Not every tea bag order needs a retail box. A café group recently asked us for chamomile bags by the kilogram; hotels ask for enveloped bags by the thousand; gifting brands ask for bags they will pack into boxes of their own. The order is the same in each case — finished tea bags without a printed carton — and it is worth describing plainly, because the specification is shorter than a retail order in one respect and exactly as long in every other.
What the order is
A bulk-packed order is finished tea bags packed by count or by weight into food-grade inner bags, and those into outer cartons, with no printed retail box. The bag itself is the product: string-and-tag, enveloped or not, in the blend and weight the buyer specifies. The retail carton, its artwork and its print job are simply left out.
That removes a print item and its approval cycle. It does not remove the bag's specification, and it does not remove the documentation that travels with a food product.
Who orders it
Four kinds of buyer, mainly. Cafés and café groups, who serve bags from a pot or a canister. Hotels and the food-service suppliers behind them, who hand a guest a single bag with the room or the breakfast. Corporate gifting and subscription brands, who assemble their own presentation boxes from components. And small brands that pack at their own premises, for whom a carton printed elsewhere is part of a process they already own.
What they share is that the retail carton is either unnecessary or made somewhere else. What they do not share is the bag they want, which is why the specification still has to be written.
Enveloped or not
The envelope is independent of the carton. A bulk order can be unenveloped bags for a café that drops them straight into a pot, or individually enveloped bags for a hotel that hands them to a guest, with or without a brand on the envelope. On our line the envelope is applied in line, so an enveloped bulk order is the same bag as an enveloped retail order minus the box.
For a gifting brand this is often the useful combination: a branded envelope, no carton, and the presentation built at their own premises.
What still has to be written
The blend, from our library, matched to a benchmark or built to order. The bag format and fill weight — chamomile, for example, is specified from the flower and the cut, not by copying a black tea weight. Whether the bag is enveloped and what the envelope carries. The count or the weight per inner bag, and the inner bag material. The outer carton count. Any tag or envelope branding, which are print items with their own artwork.
Leaving out the retail box shortens nothing in that list. A bulk order that is specified as "chamomile bags, seven kilos" has not been specified.
Documentation and where we sit
A bulk order ships with the same batch-level documentation and export paperwork as a retail order: the specification, batch analysis, date marking and lot identification on the outer packing. A buyer who repacks the bags into their own presentation needs that for their own labelling, and it is provided per batch rather than assumed.
We supply bulk tea bags from our single-chamber string-and-tag line in Sındırgı — enveloped in line or unenveloped as specified, packed by count or weight in food-grade inner bags and outer cartons, with batch documentation. We hold ISO 9001, ISO 22000 and ISO 27001 and make no organic or other certification claim. Volumes and prices are confirmed at quotation.
