Tea, coffee shops do brisk business during vacations

Vacations promise a roaring business for the numerous tea and coffee shops dotting Jeddah’s streets and districts.
This explains one reason why crowds gather at these tea shops during the current spring break.
While speaking to Arab News, Hussein Bahaikali, owner of a chain of tea shops in the city, said the arrival of school vacations attracts a large number of visitors and tourists to the city ensuring a lucrative profit for tea and coffee shops especially in the Corniche area. In other seasons, business is dull and the prices are slashed.
However, prices of the beverages remain high on the highways and inside the city regardless of whether it is the holiday season or not.
Customers are generally of the view that the best quality tea is available at teashops on the expressways.
Some customers feel that the number of cars parked in front of a coffee or teashop is an indicator to the quality of the stuff sold there.
Mostly, the highest demand is for green or Moroccan tea where the daily turnover of a shop can range from between SR1,500 to SR2,000.
Arif Sulama, owner of a coffee house on the Corniche said, “During vacations a large number of customers visit coffee shops in tourist spots such as the Corniche,” adding that most of them want to have green tea and Moroccan tea.
The price of a cup of tea ranges between SR4 to SR5. The shops also serve fruit juice at prices starting from SR7 up to SR14, he said.
The quality of the tea or coffee depends on the skill and experience of the tea maker.
Youths are impressed by the varieties of coffee such as Turkish coffee with milk, French coffee and Italian coffee which range between SR5 to SR9, he said. “I like to serve coffee or tea the way a customer wants it. Even if prices are high, I am sure, the number of customers will not fall,” he said. Owner of a tea and coffee shop on the Tahlia street Muhammad Al-Sulami said he rents his shop for SR150,000 a year as it is situated in one of the most expensive areas in Jeddah.
“Even though I fear that more coffee shops will open here and my profit will decline, my shop attracts customers from distant parts of the city because my tea maker’s skill is unbeatable,” he added.
He sells a cup of green tea for SR5 while at some places in the city a cup is sold for up to SR8, he said. The high prices are attributed to the high rent for the building or stand. At some locations such as the Corniche the annual rent is SR250,000. Some shops offer decorative napkins with the tea and demand a higher price.
Ali Shari, a Moroccan national who sells Moroccan tea said his shop on Prince Sultan Street, sells an average of 500 cups daily and his net profit sometimes reaches SR2,000.
Deputy Chairman of the Hospitality Committee at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry Darwesh Al-Khodra attributed the high price of coffee and tea to the soaring rent the shop owners had to pay for the buildings besides the high salary of skilled foreign workers. He admitted that there was no effective official mechanism to check the prices of the beverages. However, he stressed that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry take steps to monitor the pricing in the teashops besides setting a ceiling for rents of such shops. He put the number of tea and coffee shops in the city at 5,000.