Gratitude #62: The most popular beverage in the world

I bet you can’t name the most popular beverage in the world, excluding water.

Coffee? Sorry no lol

Coca-cola? who invited you anyway

Creamy Soda? oooh close

Coffee? seriously you can leave now

Tea? Wrong again loser

Milk? This isn’t Inglourious Basterds julie

The answer, of course, is tea. I don’t care if you already said tea, I didn’t hear you. 6 billion cups of the stuff is drunk/drank/drunken/dranken/dranked every single day and it’s so versatile it’s not funny. You can make light, refreshing and summery or dark, deep and heavy depending on your mood. You can drink it from a cup or a straw, upside down or regular sitting position, it goes just as well with a sandwich as it does with a big rack of all-American BBQ ribs.

get ready for the puns

All of the above examples are terrible but the fact remains tea must be doing something right if there are 6 billions cups of it consumed each year. Ultimately I think it comes down to economics, for both the developing and developed worlds. For the developing world it’s just a cheap beverage: a lot of water and a few camellia sinensis leaves. It’s simple and flexible and cheap. So that’s the developing world. Well argued, me.

For the developed world — specifically the most developed part of the developed world (it seems there’s no direct analog for First World Problems) — the economics of tea is entirely related to the amazing value tea represents at cafes. Let’s take my home town of Melbourne:

• A coffee costs $4ish. You get one small cup. It takes 5 minutes to drink if you’re nursing it. You get a small buzz which is fun. Once the waiter takes away your empty cup you have to justify why you’re hanging around so long without any visible purchased item.
• A tea costs $4ish. You get anywhere from 1–5 cups. It can take an hour and multiple toilet breaks to finish. You don’t get much of a buzz but maybe after 5 cups of the same steeping black tea you feel like you’ve got arrhythmia. You don’t have to justify to anyone why you’re there for so long, there’s still liquid in your cup so people leave you alone.

There’s a minor reference to tea and coffee in this bit, and that’s all I need.

So let’s raise one of our 6 billion cups to tea, for allowing us to drain vulnerable small businesses with impunity.