Lupicia Tea
Chocolate Strawberry Pu’er is tha bomb!
I’d hold up until New Years – they do a mystery bag thing that’s a really good deal, 50%. It’s worth snagging $30 order so you get a year of their freebie tea magazine + sample.
My only dislike of them is their shipping prices are high. Best to find a store or a tea mule to get it for you and ship it. In store, they are great. The store in Honolulu would let you sample anything!
Another thing I’ve come across is contacting CS is a dud – i’ve emailed them with questions on their products, which have never been answered. edit: they’ve answered my questions through twitter though.
Do they do the mystery bag in store? or just online? I have a family member in the states at the moment, so can put this into motion!
I’m not sure. It is something they do every year, but I haven’t seen an announcement for it this year yet.
Last year they did them in-store and online. I’m trying to remember…I think they were not the same, but there were a lot of complaints that the online ones were identical. So if you bought two $30 ones, you got the same ones twice rather than a random assortment with potential overlap. So it is sort of a planned surprise now?
I’m surprised to hear about the bad in store service! I have been into three CA locations, the HI one and had nothing but great service. All but one store were staffed by Asians who were very Asian in mannerisms. Polite, quiet, helpful when needed, but backed off when I said I was just browsing, taking my credit card from me with both hands and returning it the same way.
The Lupica US headquarters are in or around Hayward (East Bay San Francisco area), so the online orders come from there. The shipping is higher than I’d like to pay, so I either wait until there are enough teas that I want so I hit the free shipping quota or I wait for them to have a free shipping promotion.
There are several of their teas that I have found to be pretty amazing and a few that I wasn’t crazy about. Overall I really like them.
I 2nd what Dustin said. I’ve been in both San Jose locations and the San Francisco one and I’ve always experienced great service. I do try to go during the less busy hours or weekdays though. The stores tend to be small and the SAs seem overwhelmed when there’s a crowd in the store.
I think the two hands on the credit card is a Japanese thing, I think Lupicia is a Japanese company? Uniqlo trains their associates the same way.
Koreans also take things handed to them with two hands. Credit cards, business cards, ect.
I have been in the downtown SF location (the one in the multi story mall), one at a mall in SJ and the one inside of an Asian grocery store in Saratoga/SJ area.
Oh well, I go to the one in LA, down by UCLA. They always take my card like that, even though the workers aren’t all Asian. But LA is not known to be a very friendly place anyway, soo it’s not all that surprising. xD I heard that the store I go to is offering a position…I’m not an overly friendly person, I could probably work there haha! Too bad it’s so far away.
I’m a big Lupicia fan. Love just about every tea I’ve tried from them. My favorites are cookie, chocolate strawberry pu-erh, and chaud le marron!, but there are so many others I could easily recommend (sakurambo, ceylon nuwara eliyah, english caramel…). I think the quality of the product is wonderful. I haven’t had any occasion to contact them, so I can’t comment on that, and there are no retail stores near me (so sad) so I have to order online. I’ve never had a problem with any orders I’ve placed. All in all, they are one of my favorite tea vendors.
I’ve also only done online orders, but I’ve never had a problem. I like a lot of their flavored teas and when I travel or am in meetings where loose leaf tea is problematic, I like their tea bags.
I heart Lupicia! I first tried Golden Honey Dew from a TTB and I thought hmm I want to try their other teas too. So I picked some up while I was in SFO one weekend and man was their store awesome! Felt like I was back in Japan. And then there are the teas. So many choices. You can tell they really put a lot of effort into making their tea great/
I go to the store in San Francisco and have nothing but good things to say about that. The salespeople are very polite and friendly and they don’t try to upsell you on things (like Te*vana). If you want to try some different flavored teas I would recommend them. Their green teas are also good, I’ve been less impressed with the straight black teas myself.
Login or sign up to leave a comment.