Welcome to our series on the new generation of tea drinkers. Over the next few weeks, we'll explore what the younger generation is drinking though a global lens, how they're learning about the tea industry, the role social media plays, and more! To start things off, we begin with a look at what's driving young people to embrace tea.
As someone who grew up watching the TV show, Friends, I recall Central Perk, the coffee shop featured in the show, as epitomizing the gravitational pull of coffee among social circles when much of Gen X was still in college and the older of the generation had started their first jobs. Mug in hand, the six friends would complain about their love lives, their bosses, and quip about living in Manhattan, often exchanging giant coffee mugs as their friend and waitress, Rachel played by Jennifer Aniston, would get their orders wrong. The show rocketed to top ratings during the mid to late nineties, and came to define the Gen X generation—one which was centered around coffee culture.
So, when a YouGov.com survey taken some 10 years back revealed that the 18–29-year-old demographic in the United States included as many tea slurpers as coffee guzzlers, it demonstrated a shift that can only be described as nothing less than tectonic! A mere fifteen years since my generation had their fingers glued to those giant mugs of coffee, younger people in America were trading in those huge vessels for elegant ceramic teaware bowls or transparent double-walled glass teacups, preferring that age-old elixir created by Chinese monks to the bean-brewed beverage of the Friends era.
Since the survey came out, those 18-29 year olds—or Millennials (now in their thirties)—have only increased their tea consumption as a proportion of the demographic in the United States. According to globalteaauction.com, 87% of millennials say they “regularly drink tea.” The same source didn’t have a figure for regular tea consumption for Gen Z, but 94% had reported that they had consumed tea in 2024.
The trend is consistent with what most retailers are seeing, including top US tea retailer Harney & Sons. “We've seen an increase in younger tea consumers, absolutely,” says Emeric Harney, one of the proprietors of Harney & Sons.
Kevin Gascoyne, the owner of Camellia Sinensis, a tea retailing business based in Montreal, Canada, agrees. “The numbers have changed quite a bit in the last few years, swinging more towards tea,” says Gascoyne.
Gascoyne’s theory is that millennials, and even more so those in the Gen Z demographic, “have an obsession with controlling as much of their lives as possible.” This, he believes, has led to them picking up tea rather than an alcoholic beverage. “They're the least alcohol drinkers, so alcohol's going down,” says Gascoyne.
That said, Gascoyne feels the genesis of the interest in tea among the Gen Z population comes as a carry-over from the trend that began to occur in their parents’ generation. That initial exposure was probably important to establish tea as a regularly consumed beverage in that generation.
Hannah Little from the retail business, Tour de Tea, which she runs with her sister, Amy, in Brisbane, Australia, has come to a similar conclusion, “We find young people from the countryside—more remote places where the trendiness of coffee culture took longer to grow and didn’t establish as ubiquitously—have strong appreciation for tea as it's an old-Australian, simple family thing.”
Another Aussie, Tania Stacey from Wilston, Queensland, the co-founder of East Forged, a tea-based beverage company, makes the same observation. “While Australians consider coffee as part of our DNA, there has been a growth in embracing one's family life. For example, we are told by customers that tea was part of their home life. It would be included in all the meals and some families would keep a pot warm in the kitchen," says Stacey. "Therefore…I believe they are embracing the DNA of their family upbringing. We see a rise in alternatives for the afternoon beverage. Tea holds a fascination for younger people with the vast range of tastes and aromas.”
Stacey explains that the East Forged tea-based beverage was the culmination of 18 months of development after she had won a tea brewing competition, and her business partner, Kym, had discovered a high demand for non-alcoholic cold beverages. The logical next step for the pair was to develop one from tea. They were fortunate in that the beverage was developed around the time that alcohol abstention was really trending upwards, particularly among young people, who’ve taken to it like a duck to water. “Young people love it,” she says. “They are moving away from alcohol and so many of them drink hot tea They find the iced tea category too sweet.”
Christian Brey of the German retailer, Teekampagne, backs up the observations of his industry colleagues with data. “According to the Tea and Hot Chocolate Market Report 2025, tea consumption among Germans remains constant overall, with 16- to 34-year-olds being the leading consumers," says Brey. "This data suggests that younger adults in Germany, especially those under 35, consume tea more frequently than older age groups.”
It’s also the drink of the health conscious, and perhaps more than any other generation, the habits of Gen Z on average are healthier than the generations that came before. “Tea is a 5,000-year-old health tonic. So, any kind of liquid tonic that you could be drinking on a daily basis is going to be something that's worth introducing into your life,” says Gascoyne.
Adi Baker, communications coordinator for the Tea and Herbals Association of Canada, cites health and variety as the main impetuses behind the interest of younger people in tea. “Gen Z and millennial Canadians are much more open to trying new non-alcoholic beverages than older Canadians,” writes Baker in response to an email inquiry from this writer. She adds that they, “have a more varied palate for beverages than older generations; however, the consumption of black specifically, is consistent across generations.”
Keep an eye out for Part 2 next week, which will cover how the next generation is learning about tea, and how it's taking over college campuses.
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