Tea Shops & Retailers
Build a Korean tea range with clear provenance, distinct price points and enough product story for staff to sell with confidence.
Explore retail supply →Korean Tea Wholesale & OEM | B2B Tea Supplier | KTeaShop
Korean Tea Wholesale · Switzerland & Europe
Korean Tea Wholesale for Professional Buyers.
We import, stock and ship Korean green tea, black tea, balhyocha and matcha from Switzerland — with samples, commercial selection, lot-level documentation and support from first tasting to repeat order.
For tea shops · retailers · hotels · cafés · restaurants · distributors · private label projects
Three yearsImporting and distributing Korean tea
Seven marketsSwitzerland, Germany, Italy, France, UAE, Australia, United Kingdom
30+ teasGreen, black, balhyocha and matcha
Swiss stockHeld in Switzerland, resupplied direct from Korea
Start here
Which of these are you?
Each buyer type asks a different first question. Jump to the answer that applies to you.
DistributorTerritory, exclusivity and margin structure
ImporterDocumentation, certification scope and compliance
HospitalityHotels, cafés and restaurants — service-led supply
RetailerTea shops and retail ranges with provenance
Private labelOEM product development under your own brand
None of these quite fit, or not sure yet? Build a sourcing brief in two minutes with the Korean Tea Finder →
Wholesale by buyer type
Start with how you plan to sell or serve the tea.
A tea shop needs a range customers can understand. A hotel needs consistent service standards. A café needs recipes that work at volume. We shape the assortment and support around the commercial setting.
Hotels & Hospitality
Source tea for guest rooms, breakfast, restaurants, lounges, gifting and high-touch welcome experiences.
Explore hotel supply →Cafés & Restaurants
Korean tea, matcha and modern drink applications supported by recipes, preparation standards and staff guidance.
Explore café & restaurant supply →Distributors & OEM
For larger-volume sourcing, branded products and private-label projects, we begin with the product brief, target volume and market requirements.
Open a distribution conversation →You want a territory and a margin you can defend.
Distribution conversations start with the market you cover, the channels you already serve and the volume you can realistically move in a first year. Korea is a small origin, so territory and volume commitments are agreed against real producer capacity rather than promised in advance.
- Market and channel coverage you can demonstrate
- Whether the arrangement is exclusive, semi-exclusive or open — defined per market
- Distributor pricing tier and margin structure — confirmed on request against volume
- Which teas can be committed for a season and which are lot-limited
You want to know the paperwork before you want the tea.
The right sequence is to fix the compliance route first, then choose the tea — not the other way round. Required documents depend on destination, product status, supplier and applicable import route, so we establish those per lot before a commercial offer is made.
- Whether the lot is covered by EU organic certification, Korean organic certification, or neither — these are not interchangeable
- Which certifying body issued the producer certificate, and its validity period
- Producer-level food safety scope (for example HACCP or ISO 22000) where the producer holds it
- Lot, harvest and shipment records that stay attached to the goods
You want MOQ and price breaks, not adjectives.
Bulk sourcing is decided by four numbers: minimum quantity, price break points, lead time and the format the tea arrives in. We do not publish these as fixed figures because they move with producer, harvest, grade and certification scope — they are quoted per enquiry. The table below is the exact set of values we confirm in writing.
See the bulk terms table →You are comparing suppliers and want a way to tell them apart.
Most Korean tea supplier pages read the same. The fastest way to separate them is to ask questions that only a supplier with real producer relationships can answer at lot level. We have written that list out below, including the questions that are uncomfortable for us to answer.
Use the supplier checklist →Product portfolio
A focused Korean tea range for professional use.
Availability changes by producer, harvest, grade and certification scope. We recommend commercial alternatives based on target use, price point and required volume.
Green Tea
Seasonal Korean green teas across multiple grades and regional styles.
Black Tea
Korean black teas for retail, hospitality and pairing programs.
Fermented Tea
Oxidised and fermented Korean tea styles with distinctive regional character.
Matcha
Professional matcha for service, beverage menus and selected retail applications.
Hojicha
Roasted tea and powder formats for cafés, restaurants and modern menus.
OEM & Private Label
Move from buying tea to building your own tea product.
