Moreover, it includes tasting notes to guide you through the flavors and story behind each tea, while brewing guides features advice from the experts on how to best brew each tea. The prices vary depending on whether you sign up for an annual, six-month or monthly plan, but it will cost between $30 and $35 (USD) (or your local currency equivalent) every month, which includes shipping. Yes, it’s more expensive than your typical industrial-sized box of Typhoo, but if ‘fresh’ and ‘quality’ is what you’re after, well, it’s this market Teabox is serving. The scale at which Teabox is already operating, with fully localized pricing and shipping to more than 70 countries, certainly bodes well for its future – after water, tea is thought to be the most popular beverage in the world. To date, the company has shipped the equivalent of five million cups of tea to customers in dozens of countries, and has reduced the typical production>consumption period from between 3-6 months to as little as one week, so we’re talking fresh here. “There’s a general tendency in the (tea) industry to use ad-agency manufactured slogans, as facts to sell tea,” explains Dugar. “Anybody can call their tea ‘the best’ or ‘the finest’ or ‘first-class’. But that doesn’t necessarily make it any of those terms, unless it really is fresh – and this is the core component of a great tea.” Fresh tea, on demand, direct from source, within seven days of harvesting – that’s the main selling point here. “When it comes to freshness and quality, the industry does not want to talk about in detail and books often lack real, hard information,” continues Dugar. “At Teabox, we’re changing this trend. We’re making all relevant information available, such as the date of picking of tea, its origin, the season it was picked in, and more to our customers.” Teabox’s ‘Fresh Beginnings’ hand-selected subscription service is in private beta now, though anyone with the link can sign up. The first boxes will start shipping on May 14. Meanwhile, if you know exactly what you’re after and don’t want a regular box arriving at your home each month, it’s business as usual at Teabox. .