Tea v coffee: What does your guest's choice of morning cuppa say about them?

Published on Feb 13, 2018

At HealthPak, we package and send out so much tea and coffee every year that we’re fully aware that not only are New Zealand and Australia packed full of caffeine addicts – but how much our visitors expect their morning or afternoon pick-me-up too.

But what does the type of tea and coffee we stock at our hotels, motels, guesthouses, B&Bs and Airbnbs say about the type of people we have staying here? And what do our visitors’ choices between tea and coffee say about them?

The choices on offer at HealthPak are straightforward, but cover all the beverage bases: Café de Sol’s range of instant and plunger coffee sachets blended to suite an Australasian palate; the eight Porters premium and specialty teas ranging from Pure Ceylon to Peppermint; and the One Fairtrade range of organic teas, coffee and drinking chocolate that guarantees you serve only an ethical and socially responsible cuppa to your guests.

Because we supply so much of all our products to accommodation providers throughout New Zealand and Australia, we thought we’d have a look at the type of people who are actually boiling the kettles…

Those needing a kick-start to their day

 Whether just sight-seeing or getting ready for an important business meeting, those staying with accommodation providers are often required to hit the ground running. So which beverage do they choose? Although it might seem intuitive to think that a burst of caffeine from coffee provides a bigger boost than tea (after all the same size cup of tea has around half the stimulating dose than coffee), researchers in the UK have found that tea not only provides just as powerful a wake-up call as coffee but it also has the similar long-lasting effects.

Those needing a little soul-soothing

This seems a bit of a no-brainer – after all everyone knows a nice cup of tea helps settle you down and there’s plenty of research to show that regular tea-drinking can help people respond more calmly to stressful situation. But studies published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry in 2015 involving more than 330,000 participants actually showed the risk of depression decreased by 8% for each cup of coffee per day increment!

The healthy choice

Compared to some of the sugary drinks on offer, it’s clear that tea and coffee are both healthy choices – but some of your visitors may well have investigated beyond the obvious and will be choosing either tea or coffee because of specific health benefits. For example, both have been linked in studies to reducing the risk of diabetes (even decaf does this, apparently), heart disease (coffee slightly more than tea), and cancers.

Tradition

Welcome the majority of your guests from England and China? Chances are you’ll get through your teabags faster than if, say, you have more guests from Italy, the US and Brazil where coffee is the norm.

Personality

A 2013 poll in the UK discovered quite a few differences between the traits of coffee-lovers and those who preferred a cup of tea – and some were quite surprising. For example, coffee-drinkers were more “hot-headed” but were more likely to have had a pay rise in the past five years and, on the whole, earnt more (despite, oddly, also tending to be late for work more frequently). Tea-drinkers were also more likely to describe themselves as team-players!

 It’s in the genes

According to research at the Harvard School of Public Health there are eight different gene variants that determine how much coffee we drink, how often and what its effect is on us.

 

For more information on HealthPak’s hotel and motel food and beverage supplies and other guest amenities contact us on +64 9 579 6268, at info@healthpak.co.nz or via the website.