For brands and larger buyers, we develop the product with you — tea sourcing and sample selection through packaging requirements, private-label planning and production. Feasibility, MOQ, certification and production scope are confirmed project by project.
01 · BRIEFProduct & Market
Tea type, target customer, price point, channel, market and expected volume.
02 · SOURCESamples & Selection
Shortlist teas or powders, compare quality and confirm commercial fit.
03 · BUILDPackaging & Label
Define format, packaging needs, label responsibilities and required documentation.
04 · SCALESupply Planning
Align MOQ, production timing, import route and repeat-order expectations.
Korean origin
Boseong, Hadong and Jeju — not one generic “Korean tea.”
Different regions, producers, cultivars and processing choices create different commercial roles. We use origin as part of assortment design rather than treating Korean tea as a single style.
01
Boseong
Engineered contour terraces; 13.4 °C mean annual temperature; 1,450 mm annual rainfall.
bstea.kr, Boseong County (Important Agricultural Heritage System No. 11) · no year stated at source
02
Hadong
Mildly acidic, gravelly sandy-gravel soil (사력질); 14.0 °C mean annual temperature; 1,789 mm annual rainfall. A 2014 field survey of three Hwagae villages measured fresh-leaf yields of 752–2,408 kg/ha, mean 1,462 kg/ha — the scale small-scale production actually operates at.
Soil: 한국향토문화전자대전, Academy of Korean Studies · Climate: Jeju ARES, 2006 · Yields: 황정규·김용덕, 농업생명과학연구 50(2), 2016
03
Jeju
Volcanic ash soil, over 70% of the island's soils; 16.2 °C mean annual temperature; 1,850 mm annual rainfall.
Jeju ARES, 2006Sourcing reality
Korea is a small origin. That is the sourcing constraint.
Any supplier implying unlimited Korean supply is describing a country that does not exist. The published national figures are small, and the planted area is shrinking. We would rather you plan against the real number than be surprised by it in your second season.
2,624 ha
Korea's total tea-growing area, producing 4,185 t of fresh leaf. Fresh leaf converts to finished tea at roughly 5:1, so the finished-tea volume behind the whole country is modest by global standards.
2023 · Rural Development Administration, citing MAFRA 주요통계 2025 · conversion ratio KREI, 2006
2,845 → 2,624 ha
The planted area contracted between 2019 and 2023. Volume commitments for a growing brand should be discussed against this trend, not against a best harvest year.
2019–2023 · Rural Development Administration
3 regions
Hadong accounts for roughly 23% of national production (2017), Boseong roughly 34%, and Jeju roughly 35% — the last from only 40 tea farms on the island.
korea.kr, 2017 · Boseong County · Jeju ARES, 2022–23
Heritage designations, stated precisely. Hadong holds the FAO GIAHS designation awarded in 2017 for the “Traditional Hadong Tea Agrosystem in Hwagae-myeon,” and Korea's Important Agricultural Heritage System No. 6 (2015). Boseong holds Important Agricultural Heritage System No. 11 (2018), and 보성녹차 was Korea's first registered geographical indication, in 2002.
Cultivar & plant material
“Is this really Korean tea?” — the honest answer.
Buyers building a Korean story on their shelf or menu deserve to know what is actually growing in the field, because it is not uniform across the three regions.
Native seed-grown tea, clonal cultivars, and Japanese cultivars all exist in Korea.
- Hadong is the 재래종 (jaerae-jong) heartland — seed-propagated native tea, genetically diverse rather than clonal.
- Jeju plantings include substantial Japanese cultivar acreage, notably Yabukita and Fushun.
- Boseong is mixed.
If a buyer's positioning depends on native Korean plant material, that has to be specified at lot level and confirmed with the producer. It is not a safe assumption for Korean tea generally.
22 Korean tea cultivars held plant variety protection by 2023.
Registered with the Korea Seed & Variety Service. Named examples include Sangmok (RDA, 2011), Geumseol (Jeju, 2014), Bohyang and Chamnok (Jeonnam), and Jinseol (Jeju, 2019), which is a matcha-dedicated cultivar.
Cultivar is a legitimate specification line for a professional buyer. Ask for it by name rather than accepting “Korean green tea” as the description.
