Tea Adventures

Yes, it is quite possible to have adventures and tea. In fact, most of the best adventures begin over a cup of tea. Today we decided upon a hike up Tuckerman's Ravine for some quality adrenaline rush snowboarding. We also discussed our trip into Boston next week for some tea touring. This might sound corny but hey, we have to start out somewhere and we might as well check out the competition and see what they are doing right and what we can do better. We need to pick out the places to visit but that will come in due time for now we are content with the fact while in Boston, Newbury Street is an excellent place to shop. Overall, the weather in New England is getting warmer and it makes us want to be outside and exploring the surrounding area that both of us admit, we don't know much about. With that in mind, you'll most likely see us riding our bikes around campus and such, I know in my case I'll be lost, so feel free to suggest some places to explore and until next time, stop smell the newly blossoming flowers and enjoy a cup of tea.

Happy Easter!

"Although tea is consumed everywhere, it is produced only in certain regions where the climate and the soil are ideal. The foremost tea regions are in China, Japan, Taiwan, India and Sri Lanka. China and Japan produce some of the finest green tea in the world. Taiwan has some of the best oolongs. India and Sri Lanka are the home of some of the best black tea found anywhere."

(www.planet-tea.com)

Origins of Tea

In one popular Chinese legend, Shennong, the legendary Emperor of China and inventor of agriculture and Chinese medicine was drinking a bowl of boiling water some time around 2737 BC when a few leaves were blown from a nearby tree into his water, changing the color. The emperor took a sip of the brew and was pleasantly surprised by its flavor and restorative properties. A variant of the legend tells that the emperor tested the medical properties of various herbs on himself, some of them poisonous, and found tea to work as an antidote. Shennong is also mentioned in Lu Yu's famous early work on the subject, Cha Jing.A similar Chinese legend goes that the god of agriculture would chew the leaves, stems, and roots of various plants to discover medicinal herbs. If he consumed a poisonous plant, he would chew tea leaves to counteract the poison.


tea leaves
tea loves
loves tea
lives tea
leaves tea?
never.
~Uniek Swain

The Bakery Aspect

I did not create the recipe, but I did re-create it in my tiny kitchen. Perhaps the start of our bakery section in our tea business? They will certainly make you thirsty!

The Perfect Tea Cups for the Perfect Cup of Tea

Where do we find an abundance of tea cups such as this? The search begins... Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Tea on the Brain

Well it's quite late and I'm exhausted, but I just can't get this Tea Business out of my mind! I started out looking up some recipes and found quite a few, although how many is too much? And how much variety do we need? And how come every time I scan the menu of another tea bar, they offer full meals? I wish I could find all the time to bake everything I want to, but I guess for now, research is all I can do. Anyhow, then I moved onto the decor and I found a million cute things and was thinking about how great it would be to have a variety of teacups for our customers? There is this cute place nearby campus and they actually hang different coffee mugs on the wall and you can serve yourself at the counter. It's convenient, although I wonder if tea cups would be too delicate to just hang on the wall? Probably. I'm still searching for that one thing (or many?) that is going to make OUR tea business better than all the rest. I know we need to have something, and I guarantee we will come up with it eventually-- but my patience has never been that great and so I will continue to do tons and tons of sporadic research at the crack of dawn...

I Should Probably Know Something About Tea First...

We just had yet another unplanned 'elaborate' business meeting over breakfast at the MUB, where we covered everything from napkin holders to fabric swatches to the 'uniform'. And now I am even more confused! What I think we really need now is a good starting point, and I agree with Aly (who would know better than I) that it has to be with a solid business plan--# 10 on her checklist--haha. With that in mind, I set off to peruse yet another website on instructions on how to do this when it occurred to me: I don't know a damn about the actual product we intend to market: TEA! I'm not sure I should even be admitting that, but it is the beginning, and well, anything flies when you're just starting out, right?? So, I went onto Teavana's website just to get an idea of how many teas one business could come up with, and what I came up with ended up being 29 pages of copy & pasted material on my Microsoft Word document. *sob* For anyone remotely interested in ALL the tea in which that 'growing' company has to offer, just check out their website. So, it seems, for now, I'm stuck doing more reading than ever. But hey, I guess we've gotta start somewhere, and it doesn't really make sense to sell something you can't explain in depth to your customers, right? UPDATE: We also discussed a name for our company today. I'm not ready to reveal it yet (competition--ha!), but I will put everyone's mind at ease that it will not be "Joe's Tea-Bags" (although I can't stop laughing everytime I think about that...)

Tea Bar

Back at the University and work is piling up, however with the recent crash of my laptop I have found that I explored many tea businesses and have come to the conclusion that a tea bar would be ideal for us to being our business research. Things to consider:

1. Which tea trends can drive customers to the door (and keep them coming back again and again!).
2. What tea history can teach you about your business in 2009
3. The correct way to choose tea
4. How to create a tea niche and succeed (that works with our lifestyles)
5. What never to believe in a tea business seminar (and what to know BEFORE we invest our life savings in a tea room)
6. A NAME! for the business (My good friend Joe suggested "Joe's T-bag" However, I told him that was inappropriate)
7. Business Plan
8. Just keeping the list small I am going off some of this websites advice.

The Start of Something Tea

Well after sitting down one day at breakfast and discussing everything from relationships to what our favorite hobbies were we thought we might have run out of possible topics--and then we came upon a subject that two college students with majors in business and nutrition have a common passion for--the perfect cup of tea. The general population of college students spend their Spring Break days on a sandy beach in Mexico...We took our time off and started a dream of a business. New Hampshire and Connecticut natives the unlikely duo have started their journey into the tea business and have created this blog to document the trials and successes along the way.