In early March, Appliance Innovation, a Dallas-area developer of foodservice equipment platforms, announced the expanded availability of Automated Fresh-Brew SimpliciTea systems, automated tea dispensing units that company executives expect will shake up the tea industry.
Originally developed and deployed through an exclusive partnership with QuikTrip, a convenience store chain with more than 1,200 locations throughout the U.S., the SimpliciTea system aims to address issues that have long plagued operators that sell hot tea.
Because tea quality starts to degrade immediately upon brewing, Phil McKee, CEO and founder of Appliance Innovation, said the traditional batch brewing gives operators two unsatisfactory choices: losing money by discarding tea and rebrewing to preserve flavor, or serving tea past its prime.
The two SimpliciTea models — 4800 and 1500 —, he said, circumvent that dilemma by freshly brewing tea for each cup, dispensed just as quickly as traditional brewers. Additionally, the touchscreen machines enable greater customization of factors such as flavors, sweetness, strength and temperature.
“One of the things that just blows my mind is, anywhere you go for tea, there’s sweet, and there’s unsweet,” McKee said. … “In our device, you choose your own sweetness level. It’s not: if you want sweet tea, you take the sweetness we’re giving you, because that’s what’s in the urn.”
The global tea market is experiencing a surge in demand, driven in part by the growth of organized retail distribution, increased awareness of the beverage’s health benefits and a diversification of tea varieties. According to the 2026 Tea Market Report from The Business Research Company, the tea market is expected to grow from $56.26 billion in 2025 to $59.08 billion this year.
The Automated Fresh-Brew SimpliciTea 1500 system includes a countertop model.
Andrew Campbell, senior vice president at Appliance Innovation, said the SimpliciTea systems provide a means to tap into the growing number of tea consumers for operators in the convenience, quick-service restaurant, healthcare, hospitality and corporate dining industries.
“Tea is challenging to execute — that’s just kind of the given. What we’ve developed is completely new tea technology, never before seen,” Campbell said. …“We’re not necessarily brewing it in a new and innovative way. It’s still hot water over tea leaves, but we are dispensing it in a new way, with new proprietary technology, where the tea stays fresh longer, for up to seven days.”
The SimpliciTea system entered a store trial period with QT in 2024, with a rollout that began in 2025, since crossing the 400-location threshold. McKee said the technology also offers a feedback loop for operators that was not available through traditional tea dispensing systems, including sweetness and flavor preferences.
Campbell credited a close working relationship with QT as crucial to ensuring the machines address the issues operators face in stores. One such concern was labor costs associated with cleaning and restocking urns.
“Imagine working with someone intensively for a three or four-year period to then get this end product,” Campbell said. “It’s not like, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of good stuff in here, (but) there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense.’ No, everything in this equipment, and the whole reason it was designed the way it is and it operates the way it does, is because large, industry-leading operators were telling us their problems, and we were delivering engineering solutions for it.”
The SimpliciTea 4800, the larger of the two systems, requires three hours for cleaning, and the smaller unit cleans in about one hour. Both automated systems require cleaning just once per week.
McKee said the SimpliciTea units offer a solution to operators with tea, but Appliance Innovation could use similar technology to help operators meet skyrocketing demand in the refresher market.
