If Yorkshire Tea drinker Jode Steele and his lovely lady Becca had fallen for each other a little over half a millennium ago, there’d have been an outcry.
After all, he’s a Selby lad she’s from Preston, Lancashire. With the Wars of the Roses going on, things might have gone a bit Romeo and Juliet.
Thank goodness, then, that it’s 2013 – a time of civil peace in which Yorkshire Tea can openly declare its support and affection for the fine people across the border.
(Unless we’re talking cricket – but that’s another story).
So we were thrilled to be invited to Jode and Becca’s wedding, which took place at the picturesque Selby Abbey last week.
We headed over with Little Urn and the Yorkshire Tea Band to serve tea with a spot of music – and we gave guests a few brews to take home as wedding favours.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better day,” said Jode. “It was kind of overwhelming to be honest… it was really perfect.
“Everyone who came was blown away. They rocked up outside the abbey – which is a beautiful building anyway – and there was Yorkshire Tea there and a brass band playing.
“Everyone loved it, they absolutely loved it. It was a real kickstart to the day.”
If you’re celebrating something special, we might be able to help it go with a bang. Please tell us about it here via our Facebook form.
Posted under Our Customers by Yorkshire Tea on 25.04.2013
And this year we’ve been asking Yorkshire Tea drinkers what they’re celebrating – because they’re generally a happy bunch and we rather like meeting them.
So on Sunday we packed ourselves into Little Urn, our trusty tea van, and motored off to Southampton to pay a visit to the very lovely Faye.
She’s a Yorkshire Tea fan through and through, and Sunday was her birthday. What better excuse for a bit of a street party?
“It was the most amazing day,” said Faye. “My friends were very impressed with your friendliness and hospitality. It is such a change to see employees for a big company to have sparkle and charisma.”
It was a particularly big celebration for Faye, as she has very recently recovered from a serious illness.
“Yorkshire Tea, Little Urn and your employees have made a difference in my remission stage of cancer,” said Faye. “It was like a dream come true – I shall never forget it!”
If you’re celebrating something this year, why not tell us about it? We might be able to help it go with a bang.
There’s just a short form to fill in, which you can find here.
Posted under Our Customers by Yorkshire Tea on 02.04.2013
When our Twitter friend Lauren sent us a picture of her Yorkshire Tea collection – that’s it above, complete with tea caddies, teapot and mug – we posted it on our Facebook page asking if anybody could go one better.
Well, it turns out the title of number one fan is hotly contested. It’s left us pretty bowled over, in fact.
Mark is not the kind of man to run out of teabags. He’s got five caddies and four boxes.
Ella’s all about the mugs and jugs, plus a fetching pair of retro tins and our lovely teapot in pride of place.
Gareth boasts not one teapot, but two. He’s not short of a teabag either, and he’s even got Little Urn’s ‘Little Brother’, the Corgi miniature version of our beloved travelling tea van.
Meanwhile, Helena’s making sure that there’s always a little slice of Yorkshire over in Sweden, thanks to her great collection.
Do you have a bigger claim to be Yorkshire Tea’s number one fan? Leave a comment below, post on our Facebook page or send us a message to @YorkshireTea on Twitter.
Just bear in mind that you may have your work cut out if you’re going to beat our Facebook friend Paul.
“I can do loads better than that,” he says. “I live in a Yorkshire teapot.”
Posted under Our Customers by Yorkshire Tea on 08.11.2012
Meet Jayne, Debbie, Susan, Gerwyn, Anthony, Donna, Stephen, Katie, Paul, Helen, Pete and Sue.
They seriously love Yorkshire Gold. In fact, you could call them superfans.
We asked people to send us a video or picture showing their love for their favourite brew, and boy did they deliver.
There was everything from an intricately constructed samba tune using spoons, kettles and other tea-making noises, to a picture of the marriage between a tea-loving young lady and our 1886 founder Charles Edward Taylor. (See our previous blog for links and more info.)
He’s old enough to be her great-great-great-grandfather!
The prize was a VIP visit to our Harrogate HQ for a special Yorkshire Gold Masterclass. Like Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket, but for tea.
The winners and their friends – that’s them in the picture above – joined us on Tuesday, travelling from as far afield as London and Wales for a glimpse behind the scenes of their beloved cuppa.
That meant a spot of lunch followed by an in-depth tea tasting session with Henry, one of our tea buyers, and a guided tour of the Yorkshire Tea factory.
And what a lovely bunch they were! There’s clearly something about our tea which attracts the right sort. Meeting them was the highlight of our week, and we hope they enjoyed it just as much.
Yorkshire Tea – official brew of nice people. We should put that on the box…
We’re absolutely amazed and actually incredibly touched by the amount of effort some people have gone to when entering our Yorkshire Gold competition. There really is a lot of love out there for our tea. What’s more you’ve expressed it in so many wonderful, creative and, it has to be said, sometimes rather strange ways.
We simply asked you to make and upload a short video that showed your love of our tea. We had a total of twenty two entries, which might not seem much to you, but just like Yorkshire Gold, it’s the quality, not the quantity that counts. Obviously, we can’t possibly mention all of them, and the judges are still pouring over them, but here goes with a few that caught our eye.
Francesca Ruta (above) entered a brilliant and painstaking “I Love Tea” stop-frame animation that took us, and her tea, to many exciting places including a supermarket kids arcade ride and her kitchen where her fella danced around her with a saucepan on his head (we suspect he may have been drinking something even stronger than our tea).
