Twinings, the world’s oldest tea shop, took over Tom’s Coffee House in 1706. If you head down the tea-caddy-lined hall you’ll find a wooden box with the gold-painted initials ‘T.I.P.’ on it, standing for ‘To Improve Promptness’. If you wanted your beverage a bit faster you’d drop a few pence in, from which we get the word ‘tip’.
