Kasim Ali is the founder of Waterloo Tea. A qualified pharmacist with an MSc in International Relations, he decided on a change in direction without losing the skills he had already learned. Kasim considers tea as a “gift” from the East to the West and has aimed to honour this by applying science and accuracy to complete the ‘farm to cup’ journey.
Within 8 months of launching Waterloo Tea House, it won the award for best café in the UK. The thinking behind Waterloo Tea is the simple idea that it is all about your palate and exploring taste. They have no marketing, no sales team, no people on the road, all their growth comes from people just tasting their tea. They now have 3 tea shops in Cardiff. Waterloo tea’s mission is to get you to re-think tea. For the last 20-30 years, we have to drink the wrong stuff, pouring boiling hot water over it and calling it tea. But once you taste the real tea, you won’t drink that other stuff again.
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Recorded live at the global event in Cardigan, west Wales in 2014.
Watch Kasim's full talk here: www.thedolectures.com/talks/kasim-ali-why-great-tea-is-as-every-bit-as-geeky-as-great-coffee