opening a tea shop. any info welcome!

Check local health department regulations for what your building/location would need, and work at a coffee shop for a while — that’ll get you close up look at the nuts and bolts of a similar kind of business.

Figure out your style, menu and target market – who do you sell your tea too? What kind of tea will you sell? What sorts of food will you be selling along side your tea? Will you sell dry tea and tea wares as well?

Figure out who wholesales the kinds of tea you would like to sell.

Take a trip to a restaurant supply place to check out the appliances and small wares you might need, and another to the local food wholesalers outlet (probably a gordon food services store), to get a look at non-tea staples such as milk, sugar, artificial sweeteners, and baking ingredients.

Think about your target market and ideal location, then think about hours and staff. This is a good point to take an accounting course somewhere – workers (even just you and your partner)mean payroll, taxes, social security contributions to make, etc etc etc.

Once you’ve figured out roughly what your weekly or monthly outlay will be (advertising, location, utilities, workers, foodstuffs, taxes etc etc) you can put together a rough estimate of the amount of capital you’ll need up front and starting thinking about how to finance the venture. Try to be prepared to cover a few years expenses to work out all the kinks and problems that will come up before your income stream stabilizes.

This book is targeted at people wanting to open an online tea business but it might contain some info that’s useful to you too? http://www.worldoftea.org/how-to-start-an-online-tea-business/

Great! Apart from the informative advice given here – I’d say nurture the idea little by little. Take a step at a time to figure out how you wanna go about it without cramming everything and being completely overwhelmed. So its good you got a partner/co-founder, this must take a load off your startup pressure.

It would be very helpful to have a clear USP. If your ideal location is an area with another tea room in the vicinity, do what they don’t, sell what they don’t. Its not all about being different, its about filling a void. Where there is no tea lounge in a nice town, there’s nobody better than someone like you with the drive to start one. Just make sure the area is not too java-loving! If you can ask around in few neighbourhoods if they would like a tea house, you can cover some market research that way.

Good luck!

The closest tea house to me was Macha Tea House in Madison, WI. Unfortunately they chose to close at the end of 2014 because of 2 years of upcoming street construction at their location. Basically the tea room was two rooms plus a kitchen on the lower level of an older house.

They weren’t open every day, but several days a week they opened at noon. Jars of tea lined the wall. They also sold baked goods, made fresh right there. A group sitting around might be lucky enough to inspire the owner to cook up steamed pork buns. I think she might have had some training in a Chinese restaurant. Anyway, what was cool about it is that you didn’t know what might be there to eat along with your tea and so that got people to linger. Having regular art openings is a staple in Madison for coffee shops, and they did that too. It brings in new people. Sad to see it go.

Hello! I’m starting a tea business as well though mine is a little different since I’m an online retailer. However, one suggestion that I could give is to do some research through friends, family and other members of your community. You can learn a lot through them such as what flavors they would like to see you carry, their opinion on decor, snacks/foods they would like, etc. When I asked around, I learned a lot about what kind of products people wanted and what they valued in a tea company. It’s good, helpful information that’s pretty much free!

If you’d like to take a look at what I’ve got going, my website is www.waygoodtea.com. Let me know if you’ve got any suggestions too as I’m always open to new ideas. And if you’ve got questions for me, please don’t hesitate to shoot me a message! Good luck! :)

One more advise: In most cases when you rent commercial space, it is the renter that is obligated to pay real estate taxes and not the owner. If it is you, find out how much it is, since commercial real estate tax is rather high, so take it in the account.

thank you everyone for all this amazing information! ya it is a very very new idea and were trying really to educate ourselves on everything. we started by getting some “starting a small buisness” books.and then after that i wanna get a really good handle on some information on tea its self. i wanna be an informed owner/worker, i dont wanna just sell something to make a dollar. so some info on tea itself, ie:history, healing properties and so on.