The Tea House Times
The Tea House Times
During the World Tea Expo Tea Radio (TM) was able to interview "Lady Gail" from The Tea House Times.
She was kind enough to share one of her products with us that is mainly for children called the "Etiquette Cards." "Lady Gail" also gave Tea Radio (TM) listeners some in site to the future of tea, information on The Tea House Times Tea Bureau, and how she got started in the business of tea.
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Tea Radio (TM) audio interview with "Lady Gail." Link will play automatically. No downloading required. Just left click this link and the audio will play using your computers media program.
Download the_tea_house_times2.mp3
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For more information on The Tea House Times click on the link below.
http://www.theteahousetimes.com/
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Below is the transcript of the interview with "Lady Gail."
Dawnya: Hi. I am with Gail from the Tea House Times and we are talking today about Tea Bureau, because that is her latest thing. First of all I just want to welcome you to the program. Welcome to Tea Radio, Gayle.
Gail: Thank you very much. It is so nice to be here with you Dawnya.
Dawnya: Well we are just laughing it up because we are at the end of a long show, but just talking about how exciting it is to be in the tea industry right now. Gail, what are some things that you have seen this year that you think wow there are some changes happening or these are exciting things that I see in tea?
Gail: You know what I think that we are really still focusing towards children and I think I really started last year. I was starting to see more of a trend towards connecting with children and teens, the younger generation trying to bring them in and to continue the tradition of tea whether you know whatever the tea ceremony is.
What ever nationality you are really continuing those traditions with your family and keep a deep rooted history of going with your families. There have been a lot of products selling probably the best sellers have been the products that are doing that, connecting children with their family and with tea.
Dawnya: Yah, I felt that was interesting too. Several etiquette types of things are out there and you guys have an etiquette. Was it etiquette cards? Tell us a little bit about that because those are great for children?
Gail: Right. It is actually very new. I have the prototype with us at the expo, but it’s a great little card game. It plays like old maid and it’s called the Victorian Etiquette Tea Parlor game basically and they are cards, they are playing cards and on each card is an image of an old victorian scene of a woman either drinking tea or a very beautiful object from tea time, you know an accessory.
Each card has a different etiquette, the little etiquette code about may be how to properly eat a scone or how to be very graceful at tea or even just very nice etiquette mannerly ways on a regular basis and we do playing like old maid is to connect the images. So each card says something different with etiquette, but you would match up the images of the cards and then whoever is out has the tea maid. She is a nice little tea maid on one of the cards. They really look pretty.
Dawnya: That is a fun idea. So that is a way to connect again with the ceremony, you can do with children, you can do it with the old maids whoever is sitting around, great thing to do with tea and I have seen a lot teas that are designed for children and then of course we have seen a lot of the ready to drink market because that is the future with the teen market and the health market. Now Gail tell us a little bit because of our listeners have not heard your story so tell me a little bit about how you got started in the tea and what your story is and gosh you have been around now forever.
Look perfect. I don’t mean it that way, but you have been around in the industry a long time. You are very established and this is chance for people to not only hear about you and get to connect with you and your company, but look toward the future and knowing that you are always going to have because you come out with the latest information. So you are a great resource for tea lovers.
Gail: Okay. Well did have an interview quite sometime ago and it really focused on me on how I got started and it was kind of a long story, but there is the short and sweet of it really is that, I do have a passion for tea. I have always enjoyed going to afternoon tea and over and over I would go different tea rooms and would really become friendly with the team room owners on the side and they confided in me.
They would tell me their problems, they would tell me what was going on in their shops and I just thought what can I do, I know there is something I can do to help these people. That is just me and the kind of people that just wants to help everyone and so I became the publication because I felt like they weren’t really reaching out to their customers. They needed to reach out to their customers more in someway and it started out as just a very basic, but once page news letter they could personalize.
I would do it for them. I would create the content and it would just have information about their business, their hours, little bit more about them, may be some history if they were in a historical building something like that and then it just grew from there because the more and more we did it you know they get busy, may be they didn’t have time to do it more of a personalized thing so it became you know can we just subscribe to something. You do it. You do it all the time.
Let us subscribe to it, let us may be just clip our business card to the front and be done, we are done. Fine and so it grew into a publication and at first again it was you know the basic new letter, couple of pages then it grew to several pages to more of a glossy publication and now its quite a lot bigger and yet now quite a magazine.
And the reason we don’t push to make it a magazine is that the news letter image and the content itself really connects to the customers in a way that, you know why are they going into tea, they want to be together with their friends and family, they want to find a time to relax and connect here with their families.
Carry on the tradition and so with recipes and real life stories we have a page now I call it turning over a new leaf and its really finding ways to make your life better and whether it is through tea other personal experiences and sharing stories with other people and so we are doing a lot in that way without our publication. It’s grown and that is how I got started and then through the Tea House Times.
Dawnya: And the Tea House Times now is full color, its glossy. How many pages are you at?
Gail: Its 20 or 24 pages, but it is a lot of decent content so it is now overloaded with ads, but enough that you can find some great resources and connect with people and we have book reviews and product reviews that helps people really determine where they should be spending their money these days and that’s good.
Dawnya: Absolutely. Now the Tea Bureau is also something that goes kind of a long with that because it is going to be a great resource online to help people know where to go, who to find? So talk about the tea bureau. I want to know, what’s the story behind it? So how did this you know like did the tea cup fall down and hit you on the head one morning and you are like oh I have got it or how did you come to this idea?
