Specialty Coffee Retailer - Dec 2002 - TEAHOUSE... -
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Published on: 12/1/2002
Last Visited: 12/21/2002
The brainchild of Christina Nguyen, an 18-year-old junior at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, the Tea Garden represents tea's coming of age in the Twin Cities.A chic, youngish clientele, including many Asian Americans, needs no introduction to tapioca pearls, coconut jelly, and iced lychee tea.The bubble tea appeals especially to the Asian community, says Nguyen."They come from the whole metro area for it."The Tea Garden attracts high schoolers sporting dental braces, college students poring over philosophy textbooks, mothers with babies in strollers and middle-aged Midwesterners--a wide demographic range.
A straight-A student majoring in entrepreneurial studies and marketing, Nguyen was primed to start her own business at a young age.Her parents, Vietnamese immigrants from the war period, worked hard to establish a print shop and graphic design business in their adopted Twin Cities."My mom and dad are very inspirational to me," she says."I always wanted to follow their example."In fact, her mother is her co-owner and business partner.And perhaps not surprisingly, her brother is a business major at Berkeley.
But it was Christina who came up with the idea of opening a tea shop in the Twin Cities, after she first sampled bubble tea at a Texas establishment about a year and a half ago."I thought, hey, I could do this up here!"she recalls.And so she did, after extensive research that led to her finding a site, securing a loan, supervising remodeling, and ultimately buying recipes, formulas, and many supplies from one of the leading bubble tea businesses in Taiwan."We're not a franchise, though," she explains."We came up with our own name and store design."
Nguyen first favored the name "Tea Leaf" for her establishment, but when she discovered that it was already taken, she quickly came up with "Tea Garden."After all, that's what they call tea houses in China, she says.
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The salon's signature decorative elements are the small pools Nguyen designed, one on each side as you enter, flanked by lush tropical plants.A fountain splashes soothingly in one pool, and in the other a diffuser creates a misty, primeval landscape in miniature.Patrons gravitate to this serene area to savor their drinks and snacks.
The Tea Garden opened its doors last March 22, a little later than Nguyen's hoped-for January date."The place hadn't even been a restaurant or coffee shop; it had been a futon store, and empty for two years," she explains."So that meant a lot of work to get it ready.
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Nguyen is proud of having introduced many to bubble tea."Sometimes they say, 'Wow, this is the best thing I've ever had, even though I wasn't expecting a pearl coming through the straw.' And some people are grossed out; they just don't like chewy things in their drinks.We have enough good other products, though, that there's something for almost everyone.So if people don't like the tapioca pearls, they order crystal jellies and other add-ons for the bottom of their drink."
Although tea dominates, a favorite drink is coffee, brewed in a French press and served with condensed milk in the Vietnamese style, hot or iced ($2.85).Coffee accounts for about one-fifteenth of total drink sales, Nguyen estimates.
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Nguyen aims for an elegant presentation, serving bubble tea, for example, in tall, gracefully tapered glasses that do justice to the drink's colorful hues.
Chai is available in three flavors (vanilla, spiced and vanilla decaf), hot or cold, and for fall and winter, Nguyen has added herbal teas in several flavors to appeal especially to the health-conscious Twin Cities clientele.But she has no plans to add British-style high teas to her menu, despite a few requests from customers."I'd hate to do it wrong; I want to make sure that everything we do here is the very best," she explains."I think it's better to do a few things really well than to try to do too much."So she emphasizes a high-quality, if limited, foodservice.Local bakers prepare the raspberry caramel cake and apple caramel cake ($2.50), blond brownies ($2.25), scones and muffins ($1.75), and croissants in the display case.The Tea Garden staff prepares and pre-packages sandwiches on the premises (ham and cheese, egg salad, etc., $4.95).
Nguyen is looking into adding both dessert and entree crepes."Just a few simple ones would be nice," she says.She recommends offering the finest, freshest product you can get and brewing tea fresh daily, because customers ultimately recognize the value of quality.
It's late afternoon and patrons begin to trickle in.A young man orders the best-selling royal tea latte, sitting at the bar the better to chat with Nguyen and the new barista she is training.A 30-ish woman pops in, orders a cooler to go ("the usual"), and picks up one of the salon's business cards from the counter, "So I can send you guys a postcard when I'm in New York next week."Such is the warm relationship regulars seem to have with the staff.These customers view the Tea Garden as truly their home away from home, and it's this sort of regular patronage, Nguyen says, "that can make or break you."In fact, one young woman became such a regular that Nguyen finally hired her as a part-time barista.
As manager, Nguyen often trains staff newcomers, with assistance from the more seasoned ones."Many of our employees are in their 20s--and some just 18 or 19," she says, "and they may never have worked in a restaurant before.So it can take some time to teach them everything.It's usually about three shifts--20 hours--before most people have it all down.
"We don't have a big, standardized corporate formula for training," she adds."Really, a lot of what makes you successful in this business is being tuned into people."
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"I really enjoy the customers," Nguyen says."We're like a big family.
"You definitely have to like people in this business," she stresses.
And be willing to put in a lot of hours, especially at first.Nguyen estimates that managing the Tea Garden consumes about 80 hours a week, at least."It's hard for me to stay away," she confesses, smiling.She recently moved into an apartment directly upstairs, eliminating a half-hour commute from a nearby suburb.
"And you do have to learn how to pay yourself a salary from the get-go, otherwise you never get around to it," she notes.
At first the Tea Garden experimented with an early-morning start, opening at 7 or 8 a.m. for a month."But nobody came," Nguyen remembers."We get more of a late-night crowd, so we're expanding that way instead of in the morning."Current hours are Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m.-10 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m.-11 p.m., and Sunday, noon-10 p.m. On weekend nights when there's music, the place is packed, often standing room only.Nguyen hopes to extend closing time on most nights by an hour or two.
As the first tea bar to open in the Twin Cities prospers in Minneapolis, Nguyen has already started thinking about opening another, perhaps on the other side of the Mississippi River in St. Paul.Now that bubble tea has caught on here, Nguyen believes, it has great potential to popularize the tea salon as an institution.
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