. No mess no fuss!”

Experience:  “loved using it at work/home. I’ll be sticking with loose leaves in my Tovolo from now on. The Lahloo Breakfast is an aromatic flavour which is much smoother. I’ve been filling it up ready to go and then giving it to my work colleagues on the tea run!”

Overall:  Sticking, thank you!

Volunteer No 3:  Joanna

Self Confessed:  lives in a “tea crazy household”

Pre challenge:  used tea bags and has about 20 (big brand) teas on the go!

Overview:  “the ease and convenience are pretty handy. Making a nice cup tea is very easy”.

Experience:  Slightly mixed.  “I loved the leaves but not 100% sure about the Tovolo. I rate the tea extremely highly for flavour and fragrance that you just don’t get with PG Tips and Twinnings”.

Overall: Sticking with the leaves  not sure about the Tovolo. Hey ho, we can’t win them all!

So, there we are! In a nutshell, a resounding success for Lahloo Tea and Tovolos! Why not try it yourself? Simply purchase our Tovolo tea infuser and Lahloo Breakfast  tea online, enter goloose at the checkout and receive the tea absolutely free for the rest of March. Shop now >

Just one request. We love having feedback, so please drop us a line with your views.

Happy Tovolo-ing!

Win the perfect tea treat for Mother’s Day

Me and my Mum are like two peas in a pod! She is a very special lady but we don’t live very close to each other. I often tell her how much I love her but as an extra treat she, along with every Mum, has a very special day every year dedicated to them. This year Mothering Sunday is on 3rd April.

Every year I like to treat my Mum to a little something to say ‘Thank you” for being an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, a hug at the end of a phone, a real giggle and generally for being brilliant! Don’t forget to treat your Mum. We have a real range of lovely treats perfect for Mother’s Day from £5.00. Take a look >

To celebrate the arrival of spring sunshine, blooming buds and new life, we are giving away a very special edition of our Blissful gift worth £60, perfect for Mother’s Day:

♡ Glass infuser tea-cup
♡ Green Jasmine tea
♡ True Grace Candle

To be in with a chance, simply tell us why your Mum deserves this treat.
Enter here before 25th March 2011  ➤

Lahloo Tea spring challenge

Do you know someone who just won’t ditch those tea bags because loose leaf is (in their words not mine) too “messy’, “slow”, “posh”, “expensive” ? Or anyone who is stuck on “builders with milk and two sugars”? Maybe, someone who thinks loose leaf tea is only for “the weekend or special occasions”?

Well, throughout spring Lahloo Tea is going to be challenging you, tea drinkers of Britain, to take our 3 “Old favourite; new twist” challenges. You see, we believe that Lahloo Tea is as good as tea gets and of course, we think that you should all be drinking it everyday! We are confident that once you’ve tried Lahloo Tea you just can’t go back.

So, our first challenge, the “Lahloo Tea & Tovolo Challenge” will take place in March. We need 5 volunteers. To take part you need to be stuck on drinking teabags.  We’ll send you our unique tea kit ad we’re simply asking you to try drinking nothing but Lahloo Tea for 1 week! Easy! Oh and be prepared to report back with photo evidence.

If you’d like to nominate yourself or someone, just email us here ➤

Watch this space for news of our next challenges.

Join us for tea in Cheltenham

This week is looking busy but really lovely. I am going to be spending rather a lot of time in and around Cheltenham. I love Cheltenham and despite there already being some lovely spots in other parts of the Cotswolds that serve and retail Lahloo Tea, we haven’t taken our lipsmackingly tasty tea to Cheltenham yet. Don’t panic Cheltenham we are coming this week!

I’m starting by sharing a lovely cuppa at elevenses with The Daffodil to tell them more about serving really delicious tea, then I’m going to train the wonderful team at Cowley Manor Hotel and C-Side Spa on serving Lahloo Tea (they are serving it in the really cool Tovolo tea infusers rather than tea pots so it’s going to be great) and finally I’m delivering new tea orders to the gorgeous Bob Parkinson’s Made By Bob and SallyAnn Bliss’ gorgeous PUREbliss Organics barn.

18th, 19th and 20th June 2010

Then on Friday we’ll be at the 2010 Cheltenham Food Festival sharing Lahloo Tea with festival goers.The Cheltenham Food and Drink Festival 2010 returns to Montpellier Gardens in the summer, for more gastronomic delights, a celebrity guest appearance from Antonio Carluccio and the chance to eat, drink and be very merry. Come along to stand E17 and find our more about how delicious Lahloo Tea is.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Should we ditch the latte in favour of tea rooms?

I found this article really interesting and thought I’d see if you agreed. Please comment, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Ditch the latte, bring back tea rooms

A majority of people would prefer to ditch their morning latte and muffin in favour of an old-fashioned cuppa in a tea room, according to a survey conducted by Country Living magazine.

“Though American-style coffee shops, such as Starbucks, have survived the recession well, 79 per cent of adults questioned said they would prefer tea and cake in a tea room to coffee and a muffin in a coffee house.

Though people in the survey said they would like to spend more time in a tea room, trading figures from Starbucks, Costa and other outlets suggest that a frothy coffee on the go continues to be the drink of choice for millions in Britain. At its latest quarterly results, Starbucks indicated that sales in Britain had increased by 5 per cent on an annual basis in Britain.

An overwhelming 96 per cent of consumers surveyed by the magazine Country Living lamented the loss of a proper British teatime, saying that they felt the tradition has fallen by the wayside because of busy lives.

