How to Run a Tea Business - TeaRetailer

Discover proven methods to improve your social media strategy for your tea shop.

Are street festivals a good place for tea?

A sampling strategy is crucial to growing exposure to your tea shop. Learn about innovative ways to get your tea shop noticed.

The single most important element to evolving your tea shop is incubating a winning attitude within your staff. Training them to be potent on the sales floor is crucial, but often overlooked is ensuring the job is fulfilling, and above all keeping the fire lit with motivational cues.

Great companies live and breathe great customer service. It’s often noted that it’s much easier to keep an existing customer than gain a new one, and it’s amazing how many companies wing it and hope for the best. It’s especially never a good idea if your small business is struggling to survive, and it may make the difference between red and black. But how is great customer service created and how do you make sure the customer returns? Breaking it down between in-store and out of store, I’ll explain how adagio attempts great customer service in our brick and mortar locations.

When you open a retail store, you have about six months before your new neighbors don’t see you as “the interesting new store on the block,” and the hype you had when you first opened your door decreases. When you’re a new store, your neighbors want to see what just opened and help your store succeed. Connecting with hotels, cafes, restaurants and other stores will never be easier than it is during those first six months.

Marketing your tea shop beyond foot traffic. In this article we will highlight how to win new customers by weaving your shop into the many facets of the surrounding community.

We've incorporated several changes into our new store, focusing on the amount of merchandise we offer, changes to blending, and our Cups2Go. Read more about why we made these changes and how we expect them to make customers happier.

It’s been just under a month since we opened our third retail store in downtown Chicago on State and Ohio. We unfortunately missed the black Friday sales, seeing as we opened about 2:30 that day. The good news is that we’re getting lots of positive feedback and positive results to some of the changes we’ve made.

If I've learned one thing from seven years in the US Tea Industry opening stores and selling online, it's this: To be successful in tea you need to pick a customer and rock their world. It can be hard to tell the difference between a business strategy that will make you king of a niche, and one that will leave you floundering in a sea of competition, but it's those little differentiators that make all the difference to a company's long term success.

The simple truth is that many Victorian Tea Rooms, serving high tea and finger sandwiches, are struggling to survive, while most of the successful new entrants are taking a hip, urban approach to tea. It's also true that averages don't always apply at the local level.

The 2011 Tea Expo East just concluded this afternoon in Philadelphia, PA. This was the first east coast tea show since 2007 and the first ever to take place in addition to the World Tea Expo in Las Vegas. It was a great three days (including the World Origins Tasting Tour), and I wanted to share a few thoughts as I wait to leave town.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of Adagio’s first tea retail store and break ground on our third location, we’re going through an internal discussion of how to apply our branding strategy to the physical retail stores. As the internal discussion has swirled around details such as proper attire for staff, and how many video screens you can incorporate before the store feels too high-tech for tea, I keep taking big steps back to gain perspective. I ended up back at the beginning. Why do people drink tea?

Adagio Teas is EXPANDING! We've just signed the lease on our third store and we're looking for passionate team members to join our team.

Adagio's third Tea Experience Retail Store will open in early October at 617 North State Street in Chicago, IL. This third store completes the original intent of piloting three strategic locations: downtown, suburban street-level and high-end suburban mall.

In April the Adagio Retail Management team set out to adjust the Customer Engagement Process to increase the Average Sale while improving customer satisfaction. We achieved a 25% increase in average ticket, and here's how we did it.

As of the end of March, the Adagio Retail operation had been open for 6 months. Traffic counts were good, and customer feedback was glowing, but the customers were purchasing too little to support the amount of time we put into each transaction, and too little to support the high rents that come with great locations. Starting in early April, we set out to fix this...

I've just returned from another exhilarating and exhausting week of Tea Industry immersion, starting with the New Business Boot camp and ending with the World Tea Expo. 5,000 industry attendees (the general public is not allowed to enter) makes for a fascinating platform. Here's a brief recap of a few highlights:

Frequent tasting is the single best thing you can do to take your tea knowledge to the next level. No amount of reading, lectures, or even tea plantation tours can possibly replace the powerful depth and quiet focus of a refined palate. After all, your appreciation for tea and the success of your business depend on a connected, real relationship with the tea. I'd like to invite you to join Suzette Hammond, Adagio's Tea Expert and Trainer in an interactive, hands-on course at this year's World Tea Expo.