My STI friend Brendan Waye’s July 2010 T Ching post “Zooming off to Vegas for the final STI course” motivated me to consider all that I am doing in the pursuit of tea and how I benefit from that pursuit. As I start up the Los Angeles Tea group, I am being asked anew what my intentions are with the Meetup groups. A Bay Area tea associate recently asked how I make money with my Meetup groups and I received a curious phone call from a mysterious nameless woman with a cloaked telephone number asking me if I sell tea. Pondering what to write about in this T Ching installment, I decided to shed some light on all of this.
My main mission with tea is expressed in three statements on my Meetup cards. Firstly, I want to help myself and others learn and/or teach about tea. When I say “tea,” I mean high-quality, premium and specialty teas prepared from Camellia sinensis sinensis and Camellia sinensis assamica. I want to increase general tea knowledge among the tea-drinking public since most people do not know the origins, modes of production, or hallmarks of good-quality white, green, oolong, black, and puerh teas or how to brew them to their best advantage. This mission is primarily about improving the appreciation of tea as a beverage and secondarily includes the appreciation of tea for its health-related qualities. To this end, I help tea educators and tea enthusiasts to connect with each other and I offer tea education myself.
My second mission with tea is to support tea businesses, especially, but not exclusively, local brick-and-mortar tea businesses. I want brick-and-mortar tea businesses to thrive and improve so they can be more competitive in the marketplace. Brick-and-mortar tea businesses offer the face-to-face interactions over tea that I encourage tea enthusiasts to experience as often as they can. This experience can come in various forms, such as having the retailer show and describe their teas or offer focused tea tastings to help purchasers make their buying decisions. I encourage tea retailers to offer tea education events, such as directed tea tastings and tea-preparation classes. This personal experience is something that online retailers cannot possibly offer, but many tea retailers do not take good advantage of this. Often, tea enthusiasts do not know that a brick-and-mortar tea business exists in their area until I announce an event on the website. In this way, I help tea businesses – especially local brick-and-mortar tea businesses – and tea enthusiasts to connect with each other.
The third and most personally gratifying mission I have with tea is to create community through the sharing of tea. I have discovered that I love connecting people to people with tea. I have met – and sometimes become close friends with – an incredibly diverse group of people due to our shared predilection for drinking high-quality tea in social settings – people I am sure I would never have gotten to know otherwise. In this way, tea is a great unifier.
I chose the Meetup.com Internet-based platform to benefit from this power of tea most easily and cost-effectively since all new Meetup members indicate their interests when they join and this information is stored in a database. Meetup sends new members notices about what groups might interest them so many members join without me needing to make any effort to recruit them. I can search the database for members within a specific geographic area who indicate an interest in tea and I can actively recruit from this pool. Members also can search for local tea groups to join at any time. There is a constant in-flow and out-flow of members, with the in-flow predominating by far. Members pay no joining fee to Meetup and I chose not to charge for joining my groups. I pay Meetup.com a small monthly fee for the use of the platform.
I encourage tea businesses and enthusiasts to form their own Meetup groups, including groups in the same geographic areas as mine, and I advise others on how to proceed. I want to make it easy for people to find tea-related activities. I will gladly cross-promote the tea events of businesses and tea groups on my Meetup websites as long as the activities are in alignment with my stated missions. I ask other Meetups to do the same for me. This is called “cross-promotion.”
Since my work in tea includes promoting healthy lifestyles, I have chosen not to cross-promote activities that combine tea and alcohol consumption as their primary purpose. A class on making tea cocktails would fall into this category. This stance has opened up a large network of alcohol-free themed Meetup groups as cross-promoters of my tea events, so I have ended up with more cross-promotion potential instead of less. I also have good cross-promotion potential with foodie, healthy lifestyle, and green/sustainable interest groups.
My “only” remaining major hurdle is to design my Meetup activities in such a way that I don’t lose money in the process. I do not have my own tea brand to sell, but even if I did, I doubt that I would turn a significant profit selling tea at events, so I am sticking with “The Day Job” for now. I am open to suggestions. Perhaps a year from now, I can write about how I solved that puzzle. For now, this is a labor of love!
Photo “DSCN4021” is copyright under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License to the photographer Jayanth Vincent and is being posted unaltered (source)
Photo “Tea” is copyright under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License to the photographer Mark Ramsay and is being posted unaltered (source)
I believe that the community surrounding tea is a rich one. It is true that everyone assumes that if one isn’t profiting by it, it diminishes its value some how. Tea has been part of countless cultures around the world where the simple sharing joins people together – much like coffee or wine does in our culture. It’s almost impossible to walk into someone’s home without an offer of wine or coffee – perhaps most dependent upon the time of day. I look forward to the time when tea will routinely be offered to others in our culture. Thank you for helping to bring that day one step closer.
