Nice to meet you Tea Street

Both in the catering industry and in companies, the coffee is often of good quality and wide choice. When it comes to tea, on the other hand, you always have to wait and see what you get. A nice box with a few bags is often what the choice consists of. The quality, diversity and versatility of tea is often neglected.

This was the reason for Barbara Veldhuizen to change course. What started with an idea for a Starbucks for tea led to a cool and contemporary brand, specializing in high-quality loose tea aimed at consumers, companies and the hospitality industry, called Teastreet. With an extensive range of loose leaf tea – more than 120 varieties – Veldhuizen wants everyone to discover how diverse and versatile tea can be.

Barbara Veldhuizen graduated from the VU with a degree in financial management and worked as a marketer for 15 years at Unilever, Albert Heijn and the Rijksmuseum, among others. While working, she noticed that most offices serve good quality coffee, but the tea supply is deplorable. Not only is it good for health to encourage drinking tea, the use of tea bags creates a lot of unnecessary waste. The benefits of loose leaf tea are threefold: tastier, healthier and sustainable. Be critical of what you drink: What's in your cup?

Time to 'rediscover' tea

In 2013, she decided it was time to present tea in a new way. Barbara trained as a tea sommelier and started Teastreet. Just like in a good wine shop, she wanted to give the customer more knowledge about tea, its preparation and let them experience what tea and food can do together. (food & tea pairing).

Although tea is thousands of years old, people actually know quite little about tea. It is often not known that tea from the tea plant, camellia sinensis, like wine comes from the grape. There is also no black tea plant, but the processing after picking determines which type of tea it is. And that the bitter taste of green tea can be avoided by letting the water cool down a bit before adding the tea. Or that by combining the right teas with the right dishes, the best taste comes out of your food – just like with wine.

You can vary endlessly with tea. There is a tea for every moment or mood. I have devised a number of wonderful tea recipes for this IkPas period. That will really be fun!

Good luck to all IkPassers!