Autocorrect and/or typo
The first time I saw it was around 1985 - don’t know what happened before then as I was 21/22 in 1985.
I’ve never not had iced tea as a normal option at restaurants. But I’ve never been served it automatically anywhere, either.
Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. And I’ve never seen iced tea set out in individual glasses like that ever. And I live in The Iced Tea Belt. Individual glasses of water are as good as it gets. Maybe you just go to nicer conferences. Or the places where the conferences are booked have noticed so many people asking for iced tea that they just save themselves the trouble of delivering it during service by having it already in place in advance - though the pitcher on the table makes a lot more sense.
Here in NC you have to ask for unsweet because the default is sweet. There is a thought that sweet tea causes NC to be part of the kidney stone belt where lots of people get the stones, above national average.
And if you drink it without sugar (the only way to drink it) it has no calories. It’s my default hot weather drink. I don’t like to drink all the chemicals in sodas. And they’re not as thirst quenching.
As a person who has been involved with a lot of catering, I’ll say tea, water and coffee are the simplest to make and serve in large quantities. And no matter how many varieties of soda might be served, someone is still going to complain that what THEY want is not on the menu. It’s impossible to please everyone.
And don’t even get me started, when it comes to catering, on gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan meals. Yes, I know they are off topic.
Ditto for me. I can’t imagine walking into a restaurant/conference/banquet setting where every seat had a glass of iced tea already poured at it (I mean, what are the percentages of people who’d choose iced tea over every other beverage? 10? 20? 30? Certainly not anywhere close to 100%). My first reaction would be “I didn’t order this… who are they to decide I want tea?”
I guess it’d be just as strange to see a big glass of milk or orange juice at every place.
Iced tea is not popular in Canada. You’ll never get unsweetened, and if you ask for iced tea with a meal, and no one does, you’ll be brought a can of Lipton.
To be fair, at conference breakfasts, they ALWAYS have orange juice.
I’ve been to conferences where every place setting had a glass of ice tea next to the glass of water. I’ve certainly also been to conferences that didn’t serve ice tea. I’m trying to think if I’ve noticed any changes over time, but I’m not sure. I always assumed it was regional.
Ice tea seems like a normal thing to put out, though, because the marginal cost of a glass of it is very low, so it’s not like it feels terribly wasteful if a lot of it gets thrown out.
It also seems like a “normal beverage” to me, in a way that soda or juice doesn’t. Those feel like things where people want this type or that type, whereas ice tea (with sugar in the side) is sort of neutral. That being said, it’s not a default beverage where I live.
Aha! This is one of the things I’m wondering. Do we have any notion of what the regional breakdowns might be?
To me it’s odd, because I perceive iced tea as being a lot less popular than ice water, hot coffee, hot tea, and sodas.
At these conferences I’d say 60-90 percent of the iced tea glasses are left untouched.
But it might be just a question of practicality as some have suggested.
Coffee isn’t a “with lunch” beverage. Coffee is with breakfast, on a break, or after lunch or dinner. Indeed you can get a coffee at the end of the banquet.
hot tea, similarly, is not a with lunch drink. It’s a breakfast and afternoon break drink.
Sodas might be too difficult to serve at a large catered meal.
Late 1990s, though certainly it varied from region to region and even venue to venue. I noted the nationwide spread with perhaps more interest than most people.
I grew up in Texas, and found it odd that northerners in the mid-1980s still treated iced tea as some exotic specialty. Waiters would tell me it was seasonal, as if teabags were migratory. On more than one occasion, I had to order hot tea and a glass of ice.
Interestingly, since 2005 I’ve watched sparkling water make a similar rollout, from being something you could only get a few places in New York City and California to being available in 7-Elevens (at least in most big cities), with two dozen variants now sold in most supermarkets.
My experience has been that for conferences with served lunches (as opposed to buffets) a pitcher of iced tea sits with a pitcher of water at the center of the table. This has been true since at least the mid '80s. Especially true in the South where iced tea is standard, and often better than in the north. (Said as an iced tea lover.)
Why? What other drink is cheap enough to serve in a pitcher? Even if you wanted to serve soft drinks, which would be very expensive, there is a lot more variation in preferences.
I have seen iced tea placed with the table settings, but only at more high scale and expensive venues.
That’s weird. I don’t think I’ve ever seen iced tea at a conference unless it was some huge buffet. Generally I see coffee, ice water, often sparkling water and Diet Coke.
And where did these conferences take place?
The conferences I’m talking about are in the Washington, D.C., area, so it might be a Southern region iced tea culture thing.
I’ve never seen any kind of soda served at a table. In a buffet, then there is often a table or bucket full of canned soda.
When I was growing up in Ohio, iced tea was standard.
What do you mean by that? You ere served iced tea without having to ask for it? Where? Were you attending conferences as a child? Or do you mean At people’s homes? In restaurants?
At every conference that puts ice tea on the table (and most others) someone comes by around dessert serving coffee, and if you ask you can get hot tea or decaf instead of the coffee.
Iced tea was served at my home, often at other people’s homes, at school banquets, and at restaurants. I wasn’t at many restaurants because we couldn’t afford to eat out often. I didn’t go to conferences (or even exactly know what they were).