Midwest Tea Festival 2016
Second annual Midwest Tea Festival is set for May 7, 2016 in Kansas City, MO!
Last year we had 19 vendors and 650 guests packed into a space that was way too small! This year we’ve drastically expanded our venue space and along with that we have room for more vendor spots that we are working on filling up. So far we have some local favorites like Shang Tea, Tea Market and Queen’s Pantry but we also have some returning national favorites like Harney & Sons, Tea Time Magazine and James Norwood Pratt. We also have a couple of Steepsters – Single Origin Teas & Hugo Teas – and are working on a few more names that Steepster Peeps might recognize…
Admissions will go on sale on February 29 on our website. Visit there or on our Facebook page to keep up with the details as they happen. We have some deals with local hotels for discounted rooms for those of you who would be traveling from out of town. Love to see a Steepster meet-up at the Festival this year!
That’s the weekend of my birthday, you couldn’t have picked a better date! Hopefully I can drive to KC again this year, last year was a ton of fun.
Would be cool to have a little Steepster meet-up this year. I’m pretty sure I won’t have time at all, unfortunately, but I’d love to meet folks to at least say hi. :)
I know last year you had talked about having stickers available at check-in for Steepster members. I though it was a great idea, is there a chance of having them available this year?
I think that can be arranged. I had them last year but things were so much more hectic than I had imagined I totally didn’t get them to the check-in table.
We have openings for more volunteers! Half day so you can hit the booths and presentations the rest of the day. Plus, all volunteers are guaranteed to get tea and/or tea gear in volunteer-only prize drawings!
See http://www.midwestteafest.com/volunteering for details of positions and shifts. Get in touch here or email us at the address on the website.
This festival is run solely on volunteer effort, from mine on down to the folks manning the check-in desks, so we need lots of help. And our charitable partner this year is Literacy KC, a local adult literacy program. After all, almost nothing goes better with tea than books!
I should be able to help this year. I think I am already on the email list, but let me know if there is anything I can do to help leading up to the event.
Got a few more vendors added – couple that Steepster folks should recognize… Beautiful Taiwan Tea & Liquid Proust Tea! :)
Check out the website for more vendor and speaker details, tasting cafe sessions (which are going fast) and to purchase your admission!
And any tea merchants out there who are interested, there are still a few booths open!
I’m so excited for this event! I’m going to be bringing some Darjeeling samples that will be tasty! As well as more raw tea leaves for people to make their own micro batches of tea. :)
And for any tea bloggers that will be going to the event, let me know ahead of time if you would like some special samples.
At my booth there will be a blind tea tasting challenge… ;)
Added some more vendors and a couple of speakers to our line up!
Bruce Richardson, tea master for the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum and author of many, many tea books will be speaking on the Five Teas that Launched a Revolution. And Tealet will be joining us again this year with Rie Tuali hosting some really awesome sounding tasting cafe sessions was well as a presentation on direct sourced tea. Shona Patel, author of Teatime for the Firefly will speak about the uniqueness of teas from Assam and talk about her boots on the ground book research as well as growing up on an Assamese tea planation. James from Single Origin Teas will be speaking about US Grown Tea and there may be some US grown tea to taste… :)
Dragon’s Treasure teas from Mount Prospect, IL joins us as a vendor, Phoenix Herb returns again for this year, Bimi Bakery from Lawrence, KS will be sampling and selling her amazing Japanese treats and the Wornall/Majors House Museums from here in KC will be hosting two tasting sessions about gunpowder green tea and the tea customs of the 19th century.
Anyone who wants to make the trip and help out for half of the day, we have some tea gear from all kinds of places, Teawarehouse included, for our volunteer prize drawings. :)
Eventually there will be someone willing to take over this event and I can just go and enjoy it! :)
The proprietor of Bimi Bakery has done Japanese tea ceremonies in Lawrence for about 10 years prior to opening her bakery. Ayako has graciously agreed to do a demonstration and talk on our smaller Specialty Stage about the art and custom of the Japanese tea ceremony.
That brings our total tea, teaware & tea treat vendors to 25 this year! Three info booths for local charities and 2 booths left to fill still. Still hopeful that someone will get back to me after the NY Coffee/Tea fest this weekend and a fantastic ceramic artist is deciding this weekend!
And our Main Stage is hosting 6 speakers with the Specialty Stage hosting 5 speakers with potentially one more.
Shaping up to be an awesome event – well worth some travel for tea tourism! :)
I was super excited to go but it’s just not going to happen… I can’t stop looking at all these updates though. It’s really sounds like it’s going to be amazing!
It’ll be hard for me to stay at my booth… someone volunteer to go get me some Japanese bakery stuff and bring it to me at my booth :)
LP I might be able to be convinced to do that, since I am going to want to stuff my face full of the sweets as well!
Our lovely pottery artist from 2016, Pi Ceramics, is returning this year and Tea Gschwendner is joining us!
Unfortunately, due to some chronic health issues flaring up, Mr. James Norwood Pratt will be unable to participate this year as he had planned. But we still have plenty of excellent speakers and great vendors this year. :)
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