Korea Seed & Variety Service, via Applied Biological Chemistry, 2024
On elevation: we do not publish altitude figures for Hadong, Boseong or Jeju. We searched and did not find a Korean government, academic or institutional source that publishes tea-cultivation elevation for these regions — that is a gap in what we could retrieve, not proof that no such record exists — so treat any regional figure you are quoted as unsourced until a producer stands behind it. Note also that Rural Development Administration material describing Jirisan as over 1,200 m above sea level gives the height of the mountain, not of the tea gardens on it. Where elevation matters to your specification, it has to be requested from the producer at lot level.
Grades
Ujeon, Gogu, Sejak, Jungjak, Daejak — defined by ordinance, for green tea.
These five labels are defined in Korean subordinate legislation: 차산업 발전 및 차문화 진흥에 관한 법률 시행규칙 [별표 1] 「차의 품질 등의 표시기준」, made under Article 10 of the Tea Industry Act. Each is set by a picking window and by how many leaves are taken with the bud. Two limits matter commercially: the annex applies to green tea only (“영 제2조제1호에 따른 녹차에 한하여 적용한다”), and it is a labelling standard — it fixes what the words mean on a package, not the quality in the cup, and it does not require every harvest to be graded.
| Label | Picking window | Leaf taken |
|---|---|---|
| Ujeon 우전 | Before 공우 (Gogu), around 20 April | 1심2엽 — one bud, two leaves |
| Gogu 공우 | At Gogu, or within 7 days after | 1심2엽 — one bud, two leaves |
| Sejak 세작 | Between 8 and 10 days after Gogu | 1심3엽 — one bud, three leaves |
| Jungjak 중작 | Picked in May | 1심3엽 — one bud, three leaves |
| Daejak 대작 | Picked from June onward | No leaf standard specified |
Where usage diverges — and why the date belongs on the spec. Producer and regional usage has not fully converged on the ordinance: Hadong County's published definitions run Sejak from Gogu to before Ipha and put Daejak in late May, and Osulloc treats Sejak, Jungjak and Daejak as a size classification. You will meet all three usages in the market, so specify the pluck date and leaf standard alongside the grade name. Both are set out in full on our Ujeon page → and Sejak page →.
What the spread looks like in practice. Across one producer in one season, we have observed a price spread of roughly 8x per gram from Daejak to Ujeon. That is an observed range from a single producer and season, not a price list and not a national average — but it is the right order of magnitude to plan a retail or menu architecture against. Actual pricing is quoted per lot.
Wholesale process
From catalogue request to repeat order.
The objective is to make professional buying simple: first understand the use case, then narrow the range, taste, agree terms and build a reorder rhythm.
01 · BRIEF
Your Business
Channel, customer, target products, estimated volume, country and launch timing.
02 · SELECT
Curated Range
We recommend the teas and grades that fit the brief rather than sending an unfocused list.
03 · TASTE
Samples
Paid samples across the full 30-tea range, dispatched within 10 working days.
04 · ORDER
Commercial Terms
Confirm product availability, quantity, price, delivery and document requirements.
05 · REORDER
Ongoing Supply
Build a practical replenishment rhythm based on sales, service volume and lead time.
Bulk terms
The numbers we confirm in writing — and why they are not printed here.
MOQ, price breaks and lead times move with producer, harvest year, grade and certification scope. Publishing a fixed figure would mean publishing one that is wrong for most enquiries. Instead, here is the exact list of values we quote, so you can see nothing is being withheld — only quoted.
| What a bulk buyer needs | Value | What it depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Sample quantities before commitment | Paid · 10 working days | Available across the full 30-tea range, selected against your shortlist. |
| Minimum order quantity per SKU | On request | Producer, tea type, grade and packing format. |
| Minimum order value per shipment | On request | Destination market and consolidation of the order. |
| Volume price breaks | On request | Annual committed volume and number of SKUs. |
| Lead time from confirmed order | On request | Harvest timing, stock position and certification route. |
| Bulk packing formats available | On request | Producer capability and the format your operation needs. |
| Certification scope for the lot | Per lot | Whether EU organic, Korean organic or uncertified supply applies. |
| Cultivar and plucking-date detail | Per lot | Requested from the producer for the specific lot. |
| Elevation of the garden | Per lot | We have not found it published for any Korean region; it has to come from the producer. |
Send your target volume, market and tea types and these come back as real figures rather than ranges. Request the B2B catalogue →
Why KTeaShop
A commercial route, not just a product list.
