1st Annual Los Angeles Tea Festival
I was just alerted to this event via Groupon, where there’s a two-for-one ticket deal today: http://www.groupon.com/deals/chado-tea-room-la. This was the first I’d heard of it, but it sounds interesting! Chado Tea Room appears to be sponsoring it (or something?), here’s what their site had to say:
The LA International Tea Festival 2011 promises to be an educational and entertaining event about the multifaced world of tea that will bring together authors, industry experts, buyers, retailers, artists, educators and tea-lovers from across country. It will give you the opportunity to sample some of the world’s finest and most varied flavors of teas, attend presentations by leading tea authors and industry experts, and meet premier tea and tea-ware suppliers all at one place! Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn new facts and expand your enjoyment of this fascinating beverage – get your tickets now!
Instructions:The LA International Tea Festival 2011 promises to be an educational and entertaining event about the multifaced world of tea that will bring together authors, industry experts, buyers, retailers, artists, educators and tea-lovers from across country. It will give you the opportunity to sample some of the world’s finest and most varied flavors of teas, attend presentations by leading tea authors and industry experts, and meet premier tea and tea-ware suppliers all at one place! Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn new facts and expand your enjoyment of this fascinating beverage – get your tickets now!
It doesn’t look like there’s too much info out other than that right now, but it sounds pretty interesting. Anyone else heard anything about it? Any fellow Steepsterites in the LA area planning on going?
Yeah, I googled around and couldn’t find much info… mainly just that there’d be one and that it was in the Japanese museum there.
From what you quoted it sounds like a large to-do, but from what I saw on googling it seems it’ll be pretty small or not-well-organized (in a museum, no specifics anywhere on supporters, companies, speakers, tastings, etc).
I’d definitely be interested, but I’d definitely need more solid info to travel to it. Have to know it would be worthwhile.
Not to be a nit-picker, but this event should not be referring to itself as the “first annual” anything. There is no such thing as a “first annual” event. If it happens two years in a row, it can call itself the “second annual.”
(Sorry, I’m an editor and phrases like that really bug me!)
Good point! Whenever I see this I always think it sounds lame; as if whoever is putting on such an event is hopeful it will become an ‘annual’ thing.
Well said Susan! From what I gather there will be 12 or so tea vendors there. We are not participating as we have a major tasting event the following weekend and are a little light staffed that weekend. I certainly wish the Festival well, although the timing in the middle of the summer may not be the most ideal. Jan or Feb would have been more conducive.
There is a website, though not very helpful
http://www.teafestivalla.com/
There are other LA area tea events, including this one, which has its own problems, but does have some more interesting stuff going on than the one above.
http://www.kulovteafest.com/
The second one looks pretty good. The ticket is one of the least expensive that I’ve seen, and for the ticket, they do promise to give the visitor a big bag of tea samples. I think the organizer is very considerate on this.
Basically I don’t understand why many tea festivals have to charge a fee that is not small. Most of them serve as showcase events for vendors. It’s reasonable to charge vendors fees to participate or charge visitors for specific tea lessons or workshops. But I don’t agree that consumers, while being there to be advertised on, should be charged an entrance fee of a significant price, unless there is direct compensation such as a lot of tea samples.
Yeah, it’s too bad the second one has passed already! I’m hoping that more info comes out on this festival. Mostly because I live so close to downtown and I already bought the tickets so it better be good. At least the profits go to the Japanese museum.
Gingko- I definitely understand what you’re saying about the price of attendance for the public. However, I think the logic is that most people attending tea conventions are members of the industry themselves who are probably shopping around for their own vendors: ie tea houses, boutiques/gift shops, specialty grocery stores, etc. The convention is acting like a big jury/selector for these people, in that they will only feature vendors who are reputable and successful enough to pay for a spot in the convention hall.
That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to go, though! I like the second one’s emphasis on tea culture and history with their guest speakers and film screenings.
Spoonvonstup, yeah I am not sure if all the tea festivals face tea consumers. But I think some of them have mostly consumers as visitors. The World Tea Expo is actually a Business to Business event. But my understanding is, if I go there as a retailer and customer of wholesalers, I won’t need to pay for the entrance. It’s a showcase event for the wholesalers, so wholesalers pay for their exhibition booth. I think that’s part of the reason why World Tea Expo has been more and more successful.
Also I am worried that high price ticket would convince people tea drinking is very expensive. Intuitively, a vendor may benefit from this kind of consumers’ mentality. But anti-intuitively, a vendor may not benefit from it when such price restriction holds back the pace of tea culture dissemination.
I volunteered at the festival and had a blast! American Tea Room, I think they planned it to coincide with Little Tokyo’s Nisei Week. Make a plan to be there next year; this thing is the real deal.
Highlights:
1. Went to a lecture by James Norwood Pratt(!)
2. Talked with an organizer of The Northwest Tea Festival about the film All In This Tea (they are trying to screen it this year.)
3. Talked tea with Katie and Linda of Art of Tea.
4. Was served an delicious Pu-Erh from Bana Tea Co.
I have a new lady in my life, and her name is Denong Wild!
http://www.banateacompany.com/pages/puerh_teas-DenongWild-2010.html
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