Victoria Schneider introduced us to Eddie, her cuddly Yorkshire Gold-loving, tea towel-wearing, birthday cake-baking pink pig. The cake looked delicious, incidentally – perfect with a cuppa.
Jainad Anwar loves his so much he took it to the skies on a jet – we don’t think they joined the mile high club, but you never know. Meanwhile, down-to-earth Dee McNamee from South Yorkshire spilt her life story of her relationship with Yorkshire Tea and how she is forever loyal to Yorkshire Gold, before bursting into a rendition of ‘Smile’ that even Nat King Cole would have been proud of.
We’re a bit worried about what Melissa Cannon’s husband might do (above) when he finds out she’s been fantasizing about actually getting married to Yorkshire Gold amid a flurry of tea bag confetti. It takes all sorts. Camilla Busbridge’s raunchy and steamy video also got our water boiling too, especially the music from Barry White (with two sugars).
There was some odd gender-swapping going on in “Omeland”, Di Coke’s northern interpretation of the intense scene in HBO’s ‘Homeland’ where Yorkshire Gold gave the game away. There’s nothing Amy Mackay likes more after a long hard day at work than lighting a few candles and dunking teabags and herself in a bath of our luxury brew.
A couple of spooky entries caught the eye too including Kelly McIntyre dressed, we think, as a witch with tea bag earrings and Simon Taylor frightened the life out of us with his austere and disturbing movie of a brew being made.
Finally, we just couldn’t help tapping our teaspoons along to Paul Brickles’ sambatastic “Something In The Water” (above) in which he samples and orchestrates his impressive personal collection of Yorkshire Tea paraphernalia to hip-moving effect. Love it, and yes, bring on Rio.
There are many more to watch and you can view them here on our Facebook page. The competition is now closed, but how about you? Are you a Yorkshire Gold lover? How would you show it? Leave a comment and let us know.
Remember our Win a Family Holiday to Florida competition? Well our lucky winners, the Matthews family, have sent us this video of them enjoying their prize. Have a look to see what they got up to…
Thanks to Gerry, Debbie, Joe, and Euan Matthews for sending in this video. Great to see them enjoying their time in Florida so congratulations again on winning the prize through our competition earlier this year.
Really brought back memories of our American adventures with Little Urn!
As another year comes to an end, so does this year’s Great British Tea Party. We’d just like to thank everyone who got involved, whether it was by throwing a party to raise funds, buying cakes at a bake-stall, or doing what Vicky Hart and her friend Claire have done here – posing behind our Wallace & Gromit photoboard and posting their picture on our Facebook page!
From the barge parties we threw earlier in the year to our own staff tea party here at Yorkshire Tea HQ, we’ve had loads of fun and we hope you have too – and the fact that the funds raised will help Wallace & Gromit’s Children’s Foundation to support sick children in UK hospitals and hospices is surely the icing on the cake!
We’ll be back in the new year with details of how much we raised. In the meantime, thanks again to everyone who joined in. We hope you had fun – here’s to next year and Merry Christmas to you all from everyone at Yorkshire Tea!
ps – you’ll find even more Wallace & Gromit photoboard pics here
“Someday you will find me, caught beneath a landslide…”
Regular readers of our blog will know all about our celebrity fanbase. It’s quite a varied bunch, consisting of characters that range from 83-year old film-maker Ken Russell to unpredictable songstress Amy Winehouse. In terms of singing our praises, though, ‘rock & roll star’ Noel Gallagher takes some beating.
Not only has the ex-Oasis star frequently discussed his love for Yorkshire Tea live on Radio 1 with his DJ friend Chris Moyles (also a big fan), but now he’s picked our tea to feature with him in a gorgeous new photography book called Love Music Love Food.
A unique collection of portraits of musicians posing with their favorite food or drink, Love Music Love Food is a charitable project supporting the Teenage Cancer Trust, which helps improve the life and chances of survival for young people with cancer. All proceeds from the book go to the trust - so it’s a lovely idea and a very good cause too.
Less hard rock and more hard water these days, Noel is pictured with a cup of his favourite brew attached to a special cupholder on his mike-stand, while another photo shows Yorkshire Tea teabags spilling out of his guitarcase.
As ever we’re blown away by Noel’s support, and chuffed to be associated with such a cracking project. Thanks Noel!
Just goes to show – Yorkshire Tea beats ‘cigarettes and alcohol’ any day!
So, previously on the blog, we’ve talked about our own obsessions - sending in photos when we see Yorkshire Tea on sale in far-flung places, or even taking a box on holiday so we can get a shot of us holding it in some unlikely location. Up a mountain, in a jungle, sitting next to a monkey… you name it and we’ve probably done it. With a pack of tea held proudly aloft.
However, this behaviour pales into insignificance compared to the devotion of Yorkshire Tea drinkers. Take a look at the gallery on our website and what you’ll see is the tip of a rather splendid iceberg of heartfelt loyalty.
One of more recent contributors went even further than usual. Not only did lovely Rita from Cascais in Portugal send us photos documenting a little tour of a region called Sintra with a box of Yorkshire Tea in tow, she even shot a video!
“I cannot live without a cup of Yorkshire Tea first thing in the morning (strong, no milk, 1 sugar),” says Rita. “I was first introduced to Yorkshire Tea two years ago when I moved to London, and have been in love ever since. After moving back to Portugal, I was very relieved to know that the English shop in Estoril sells YT!”
Thank you Rita!
Posted under Our Customers by Yorkshire Tea on 11.12.2009