Sometimes on T.V. talk shows, I’ll hear a movie star remark that they’re “blown away” that someone actually pays them to act. I suspect that would be the icing on the cake for most of us tea entrepreneurs. We bring tea into our lives and share it with others because that’s what we do. IF we could earn our living doing that ……………I guess we’d also be “blown away”.
Love this post…my husband and I were discussing today that we hope tea entrepreneurs don’t open a store one day and try to roll out a chain the next through VC money, even if they can. We are
finding it takes real in-store on-legs with-customer time to learn what works and what ‘tea people’ are looking for. In over two years, we have not only actually made money but made, hopefully,
life-long friends. Tea does make connections and can also be profitable, but both take time and quality time. I haven’t had time to get involved in starting a Meet-up because of the above (on leg, etc.) but hope to in the future as we grow our own concept. My journey in Camellia sinensis’ world has been over 6 years, and it is developing like any long-term relationship. No quick buck or quick start artists, hopefully..it’s a life-long love affair.
Thanks for your comments, Michelle! Your comment that you “look forward to the time when tea will routinely be offered to others in our culture is also one of my dreams. This is already happening in some other parts of the world, as you know. In fact, it is an insult to _not_ be offered tea. What a healthy way to socialize!
Tea education must precede tea appreciation since we have not growin up in a society that values tea in this way.
And, tea education cannot have too many proponents, paid or unpaid. Thank you for valuing what I have to offer. I look forward to being “blown away” someday!
Diane,
I was concerned I had not emphasized enough the benefits to tea business owners of supporting tea education and tea enthusiast groups. Your statements that “tea does make connections and can also be profitable, but both take time and quality time” and that running your business hasn’t afforded you the time to start a Meetup group validates what I do as a Tea Meetup group organizer.
I use the Meetup platform to reach both tea enthusiasts and tea businesses and bring them together to benefit both groups. Unfortunately, tea business owners can be reluctant to participate in what I do. The title of this article can be read as “connecting people (enthusiasts) to people with tea (tea business owners) to illustrate this point: Tea business owners will benefit from supporting their local Tea Meetups. The benefit accrues even if the Tea Meetup is not exclusive to the business.
Without educated tea enthusiasts to patronize our business, how would a premium or specialty tea business thrive, especially a brick-and-mortar one? I encourage premium and specialty tea businesses to always keep, unblended, unscented, unflavored basic teas available as models of the tea categories for serious tea drinkers and to encourage the tea purchasers to taste and learn about these teas. If tea professionals don’t take tea seriously, how can anyone else?
My Tea Meetup group members self-identify as “Tea Lovers” but sadly most of then do not know the fundamentals about tea because they never got the chance to learn. I am doing what I can to correct this , in part, by encouraging tea business owners to not only give tea buyers what they are looking for but to broaden the spectrum of what tea buyers are looking for to include these fundamental teas. And I agree, it does take “quality time”. I believe it is time well spent.
Thanks for the interesting post Dianna. Nice to get to know you a little through it. Your meetup site & activities look great. Living here in Taiwan, & being surrounded by a Chinese lifestyle it is nice to experience the enjoyment of tea in every area of society – socially, culturally, in business relationships, in philosophical & religious circles, as well as the artistically & creative minded, all embrace tea as a part their culture.
Here’s my 2 cents worth on your labor of love:Seems that with such a great community & a growing number of tea lovers that you are developing, having a selection of good teas available for people to buy, that could also generate some income, would be expected. If you could do that & then be able to invest your full time into promoting tea the way you do, I think that would be a tremendous boost to the tea education & appreciation that society needs. (or maybe a tea company could sponsor you in return for directing your community network to them to buy their teas). You certainly have a lot to offer & I hope you can soon solve that puzzle & discover a way to be “paid to act” as Michelle explained.
Peter,
That is a marvelous way to live! Usually, when I tell people here in the States that tea is “my life” outside of “the day job”, they don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. I think many of them feel sorry for me!
Tea shop owners do not want me to bring my group into their shop if I sell my own tea line. If I sell a selection of local business’ teas, I am selling their competitor’s teas and that selection needs to change for each region, which is too complicated. What happens when I sell online and expose the local customers to teas of other areas? Would I be subverting my mission of supporting local brick-and-mortar tea business? Perhaps I am not, if I define “local” as “California-based, but would the shop owners see it that way?
I recently started California Tea on Meetup (www.meetup.com/californiatea/) to build a network of tea businesses, Meetup groups, tea educators and allied tea professionals (e.g., dessert makers) who understand the value of working together cooperatively. My hope is to learn how to best proceed.
Dianna, it was nice meeting you in Ojai 2 weeks ago. I’ll search your group on http://www.meetup.com soon.