Calcutta, Sept. 14: Goodricke Group Limited (GGL) plans to set up six tea centres in Darjeeling and Calcutta to augment the out-of-home consumption.

The company also plans to develop the tea centres into a separate business unit for generating additional revenues.

“This is a favourable trend in the context of tea as not only the outlets becomes more visible to the target customers, the beverage also gets consumed more here,” said Arun Grover, vice-president (marketing) of GGL.

Picking this opportunity, GGL has recently set up Goodricke tea centres at its two premium tea gardens ? Castleton and Margaret’s Hope. These tea centres provide an opportunity for the travellers and people on the move to sit, relax and sip in a cup of garden-fresh tea in a charming ambience, Grover added.

Goodricke Group has eight tea gardens in Darjeeling. “We will open another tea centre in Thurbo garden shortly,” added Grover. The plans are to expand these tea centres to other tea gardens in Darjeeling.

The company plans to open at least three tea centres in Calcutta. The tea centres will also provide the consumers with Assam and Dooars tea.

Along side the tea centres, GGL has also launched mobile tea kiosks, which would park itself at various strategic locations ? near factories, commercial complexes and shopping areas.

“The mobile kiosks are attractively designed and they dispense quality brews to tea lovers. Through this initiative one also gets tremendous insights by interacting directly with the consumer and simultaneously offering high visibility to the brand,” Grover added.

Buoyed by the response to the initial launch, Goodricke is contemplating to roll out a couple of these kiosks more to cover a wider part of the city.

“The response so far has been overwhelming with dedicated customers regularly drinking or buying their packets of tea from these kiosks. It is too early to say right now how much tea will move through mobile kiosks and tea centres,” Grover said.

Goodricke Group commands about 6 per cent market share in the packet tea segment. “All the brands have gone through a phase of blend re-engineering wherein regional blends have been provided to consumers so as to connect with their local preferences and palates,” Grover mentioned. The company has 30 gardens in its fold, of which 10 are in Assam, 12 are in Dooars and eight in Darjeeling.