Recently a customer asked us a good question. We thought we would share our response. The question was “how come your prices are almost half the amount of other larger companies?” To be honest we are surprised we have not been asked this question many times before. The answer is simple. Low overhead, large volumes and quality product. Granville Island Tea Co. has been in business over twenty years opening in February 1999. Located in the world-famous Granville Island Public Market in Vancouver, we enjoy unprecedented numbers of shoppers and visitors. Granville Island is one of Canada’s most visited locations, with as many as 10 to 12 million visits per year. It was always our plan to attract new customers by keeping our overhead and prices as low as possible. By offering quality product at comparatively low prices, we sell more tea. The upside is we sell lots of tea, and because we turn over so much product our tea is always fresh, and we negotiated better prices from our suppliers and turn over those savings to the business. All the tea we buy is sealed at source and never opened long before we must open another lot. So, customers get fresh tea and better prices, it is a win-win. We are a family managed business that operates our business like a family, firmly managing our expenses, if we can do it ourselves, we do, in other words we keep it simple. We have managed to avoid the temptation of expansion and focused on our single store. We do have a warehouse in Vancouver and employ 22 people for most of the year who either work in the store, office or warehouse. We don’t have a marketing department or sales department; we rarely advertise and do not have any consultants. We invest in our tea. So, if you are wondering why our 100-gram prices are close to our competitors 50-gram prices, now you know.