Gail: It’s not really something new. Really throughout the time I have had the Tea House Times for five years. A lot of the things that I have done as far as the foot work and the leg work for finding resources for the tea rooms, you know where do I got to buy wholesale, where do I go for training, where do I go for what.
I have made these connections for five years. I know who’s who, I know where to go, I know where to tell you to go and I walk all kinds of trade shows whether it’s the World Tea Expo, the gift market, the food fairs and the create reports reporting on all these products and helping the tea rooms find new things and they have come to expect those reports. They want to see them; they want you know have all these resources and so I thought you know it is time to be put all these things in one spot.
You know instead of you know someone calling me can you share that with me, you know and now it should be freely available. That is what I feel and so I have created the tea bureau. It is kind of a rebranding of my other arm lets say the other branch of what I really have been doing for years and so its not like you know it wouldn’t be viewed as oh well what’s that new thing. It is really something I have been doing for a long time.
So now it’s a resource for business to find importers, may be machinery, all kinds of products, wholesale resources for everything you can imagine that would really pertain our industry and then if they need training or certification, if they need to where the trade shows are, are they any networking thinks that are going out that they can participate in or any online things.
You know social media is becoming very important these days and so whether its blogs or you know actually lately it has been this linked in thing I don’t know. Its ways to connect your business with other people and through our tea bureau we are listening all kinds of businesses and we called it Tea Bureau because it is also a news bureau, it is a speakers bureau and its really the place, the go to place for everything you can possibly need and but it doesn’t stop at trade.
We have created some connections for consumers as well because it is important to keep you know have the consumers be able to find you, put a face to you and your product and then if your are a wholesaler then you know if we still become familiar with your product and look for it in the retail shops.
Dawnya: Yah. Let’s talk about that for a second. The retial aspect, because a lot of our listeners don’t have business and so they could go to Tea Bureau and find resources, they could find tea rooms. What types of things could a person that just a tea lover not in the business just loves tea what could they find?
Gail: They would come there would be a link directing them right to a page that is a directory of tea rooms so if you are looking for tea room in their part of the country they can go to that page click on their state and find where they would like to go for tea and those tea rooms can also list their events so if there is a Mother’s Day event going on or a charity event those things are all listed there and there are fun things like we list tea radio you know its fun.
Its fun for consumers and its fun for you know every one in the trade. It is a very good resource that you have built and you know that is very important, but then there is tea parties ideas, you know this is one of the biggest requests I get. I want more tea parties idea, more, more, more and so I they have got ideas, there’s recipes, there is themes ideas and a lot of that has already been at our website, but by creating Tea Bureau it is all there. It is like a directory to everything.
They just click on it find what they need then further down on that webpage for consumers connections we have retailer then. So the retailers mails will be listed under wholesale but this way the consumer can directly find them. So its products, its fun stuff. We have free games on our website that they can print like word search, tea party word search things like that and there is fun stuff for their kids too.
Dawnya: So one stop shopping basically so whether you are in the business or you are consumer that Tea Bureau is a one stop shopping and we can go to Tea Bureau. Well under this audio there is a link, but its www.teabureau.us that’s great. So Gail as a final word is there anything new that’s happening that you think oh people need to know that is beyond Tea Bureau that’s happening in your businesses. Is there any new product that you are excited about or I love the new cards those are great, but if people were to go to your website as well they can shop first thing so what can consumers find to buy from you?
Gail: Okay. Well consumers at our website can find a pretty good variety of tea accessories. There is party games you know real board games that you can buy. We dabble a little bit in tea, we are more focused on party supplies for the website, but through wholesale though we offer these die cut gift bags those have been the most popular. They are absolutely gorgeous.
They are in the shape of a tea pot or tea cup and then we have our tea ribbons that has been a good seller for years, but we just redesigned that and so that is important to know. The machinery had a change in angle and so the wired ribbon is now not a gold edge, but it a beautiful finished edge and they print is still the beautiful tea print so those are some of the best things going.
Dawnya: So people can come to you and not only get information, but they could subscribe too, but then there is also all kinds of things on the web as well and you need to stick around and keep looking at Gail’s site because there is always new stuff. It is changing all the time, all the time, more and more and more information.
Thank you so much for being with us today Gail and I wish you well and just definitely come back and visit us next year because I cannot wait to hear what your latest thing is that you are up to, so thanks for coming.
Gail: Thanks. Have a nice day.
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For more information on The Tea House Times click on the link below.
http://www.theteahousetimes.com/
Information on Tea Bureau is provided in the link below.
www.theteahousetimes.com/teabureau.htm
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The Basics: 6 Easy Steps to a Great Pot of Tea
Bring fresh, cold water almost to a boil in a tea kettle on the stove.
In the meantime, measure out the tea: 1 teaspoon tea leaves (or 1 teabag) per cup of water. Every tea is different, calling for some experimentation.
Preheat the teapot by rinsing it with very hot water before adding the leaves. This is more important than you may think; it maintains the temperature in the pot, preparing the tea leaves so that the tea releases its full flavor when the water is poured over the leaves.
Add the measured tea to the pre-warmed teapot. Smell the aroma already? That's good.
Pour the hot water over the tea. For black and oolong teas, let the water come to a full boil before pouring it into the teapot.
Remove the leaves and serve. Some tea leaves can be used again, just let them steep a little longer each time.
