Starting Local Loose Leaf Business - Looking for Book Suggestions and Advice for a Beginner!

Pulling up a chair and pouring a tea for this! Im interested in the same thing!

I’ll give you my two cents of what I’ve learned so far. Mine is an online tea store with no physical location.

- Getting traction takes a lot of time, especially if you’re online because traffic is very few and it takes a long time to increase unless you have enoygh money for advertising.
- You have to know what people in your area are into. I made the big mistake of sourcing single origin teas, when it turned out that most people in my city don’t know much about tea and prefer inexpensive blends.
- Tea tastings are very important, that’s where I’ve made most of the sales from new customers.
- I’m still learning, and a year and a half later the store isn’t really profitable. It’s okay because it’s kind of a hobby and the costs are low, but if they weren’t I would have closed it by now.

http://www.teaformeplease.com/2015/07/8-things-you-should-do-before-starting.html?m=1

The last point is some serious stuff. I subsidize a few thousand a year from my salary for my online tea company because it’s what I like to do. Some of my teas actually sell for cheaper than I paid, yet they don’t sell out so there is even more of a hit for me. Thankfully tea is like painting for me, it’s an art to me and if I don’t sell my product I’m still quite happy with being able to do what I love.

Are you blending yourself? Do you know the legality of selling tea where you live? Have you already talked to places like Tealet who wholesale direct tea or huge blenders to resell their tea?

Looking at what others have done or are doing is of most importance as well. There is a lot to learn online!

I don’t own a tea business nor am I involved with one but the module I’m currently taking in my Tea Sommelier course is the Business of Tea, and I’ve learned some interesting things already. What I’m studying is Canadian and you’re based in the USA but some of the same things still apply. Here’s some jumbled stuff I’ve learned:

Make sure you find your “voice” before purchasing/blending ANY tea. Are you going to focus on straight/pure teas or are you looking to tap into the increasingly growing specialty tea/blended tea market? In 2014 Specialty Teas held ~62% of the Tea Market. Do you want to focus on the booming ‘health’ craze surrounding teas? Matcha imports were up 25% last year, directly because of this ‘trend’. Differentiated teas (Organic, Fair Trade) are reporting double digit gains…

Also, who is your market? Statistically, woman drink more tea than men. Last year Neilson reported that 72% of Millennial households drank tea and among this age group the mix of male and female tea drinkers is much closer to even. So making sure you know what aspect of the tea market you want to tap in on is important before you even purchase anything in the first place.

Will you be preparing tea for purchase at your store in addition to selling just dry leaf? Of course, where you’re located will change this a little bit but in general tea sold in the US the largest percentage of tea consumed is iced so having the capacity to make iced tea in addition to hot tea would be beneficial to you.

Teaware sales are a critical component of successful tea shops as they contribute between 30-40% of sales. However, it’s important to know your average ticket before selecting your teaware line. The average ticket for a specialty loose leaf store should be between $20-25, and if you’re only selling an average of $15 of tea per ticket you need to select teaware that can fill that gap. Loose leaf tea filters, infuser mugs, that sort of thing. These pieces of teaware are also important for snagging in customers who might be willing to purchase a hot cup of tea or iced tea in store but who’ve never prepared loose leaf at home and don’t know how to approach doing so.

Taste is still the primarily cited reason for people purchasing tea (77%), but health is another large one (about 40%). Consumers also say appearance is a huge factor: being able to see visible chunks of fruit in their blends.

Keep in mind these are Canadian statistics, but hopefully at least some of that was helpful information.

I’m not in the tea business either but my family ran an independent family owned shop as I was growing up and I’ve learned alot from that about small business.

You said that you are interested especially in blended tea and boba/bubble tea. The thing is that blended tea can be sold loose leaf or by the cup, ala bubble tea places. But having a loose leaf tea shop and having a bubble tea shop is different. Alot of loose tea shops are there to sell tea, and selling tea by the cup is convenient and a small side bonus, but the majority of their overhead is in tea stock. Their tea tastings is as much promotions as sales.

This is versus the bubble tea shop model where you have a limited menu and it’s much easier to gauge demand and order ingredients accordingly. It is a dried product but loose leaf is perishable. Having too much on stock and/or not selling enough of what you bought is the risk that every retailer makes but is very risky as a start up.

If you’re set on going the bubble tea route there’s also to consider if you want to strike out on your own, in which it’s up to you to do promotion and create an image that will make your shop stand out from all the others out there. Or you can purchase a franchise and let an established name dictate how a business is run. I know for alot of people this doesn’t sound like an enticing idea, but if it is your first brick and mortar business the franchise model provides somewhat of a learning experience.

If you have your heart set on loose leaf tea and blending try to find who and what you are as a blender first. What’s important to you? Why should that be important to your customer? Write a mission statement, establish yourself. Create connections. Since you’re local, branch out and start creating your fan base. Go to community events where people can sample your tea and offer feedback. Festivals, farmers markets, etc. This will also be a good chance to see what your community seems to be interested in and you can adapt to see if that meshes with you as a company. Ask questions, keep metrics. And the more people that know you and your tea, the more word of mouth there is. Also find a good location that is either close to main roads, lots of businesses, schools or shopping areas, depending on your intended market.

Above all research the business aspect of what you plan to do. Are you set up to lease a space, buy equipment, get a business license, get a food license, get the health inspector to come out, get a credit line, hire employees, handle financials, keep track of stock, do promotions, etc. All that fun stuff that is the backbone of any small business.

Or you can start as a small home business and focus on the tea and let someone else sell the tea for you. Partner with a cafe or a bake shop. Set up as specialty or an artisan tea blender. Build your focus and your brand and if you gather enough interest you can strike out on your own following that.

There are so many ways to start a business. In my opinion, the only wrong way is to not do your research and to do it halfheartedly. Everything else is a learning experience. I wish you good luck! Maybe for me one day I’ll try following this path too.

I would recommend that you contact your local board of trade, chamber of commerce, or business improvement association to learn more about the business conditions specific to your region. A lot of the advice here is very good, but speaking to local business owners about their own experiences will be invaluable.

My most important piece of advice is this: it sounds like you want to do ththis because it’s fun and because you enjoy tea. While that is important, focusing only on fun and not on the business side will get you in a lot of trouble. What payment processing will you use? What licenses do you need? How will you handle things if the road your storestore is on gets closed for long-term construction, which kills your foot traffic? Do you have an accountant to handle your bookkeeping and sales tax remittances?

Trust me, as someone who is self employed, it’s easy to underestimate how much administrivia is involved in running a business.

This may not be a popular opinion, but it’s mine!

I think if you don’t have any actual tea blending experience, it would be beneficial to take some sort of education/training/apprenticeship with someone who actually knows the craft. There is so much more to it than just mixing things together and seeing if they taste good if you want to do it on a higher level like some of the blenders on here.