'It’s an old person's drink.' Is Britain's love for tea cooling off?

It’s that quintessential British tradition that we have been enjoying for hundreds of years.

The answer to every crisis, a bonding ritual when you welcome someone into your home and the first drink many people wake up to.

“Fancy a cuppa?” or even simply “Tea?” is music to your ears, right?

Well, maybe not for everyone.

"I suppose there's kind of an association with tea as an old person's drink," says Gillie Owen, aged 20.

The student from London says he and his friends prefer water or diet soda drinks.

Layba, meanwhile, doesn't drink tea at all.

"I have never liked tea," the 20-year-old says. "I just think it tastes really off, like, really weird.”

It's a stark contrast to her parents who, she says, “really love" tea.

So is it a generational thing? As a nation, are we falling out of love with tea?

Twenty-one-year-old student Dylan says he drinks tea, but not the usual builder's tea - black with a smidge of milk – and prefers to go caffeine free.

"I drink less tea than my parents definitely. I drink Redbush tea and other less ‘tea’ teas," he says.

Shayma, 18, says she also prefers herbal tea, while most of her friends drink coffee. She says there are "so many drinks now” and she hasn’t even heard of Typhoo.

Ms Soininen points to the huge difference between sales of tea and coffee.

“Sales of ordinary tea stood at £377m in 2023, leaving it far behind instant coffee, at [almost] £1bn,” she says.

Even instant coffee's popularity is being challenged by the fast-growing ready-to-drink coffee market, she adds, which has seen sales more than double over the last five years.

Polina Jones from NielsenIQ says while people "are not falling out of love with tea per se", the landscape is changing with huge offerings from bubble tea, herbal teas, kombuchas and energy drinks attracting the younger generation.

If this trend continues, she believes brands should reinvent themselves and figure out how to get into the ready-to-drink space. Twinings, for example, has started to offer canned sparkling tea, while bottled kombuchas appeal to students and young professionals buying a meal deal, she says.

Supreme’s purchase of Typhoo includes two herbal tea brands, Heath & Heather and the London Fruit & Herb Company, as well as specialty tea brand Ridgeways. Analyst Susannah Streeter from Hargreaves Lansdown believes Supreme will incorporate these into wellness brands it already owns.