Bao Tang Solidarity Cake

This cake marks an exciting new phase in One River Tea’s commitment to transparency, solidarity, and absolute fair trade.  From the genesis of the One River Tea Cooperative, we have been reinvesting generated revenue into grassroot communities and programs here in rural China.  Never before though have we been so absolutely transparent about the costs, markup, profits, and relief generated for these initiatives.

This year, we have begun committing 15% of monthly revenue to reinvest in social initiatives like profit sharing, farming assistance, development of ecological tourism, and more for the villages, farmers, and tea makers we work with.  After sourcing tea from these people and places for several years, we know who needs a little extra assistance, and thus have aimed to directly help these farmers.

This tea is a blend of Autumn arboreal material that the farmer Tan has had piling up in his small production facility in Boatang Village, on the Huazhu Liangzi mountain in central Xishuang Banna. 

Tan makes the Riptide Wild Black Tea cake, the old Motorbike and Tree Spirit puer tea cakes, and we used a lot of his gushu tea material in the Old Salt and Kallisti tea cakes.  One tea however that he has not been able to sell is his autumn teas, so this year we worked with him to create this special profit-sharing tea cake using autumn material from several different years to create a fragrant, mellow, and mildly aged raw puer tea that surprises us at the humble price point.

Below we will include the breakdown of all these costs and what this kind of extra revenue will mean to the tea maker, but first, a few more tasting notes.

This tea is both juicy and floral.  While Autumn tea is often considered inferior to spring tea, and can be bought at a significantly cheaper price, this tea is an outstanding over-performer.  The dry leaves already advertise what is in store, rich with fruit and flower fragrances.  When hit with hot water, the juicy notes explode on the wet leaves, while the tea soup is a savory blend of saline floral notes with some rock sugar or dry honey sweetness.  This tea might have broken our prejudice on autumn tea because it is a phenomenal tea that surprises us due to its very cheap price.  Perhaps it is the environment, the blend, the addition of some aged material, but this tea turned out very impressive indeed.

Transparent Price Break Down:

The total cost of the tea was around $645 USD (￥4550 RMB) for 35 kilograms.  The processing fee, including pressing the cakes, printing the packaging, and wrapping them all was around $75 USD (￥531).  The total amount of 200 gram cakes we ended up with was 171.

Thus, each cake costs us about $4.21 USD to make ($720/171).

If we sell this tea at $25 per cake (a 6x markup), we have enough money to cover our costs and labor and split the rest of the revenue back with Tan.  The number we need to sustainably cover our costs and labor is about $10 per cake, thus Tan can get an extra $10 back during the 20% off black Friday sale, or $15 back on every cake sold after the sale ends and the price returns to $25/cake.

If all 171 cakes sell during the 20% off black Friday sale, Tan will get a total of ￥7,284 RMB ($1,028 USD) back from us, which when added to the cost of the tea he earned initially ($645 USD or ￥4550 RMB) he will have received a total of ￥11834 RMB (~$1,671 USD).

This is equivalent to just over half of the average annual income (￥21,095 or $2,979 USD) for rural residents in Xishuangbana, of which Tan and Baotang village are a part of. Selling it at this Black Friday discounted price ($20), we will have virtually no profit, covering only the cost of our own labor. The consumer, however, will get an exceptional value and Tan can get some relief as unsold product accumulates in his home.

Thank you for supporting us these past many years, it is because of devoted customers that we can finally create the kind of social initiatives we desire and we hope this to be the first in our radical transparent profit-sharing solidarity products.

Yours in Solidarity,

Alex, Derek, & Xiaoyan