RUSH: Jacksonville, Florida. Hi, Scott. Great to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Kiefer Sutherland mega dittos from your number one listener in Jacksonville, Florida.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: I am a frequent customer of Two If By Tea, and I have it delivered to my office so I don’t have to deal with it at home. Well, the other day, I’m walking by my secretary and opening my box. She says, “What is that?”
“This is Two If By Tea.”
And she goes, “Is that Rush’s tea?”
I said, “Why, yes, it is. And I really prefer the raspberry with sugar.”
“Can I try one?”
Well, I was not willing, really, but I said, “Okay, you can have one bottle of Two If By Tea.”
When I came in this morning, she goes, “What’s the website address to buy it? It’s the best tea I’ve ever had.”
RUSH: Wow. That’s a wonderful Open Line Friday call! That’s a wonderful Open Line Friday story, Scott. You gave her the correct address, right?
CALLER: Rush, TwoIfByTea.com.
RUSH: No, no, not “Rush.” Just TwoIfByTea.com.
CALLER: TwoIfByTea.com.
RUSH: TwoIfByTea.com. So one bottle is all it took for her, right?
CALLER: It’s all it took, a bottle of the raspberry. I’ve tried the blueberry; it is great. I haven’t tried the sugar-free yet, but the raspberry is my favorite.
RUSH: Well, everybody has their favorite, and raspberry is at the top. Peach, too. They’re all good, and the unsweet — the Plane ‘Ol Tea — that’s new this month. In fact, there it is. I have a bottle right here, and the bottle is cool. It’s me in an airplane for Plane ‘Ol Tea, instead of on the Paul Revere horse. Scott, I appreciate the call. Thanks very much. It is the best tea in the country, folks — and, look, it’s hard for me to say that. I don’t tout my own stuff. I’m not good at it. I really am not good at it.
Even when I pay myself… You know, I buy Two If By Tea commercials. I pay myself to run these commercials, and still it’s tough to tout. It’s the best iced tea you’ve tasted in this country. There’s no comparison. But I just get… I don’t know. Like, “Buy my book!” or “Buy my coffee mug!” I’m just not good at that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ken in Kingsport, Tennessee. Welcome to Open Line Friday. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, mega dittos from Kingsport, Tennessee. How are you, sir?
RUSH: Very well, sir. Thanks very much for the call.
CALLER: Thank you very much. I’ve called to discuss the tea, Rush. I want to know something about the tea.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: I have not tried the tea yet, and I have gone to the Two If By Tea website, and I cannot make up my mind as to which flavor I want. So what I want to discuss with you is, I want to make a request, a request for you to produce a variety pack where I can sample all the wonderful tea flavors in one case, if that’s possible, sir.
RUSH: We have that, we have a variety. You buy a case of blueberry. You buy a case of raspberry. You buy a case of peach, and you buy a case of regular and a case of unsweetened.
CALLER: Rush, one man can hold only so much tea.
RUSH: (laughing) Yeah, we get this request somewhat frequently. It’s a perfectly reasonable request, except it isn’t bottled that way. It’s packaged right as it comes off the bottling line, the assembly line. It’s shrink-wrapped and it’s all part of the automation process. So this would require a whole ramping up of assembly and packaging that would not be automated since it’s not bottled that way. And that would elevate the cost. But we’re looking at it. We always do. It’s like we came out with the Plane ‘Ol Tea, unsweetened, ’cause we’re deluded. I mean, deluged. (laughing) Deluded. I might be that, too. It’s been a long week. I only had an hour of show prep this morning and I feel so inadequate here. I really feel like I’ve let everybody down ’cause a bunch of stuff this morning took longer than I thought it would take.
Anyway, we are deluged with requests here for the Plane ‘Ol Tea. We’re coming up on a year now. So we finally did it, and the same resourcing testing process, taste testing, the same great care and concern went into the label design, and it’s clever. So nothing is ever off the table of possibility, and I appreciate your concern. I would suggest to you, since you don’t know which to buy, you’ve gotta dip your toe in the water somewhere. And you’re gonna laugh at this. Until we came out with a peach and blueberry, the raspberry was my favorite, and I really don’t think you could go wrong. The raspberry, either regular or diet, will knock your socks off, but so will the peach and blueberry. The blueberry is incomparable, and you won’t find that anywhere else. And the blueberry flavored tea is truly something you can’t do yourself.
You could theoretically brew some tea and squeeze a peach in there, and we don’t do lemon because anybody can add lemon to their tea. Raspberry and blueberry, that requires trained professionals. We have food scientists that concoct these recipes that we taste rigorously and then make our decision. Kathryn and I do this. We’ve hit gold with each one. I would suggest you try the raspberry first. But see, now people that like the blueberry are shouting. Snerdley is shouting blueberry and so forth.
There’s another alternative you could do using my creative marketing juice here. Assemble a group of friends, and each one of you buy one case, and then swap. Have your own Tea Party. You kill two or three birds with one stone there. You get five people, each buying one case of each flavor, regular or diet, and then you swap ’em out. Our tea, here’s the thing. Two If By Tea is a science, and as such, there is no consensus as to which one’s the best. It’s totally, totally up to you. It would be my suggestion until we get around to figuring out the variety pack, or the sample pack.