Professional Selection
We help narrow the range by use case, target customer, format, price position and expected volume.
Samples Before Scale
Paid samples across the full range, dispatched within 10 working days, so you assess quality before committing.
Tea Expertise
Product story, brewing, service and sensory guidance help teams present the tea correctly.
Traceability Support
Origin, product, lot and relevant import documentation are kept connected to the B2B supply path.
Compliance & documentation
Claims are handled by product, lot and certification scope.
KTeaShop is certified for organic tea import and distribution in Switzerland. Organic logos and claims are used only where the selected product, supplier and certification route are covered by valid documentation.
Swiss Organic
KTeaShop operator certification audited by bio.inspecta.
EU Organic
Available only for selected products and supply routes where the required certification and import conditions are met.
Lot Traceability
Product, lot and shipment records are maintained through the B2B supply workflow.
Import Documents
Required documents depend on destination, product status, supplier and applicable import route.
Certification reality at origin. EU-organic certified Korean production exists in all three regions, and we can source against it. Verified examples include Mongjungsan Dawon in Boseong, which has exported to Germany, France, the USA, Canada and China since 2012; and Hwagae Jeda and Jo Tae-yeon-ga Jungnocha in Hadong, both holding EU organic together with USDA and JAS certification since 2012. In Jeju, Sumang Dawon publishes its Korean organic certification numbers and holds HACCP, ISO 22000 and US FDA facility registration, and produces matcha. These are cited as evidence that certified supply exists at origin — the certification scope that applies to your order is confirmed per lot and per supply route. These gardens and the certifications each one publishes are set out region by region in our Korean tea producer reference →, which also explains how to verify a Korean organic certificate yourself.
Buyer checklist
What to ask any Korean tea supplier.
Including us. These six questions separate a supplier with genuine producer relationships from one reselling an anonymous container. If a supplier cannot answer them at lot level, that is the answer.
01
Elevation — at lot level
We have not found a Korean institutional source that publishes cultivation elevation for Hadong, Boseong or Jeju, so the only answer worth having is the one the producer gives for the specific lot. Ask for the height of the garden, not the height of the mountain above it — “Jirisan is over 1,200 m above sea level” is a fact about the massif, not about the tea. A supplier answering with a confident regional altitude figure is quoting something we could find no source for.
02
Cultivar — native, clonal or Japanese
Ask whether the lot is 재래종 (jaerae-jong) seed-grown native tea, a registered Korean clonal cultivar, or a Japanese cultivar such as Yabukita grown in Korea. All three exist in Korea and all three are legitimate — but they are not the same product, and only one of them supports a “native Korean plant material” story.
03
Harvest date and leaf standard
Ask for the actual plucking date and the leaf standard (1심2엽 or 1심3엽), not just the word Ujeon or Sejak. The ordinance defines each label by exactly those two facts, so they are what a producer has to be able to stand behind — and county and producer usage of the names does not always match the ordinance.
04
Organic certification scope — EU or Korean
Korean organic certification and EU organic certification are different scopes and are not interchangeable for a European import. Ask which one covers the lot, which body issued it, and whether it is valid for the destination market you are selling into.
05
Traceability back to the garden
Ask whether the supplier can name the producer and the lot, and keep those records attached to the goods through the shipment. Origin that stops at the word “Korea” is not traceability.
06
What the supplier will not commit to
Korea's total tea area is 2,624 ha and shrinking. A supplier who will not tell you which teas are lot-limited, and which can be committed for a season, has not checked with the producer.
Next step. Send your business type, market, target tea types and expected volume through the B2B catalogue request, and we will come back with the specific teas, the lot-level answers to the questions above, and real figures for the bulk terms table. Request the Korean tea catalogue →
Start your B2B selection
Tell us what you need Korean tea to do for your business.
Send your business type, market, target products and expected volume. We will come back with the relevant teas, sample options and the real figures behind the bulk terms table — within two business days.
Request B2B Catalogue & Samples
Prefer email? Write to info@kteashop.com
Korean Tea Wholesale · Import · Distribution · Switzerland