Red Rose Tea
| Privately Held | |
| Industry | Tea |
| Founded | 1890, Saint John, New Brunswick |
| Headquarters | Little Falls, NY, United States |
| Owner |
Redco Foods, Inc. (US) Unilever (Canada) |
Red Rose Tea is a beverage company established by Theodore Harding Estabrooks in 1894 in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. It is considered an iconic part of Canadian culture and many consumers have a strong emotional attachment to the brand. Its orange pekoe tea is said to be made from only the top two leaves of each tea plant sprig, thus ensuring the best quality.
Red Rose's old commercials introduced the catchphrase, "Only in Canada, you say? Pity..." (The catchphrase was transformed by Canadian popular culture to, "Only in Canada, eh? Pity...") Another slogan was "Red Rose Tea is Good Tea."
Red Rose brand tea has been available in the United States since the 1920s, but it is a different blend of black pekoe and cut black teas compared to the orange pekoe sold in Canada.
The brand is now owned by Redco Foods (a subsidiary of Teekanne) in the United States and by Unilever in Canada. The brand was formerly owned by Brooke Bond Foods of the UK.
From the 1950s through the 1970s packages of Red Rose Tea included premiums, including at various times fortune telling tea cups with saucers, for use in tasseography; collectible tea cards; and small ceramic figurines by Wade Pottery, commonly called Wade figurines.
There were three white tea cups with gold designs in the series of fortune telling cups, numbered 1, 2, and 3 on the bottom of each cup and saucer. They were manufactured in England by Taylor, Smith, and Taylor of fine bone china. A small illustrated booklet about tea leaf reading accompanied them.
Red Rose collectible tea cards were issued in annual series of 48 cards each, from 1959 through 1975.
In 1967, Red Rose Tea began to give away miniature glazed pottery figures made by the Wade pottery company. The earliest giveaways took place only in Quebec, Canada as part of a short term promotion, but the promotion was soon extended to the entire country. During the 1970s, United States test markets for the figurines were opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the Pacific Northwest states. In 1983 the promotion moved into the United States. The moulds for the promotions in both nations were the same, but the glaze colouring differed between the two runs.
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Wikipedia