Tea made from residuals with a positive effect on diabetes too. That was the starting point of a collaboration between four growers*. Thanks to a real tea sommelier a tasty healthy tea is developed.
The four growers are motivated to start developing new business with residual flows of their crops or (in combination) with a new crop and thereby explore the circular biobased market.
The entrepreneurs all have a crop that is likely to have a positive influence on diabetes. After an exploratory market research, it was decided to develop several good-tasting tea blends with a positive health effect based on the available crops.
A literature study was started into the effect of the crops on health; Is there a positive health effect? Which concentration is needed to achieve the positive effect? In other words, many questions with answers that raise new questions, resulting in a thorough literature study.
After the literature study, a laboratory study was started with a model organism at Wageningen University to get confirmation the tea will have the health effect as described in literature.
The entrepreneurs believes that such a healthy tea only has market potential if it has a delicious taste. Therefore another part of the development focuses on creating a tasty taste. Of course taste is very personal. In order to reach a wide audience, the taste must therefore be attractive to many people. For this purpose a collaboration has been started with a professional tea sommelier: the sommelier is an expert when it comes to tastes and knows what people like.
We are going to taste a lot of tea from the different crops and hope to be able to create a super tasty and healthy blend of the crops.
*The involved growers are: Westland Peppers, Corn Bak, Gova and De Kruidenaer.
A tasteful blend of 5 crops from 4 dutch growers.