Or anywhere where I can find unsweetened iced tea at a good price. Yes, unsweetened. I know that I have multiple family connections to the South, but I'm an unsweetened tea drinker, thank you very much.
Of course, the rage for iced tea was sparked by another upscale establishment, an Irish-themed group of dining locations known as McDonald's. When McDonald's priced any size of sweet tea, and eventually any size of many cold drinks, at a $1 price, other upscale dining establishments were forced to follow suit. Gone were the days of "If you have to ask the price of a Big Gulp, you probably can't afford it." Now, everyone can afford it.
But 7-Eleven is primarily known for its sweetened sodas. Enter B.W. Cooper:
REAL TEA
B.W. Cooper's is served in many fine dining, quick serve, and fast food restaurants. It's also a recommended item at 7-Eleven and other convenience stores.
Our real tea concentrates are created using proprietary blending and extraction processes. We offer six special blends of classic iced tea:
Organic, Unsweetened:
• USDA Certified Organic
• Real brewed tea
• No preservatives
• No artificial flavors or colors
Unsweetened:
• Real brewed tea
• No sweetener
Pomegranate Tea
• Real brewed tea
• Sweetened
• Natural pomegranate, acai & berry flavors
Half & Half Lemonade Tea
• A blend of iced tea and lemonade
• Half unsweetened tea
• Half sweetened lemonade
Sweet:
• Real brewed tea
• Classic sweet tea
Did you catch it? If you didn't, look again. B.W. Cooper's six special blends of classic iced tea are organic unsweetened, unsweetened, pomegranate, half & half lemonade tea, and the trendy sweet tea. Yup, only five.
Note that B.W. Cooper is a RECOMMENDED item at 7-Eleven, not a mandatory item. Most 7-Elevens don't appear to carry it - I've only found two that do. And these two 7-Elevens only carry two of the five/six blends - organic unsweetened, and sweet. Needless to say, I've only tried the organic unsweetened - and I like it.
And yes, it's organic. Organic food has been discussed at length by the leading scientific publication Cracked, which had this (among other things) to say about organic stuff:
A common myth about organic food is that, in your purchases, you are putting another dollar in the pockets of a humble, hard-working farmer who pushes a wheelbarrow in cute straw hats. You probably don't think about putting another dollar in the pocket of a big CEO who eats panda steaks for dinner and swims in a pool that pumps its water direct from a melting polar ice cap.
Organic food is big business. Kraft, Coke, Pepsi, Heinz, Kellogg's, Hershey Foods and General Mills, among others, own tons of popular organic product lines, like Naked Juice, Kashi, Seeds of Change and Dagoba. And with big grocers and retailers like Wal-Mart now pushing organic goods, too, you can be confident that much of the money you spend on green-friendly goods will be distributed amongst those who hope someday to be able to buy you and your family as servants.
(Postscript to those who actually read my post titles - yes, I know that there is a difference between 7 and 1 - or really 0, since I didn't really name a particular thing that I liked. But all the cool people say that list posts drive inordinate amounts of traffic (I saw it in an infographic), so I thought I'd be trendy. I just never got around to constructing the list itself.)
(Another postscript to those who actually read my postscripts - but did you notice that I am posting this item on a 7-Eleven drink product on July 11? So I guess that means I'll have to go get a slurpee. An organic slurpee.)
