Brian Keating Passes

Brian R. Keating, 62, an American specialty tea pioneer died unexpectedly of a heart attack on Sept. 2.

“Always behind the scenes, Brian Keating has played a major role in America’s tea renaissance,” writes James Norwood Pratt, author of The Tea Lover’s Treasury.

Keating was an early retailer of specialty tea at The TeaCup in Seattle. He believed that tea was not a commodity but an artisan product. His tea shop metrics demonstrated that selling high-margin broken- and whole-leaf blends was very profitable. In 1993 he published the first of 10 Specialty Tea is “Hot” reports. Keating became the principal at Sage Group and left the shop behind to consult as a blender, formulator, marketer and wholesale expert.

In short order Keating became the business spokesman for tea, citing numbers of interest to the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Newsweek, NPR, and landing clients on the Fortune 500 list. Sage Group created more than 200 beverages including first sports energy drink.

In 2006 he became the first tea buyer and blend-master at Whole Foods Market via its subsidiary Allegro Coffee Co. located in Thornton, Colorado. His in-house line of beverages included 40 new tea products in a lab of his own design. He co-authored in 2016 How to Make Tea a guide published globally.

Services were private, but a celebration of life event in Seattle brought together several hundred of his friends in tea.