Susy Smith, the editor of Country Living, said: “We’re asking people to think a little harder where they spend their money. Teatime is such a hugely British tradition. And one of the easiest ways to support the rural economy is going to have a cup of tea with friends in a tea room.

“We’ve developed a real café culture in the last decade or so, but it would be a shame if we stopped sitting down to chat to our friends over a cup of tea.”

According to the survey, tea drinkers consume on average 3.45 cups of tea a day, but only four in ten people stop and take a break while doing so – the rest are grabbed while on the move or at their desk.”

(By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor, The Telegraph, 12 May 2010)

Beans and buds!

Although it’s really a celebration of really good beans (with the likes of illycaffe, Bristol coffee roasters Extract, Bath boutique coffee roasters Lazy Jose and Cornwall’s Origin coffee) at the UK’s first coffee festival in Bath on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th May, we are going to be there to celebrate the true taste of tea buds!

You see, there is so much to discover and the tea that is generally on offer is really disappointing. So we’ll not only show you that you can love really good beans as well as really good buds (we do!) but we’ll also show you with our unique Forlife infuser teapots and tea infusers just how easy it can be to enjoy delicious leaf tea from fabulous producers.

It’s free to come along and there’s also ice cream, chocolate and gorgeous kitchen textiles to keep you busy. So head to stand B37 and open you eyes to the epicurean delights of tea with Lahloo Tea. We look forward to seeing you there.

PS mention the words beans and buds and a gorgeous Lahloo cotton shopping bag is all yours!

Lahloo loves traveling

You can now find Lahloo Tea all over the place, from Glasgow to the Brecons to London and Devon! However, as much as we try sometimes you’ll need to take Lahloo with you. Maybe your friends haven’t found us yet, or we haven’t found that special hotel you know about or you want to enjoy Lahloo Tea at work.

We think the Tovolo tea infuser and our little red heart tins are just the thing to take your tea with you. The bright and funky infuser not only looks great, it is light and really easy to use – we love it (especially the little drip tray)!

PS If you can’t find Lahloo near you, tell us where you’d like to find Lahloo on the shelf or on the menu and we’ll try to add them to our list. Find out more here>>

WIN We are giving you the chance to win A pair of Real Food Festival tickets and Tovolo Tea Travel Kits – Tovolo infuser and our escape tea collection – with 3 runners up prizes of a Tovolo Tea infuser and a heart tin.

To enter simply drop us an email by 30th April 2010 and answer this question:
Q: Who discovered Earl Grey and when?

So, what are your tea drinking habits?

Back in February we asked you to tell us more about your tea habits. You were all very lovely, so thank you for taking part. Your Lahloo Tea online shop voucher will be with you shortly (if you completed the survey but didn’t receive the voucher, please let us know).  We found the results really intriguing and we’ve listed a selection of them here. If you missed out on this one, see how your own tea habit compares?  Happy reading!

Which tea makes you jump for joy?

Why do you drink tea?

How you’re feeling definitely helps you to choose the tea you fancy. Tea is so good for the senses!

How do you choose which tea to drink?

Your perfect cup of tea would be…?

What’s your favourite tea cup?

We love that the quality and provenance are what make the difference when you buy tea.

What entices you to buy tea?

Where do you partake in your Lahloo tea habit?

Is your tea habit a…?

Your responses to this question are my favourites:

C.S. Lewis loves tea and a good book. What’s you perfect partner for tea?
Tea and….

a chocolate finger… or three
a cigar
a crossword
a cuddle
a girl to share it with
a great film
a purring cat.
BBC 6music
biscuits
biscuits or cakes!
bone china cup
breakfast news or newspaper & especially when reading a book
chocolate hobnobs, cake, digestives… or just tea 🙂
computer
conversation
dark (70% plus) spicy chocolate with black tea
freshly baked scones
friends when I have them, work most of the time
good company!
home made lemon cake
homemade lemon curd on hot buttered toast!
honey
hot bath
Leonard Cohen
my cat (she knows how to walk around the cup)
my husband, homemade vegan cupcake (matcha ones!)
peace and quiet
solitude or good company!
Tatester
toast!
tunes
Twitter
warmth

Lahloo Tea at the fabulous Greens’ Dining Room, Bristol

Fabulous Greens' Dining Room

Greens’ Dining Room is the first and fantastic small family business venture for Louise, Andrew and Simon. Between them, they have over fifty years of extremely good experience in restaurants, predominately in London and latterly in Bristol. And you can tell! Recently Greens’ Dining Room was one of just 21 places in the UK to be awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand for “good food at moderate prices”. Well done chaps! Their impressive C.V.s include Chez Bruce, Alastair Little, The River Café  in London and former head chefs at both The Glassboat and Riverstation here in Bristol.

They change the menu daily and have a wonderful ethos of  only purchasing small amounts to keep everything as fresh as possible. They let Mother nature dictate what they buy and their relationships with local food suppliers means the quality is superb.  The wine list is borne of years of “tasting and we purchase what we like (and think you may also)“.

We  love the fact that they are so passionate and they have a real hunger to learn as much as possible about what they serve. So, with Greens’ Dining Room passion and our own passion and knowledge – Lahloo Tea at Greens’ Dining Room was the perfect partnership!

Now you can enjoy a fabulous cup of tea after you meal. Try the Green Jasmine – it’s a sensational palate cleansing, refreshing and digestive tea. Oh, and watch out for the gorgeous red Forlife infuser tea pots we’ve sourced for them.