Brighton Girls students teamed up with award-winning Sussex eco-company Bird & Blend to create two new uniquely Brighton Girls tea blends.
Students learned about tea, tested flavours and developed logos before finally launching their brews Chai To Be Kind and Bold and Gold this Autumn.
The initiative is part of the school’s Café Enterprise project that encourages pupils to understand entrepreneurialism and how business works. They will serve the tea in the school’s new community and pop-up café space called The Hive, inside the school’s iconic Temple building.
Chai To Be Kind is a chai tea that includes cinnamon, ginger, cloves, vanilla, rosehip and roasted dandelion root.
Bold and Gold is a blended Sri Lankan black tea and Indian Assam black tea with notes of cinnamon, ginger, gold-sparkling sprinkles, cardamom and turmeric.
43 Students, from Year 7 to the Sixth Form, applied to be part of the Café Enterprise project. After tours of the magical tea world of Bird and Blend HQ in Worthing, they returned to school for a product development workshop with Marketing around how school values of being kind and bold should inform the teas, what health benefits the girls wanted the teas to have and what flavours they were looking for. This formed the brief for Bird & Blend who then led a tasting session, inviting students to taste ten different blends.
It was not just about creating the actual teas. Students were instructed on how to hold a focus group before testing the teas on groups of teachers and parents. Their feedback, combined with the students’ own views, informed the final blends.
The last stage was for a group of the students to design the logo with our Head of Design Technology, then learn screen printing with Brighton company Eagle Labs, to print our tea logos onto cotton aprons to be worn in the Hive. Students will serve the teas at pop-up café events for parents, visitors and community events.
One of the tea entrepreneurs 13-year-old Grace Rummery said: “When my friends and I first heard about the new café and teas we were so excited to get involved. We have really enjoyed the process of creating tea and can’t wait until it goes on sale. Bird & Blend were so lovely and explained all the processes of making the tea and how to make it more eco-friendly.”
Bird & Blend’s co-founder and creative director Krisi Smith said: “It has been an absolute joy working with the girls on this project. I’ve really enjoyed seeing their enthusiasm to learn and get involved in every step of the process of bringing these blends together. I can’t wait to see the girls serving the teas to their community”.
A student tea launch saw cups of Chai to be Kind and Bold & Gold served to fellow students in The Hive with platters of cakes. Packets of loose tea and tea bags will be available to buy at select school events, and (for a limited time pre-Christmas) our teas are stocked by Bird & Blend stores in Brighton.
