Our Story

The Beginning 2004

It all started back in 2004. A business studies project by Phil & a friend who researched and developed the idea of running a teapot company (having been raised in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire which is famous for its pottery) with Phil’s love of enjoying a nice pot of tea. Phil has always had an entrepreneurial flare from a young age. From selling mobile phone signal boosters to his friends at school at the age of 16 to reselling web hosting space as a hobby at 18. And from that moment, the seed was planted…

Skip forward 10 years...

March 2014

The Idea

Having worked for a large telecoms company for 10 years. Phil decided to explore the idea of setting up his own business. The time was right for his ideas to flourish. Phil decided to launch his very own tea company with the emphasis on sourcing only the best quality teas from around the world.

May 2014

The Name

Coming up with a name for a company isn’t the easiest of tasks. After extensive discussions around the dining room table over a glass of wine. It was decided the Cheshire Tea Company was to be born. It was almost called the Macclesfield Tea Company, but it didn’t have quite the same ring to it!

July 2014

The Tasting

Over 150 teas were tasted in the process of coming up with the initial blends for Cheshire Tea Company. Having sourced, imported and taste testing the various teas. It was tough to decide what flavours to choose, what would be popular and what our customers would enjoy the most. It was soon decided on the “Magic Number” of 20 blends and the rest is history as they say.

Sep 2014

The Launch

After researching where to sell the teas. Our first ever market was the Nantwich Food & Drink Festival in September 2014. The customer feedback was amazing. The packs of tea flew off the stall and quickly sold out before the end of the 3-day festival and from that moment he knew that he’d discovered something big. We also picked up our first café who is still with us to this day.

Jan 2015

The Journey

Selling great tea continued to be championed by Phil & his mother Sue who travelled the length and breadth of the country touring all of the food and drink festivals from Bude in Cornwall to Harrogate in Yorkshire (and everywhere in between) where surprisingly they were open to the idea of tea from a company based in Cheshire. Also picking up lots of happy customers and wholesale clients too.

Sep 2015

The Awards

In September 2015, we won some awards and not just any awards… we were chuffed to take home some pretty spiffy honours at the Great Taste Awards, which only happens to be one of the world’s most coveted food awards… … judged by more than 500 of the most demanding palates belonging to food critics, chefs, cooks, restaurateurs and producers, as well as a whole host of food writers and journalists. We picked up One gold star each for our Cheshire Breakfast, Cherry Sencha and Lapsang Souchong. We also received the most coveted and prestigious Three gold star award for our Mint Chocolate Rooibos (Only 170 entries in the country won Three stars out of 10,000 entries) That’s in the Top 2%. Think Oscars of the food and drink world and you’ll understand why we’re so giddy about this.

Jan 2016

More Awards

We went on to pick up a Small Business Sunday award from Theo Paphitis in January 2016 and we were thrilled to meet him in person to collect our award. He was always our favourite Dragon. We continued to become more popular and collect more Great Taste Awards in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Not that we like to brag. That’s not our style.

April 2019

Expansion

We launched our products on Amazon UK in April 2019, and we have continued to spread the happiness to everyone far and wide. Sales continued to grow month on month all over the UK.

Sep 2020

New Products

We launched our new Pyramid Teabags range in September 2020 which have proven popular both to our regular customers as well as new tea lovers and wholesale customers all over the world.

To be continued …

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