Scott's Tea Journey

My journey starts back at the tail end of my time at Texas Tech University, having just stumbled upon a crossover YouTube video between Alex from French Guy Cooking and Don from Mei leaf where they were comparing and contrasting the different tea flavors with that of different croissants. It was a magical idea for me, I had always had a strong interests towards the culinary arts, and from this video I began my pursuit into the world of Gong Fu Cha and high quality tea.

I quickly searched through Mei Leaf's website and selected some of my very first teas, enamored with the delicious flavors attributes from the descriptions, along with their supposed effects on the mind. It wasn't till checkout that I was clubbed over the head with what seemed at the time as a huge bill for international shipping. I think I had at the time purchased just $40 in tea and while the shipping cost was $80! Needless to say, I started questioning if this tea was really gonna be worth it. 

Upon, receiving my first shipment from Mei Leaf I was over the moon, the Amber Gaba oolong was quickly a personal favorite and the Duck sh*t oolong that I had purchased was memorable too. However moving forward I knew I couldn't keep buying tea from Mei Leaf with its enormous shipping costs. So I devised a new plan to look around the city of Austin to see if there wasn't a similar tea company in state. 

That's how I came to discover a local teahouse called Guan Yin Tea House that was offering tea service in a variety of forms and events, but was primarily focused on the specialized tea service known as Gong Fu Cha, or the mindful meditation of making tea. In fact Gong Fu is where we get our mistranslation of Kung Fu from!

I was enamored all over again, just like the first video, the people were authentic and down to earth, always looking to teach and introduce the world into true tea. 
I was hooked, I started showing up more and more talking to as many servers as possible about everything tea and business. 

I had always wanted to run a restaurant or bar when I wasn't busy pursuing a career in baseball, but was always doubtful towards the overhead costs and the inclusion of alcohol as the primary money generator. Such that when I discovered you could run an establishment with just tea alone and skip the various problems that alcohol introduces I was just floored! 

It wasn't long before I was traveling to the new teahouse practically everyday, only problem was that I still hadn't secured a job post college and was having a hard time paying for all the tea service. As such I eventually discovered that tea servers actually had a special perk for working their volunteered hours for tea credit. They got to drink all the tea that they wanted, both during and off of their shift!

Needless to say, I quickly started checking off the boxes for the requirements, of which at the time was a food handlers's license, 3 intro to gong fu cha classes, and to work 3 Communitea events that were open to the public as free tea service. 

Thus began my journey from tea consumer to tea server!

Once I was in, I began taking on lots of shifts trying my best to sample each and every tea, making a mental catalog of the nuances and flavor profiles. I had a special knack at perfectly describing a tea's flavor from my past memories of other foods. It was a unique skill that sometimes backfired as I would inadvertently, ruined teas for others once I cracked the particular flavor. 

I eventually ended up helping out across the company, taking on tasks from service to packaging tea for customers. Discovering the use of the all important hand cut 3-Liter bottle scoop for dispensing tea into black standup pouches. Each was then individually filled by hand, along with a hand written product label, listing the tea name, price, temp. and steeping time. 

Part 2: My Journey to the West China Crew

Overtime I began a friendship with the various owners of Guan Yin Teahouse, as it was a cluster of folks just a little older than myself. Without getting into the weeds of everything, I discovered that Guan Yin Teahouse was more like 3 companies all trying to function under one roof. As there was 2 tea importers both trying their best to survive, with one specializing in teaware and the other specializing in tea. It seemed like a relatively good match trade off at the time, but looking back people needed tea more than they need fancy tea ware, which always meant an imbalance between the companies with the teahouse having to purchase tea from the West China Tea to stay afloat often on credit. Which then led to numerous issues and headaches for everyone. 

Eventually however So Han, the Founder and original owner of West China Tea, asked me if I would be willing to take over his company while he and some others when traveling across China in search of new teas. It at the time felt like a God Sent moment as I had graduated nearly a year prior and was still struggling to find work. Only there was one big catch, he was leaving at the end of the week just 3 days away! 

So Han proceed to show me the mysterious West China Tea stock room, that at the time was a storage unit just down the street from the tea house. It was a cluttered 8x8 room, that was arranged somewhat haphazardly with mismatched old wooden cabinets, and an electronic scale on a table a latticed plastic top. The various tea's themselves spread round the permitter, tucked away in various cubbies and plastic bags, without a rhyme or reason as to why or where they were stored. I asked So Han for his inventory spreadsheet and was shocked to discover that he didn't have one. Since he was the only person to typically deliver tea to the teahouse, he never thought to keep track of the teas by weight or unit. 

Needless to say I was caught quite off guard, thinking about just how disorganized the whole operation was at the time, yet it was a problem I was willing to tackle and try to bring some order too. With So Han's help, we started by labeling each tea in English, along with weighing out all the products. I crafted a special excel spreadsheet with some unique formatting and soon enough had the first know logbook for west china tea crafted. 

Overtime, I tried to keep it organized and manually updated each day, with the outgoing flow of wholesale and teahouse orders, but as the company sales continued to grow, and us still using hand written labels it was became too cumbersome to use. During this phase, So Han also hired a man by the name of Logan, another degree holder in international business. He helped me craft a specialized SKU system for the company that really help build out the tea catalog... 

... to be continued. Thanks for reading!