My Whole Tea Background:
My knowledge of tea takes us back over 20 years ago to when I first fell in love with the world's favorite beverage. I was introduced to quality tea at the annual Japanese Matsuri Festival that happens in Downtown Phoenix. The love began in 2001 and I was fresh at age 17, with a warm invitation into a dark enclosed tent at the heart of the festival, it was a Japanese Matcha Tea Ceremony put on by the local Japanese Friendship Garden. The experience started with a woman standing at the entrance to a shrouded & mysterious tent, quietly & politely beckoning folks to taste an authentic sip of matcha. Once inside, the well choreographed experience that is the Japanese Tea Ceremony put me on the beautiful path of tea that brings us here today.
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Cali Kid~ I was born in Long Beach, California, moved to Tucson, Arizona as a young kid, & eventually the family settled in Phoenix, AZ where I grew up in my own earthy desert world, my head in a cloud of dust. When I was a kid, I chose plants, herby nature potions, & the hot outdoors to extend my Virgo roots grounding in the desert soil. Post high school I studied mushrooms, fungus, & insects ~ worked as a Naturalist with the Girl Scouts. I also volunteered doing many odd community things: Food Not Bombs, No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes, Atheists Helping the Homeless, Teaching classes on Kombucha making at the Tucson & Prescott Anarchist Libraries, AmeriCorps Commitment, & the Prescott Area Women's Shelter (PAWS). In present times, I'm on the board of directors for the Phoenix Food CoOp, please check it out as we are getting ready to fund raise to find a building in Downtown Phoenix!
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When I was in my early years I wanted to feed my endless desire to learn & experience all there was about tea. I visited and absorbed all I could from the local shops that existed in the hot city of Phoenix so many years ago. Chakra 4 Herbs (still exists today as it's new name: Loose Leaf Tea Market), Mandala Tea, Souvia Tea, Pura Tea, Tempe Food CoOp... spending hours on the 5th floor of the Burton Barr library reading the limited selection of tea books in existence. Then at age 19 , I began mixing and blending custom teas to sell. Fink's Drink Tea (the first ever rendition of my tea company) had teas in a few local Phoenix coffee shops, most well known was the Phoenix Public Market. At the age of 21, I moved to Tucson where I sold my first retail box of tea to rock goblins at the Gem & Mineral Show. Down there I discovered Seven Cups Tea Room and recognized what an amazing shop they had created which focused on traditional teas only from China. I chose to hang out at a place that's no longer around today: The Casbah Tea Room. A lot of what Cha Cha's Tea Lounge was- is based on my rendition of that dreamy space ~ the main seating was floor seating, under a colorful cloth canopy, plant based food, live performances, & the best Moroccan mint tea I'd had at that time. When I lived there I was selling teas & blends at several farmers markets in the dusty desert town~ Tucson is is known for being a UNESCO food heritage city, which means you will experience food at it's roots. I learned so much about what it means to love food and have a passion. While in Tucson, I earned my Herbalist certification from the famous Southwest herbalist in Bisbee, AZ: Michael Moore of the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine. Around 24 I moved back to Phoenix with an opportunity to work for Teavana (I like to say I sold my soul at this point). Teavana was small tea chain that was just beginning their expansion at the time, & I was able to grow within their expanding empire. I started as a team lead, then moved into assistant manager, then manager, then to corporate tea trainer. In that position I worked directly with around 40 stores, training hundreds of new employees on the world of tea. Also working, during some points, with the expanding company to convert a chain of Canadian tea stores: Teaopia, into Teavana stores when Teavana bought Teaopia in 2011. And then later on again I was part of a larger merger when Starbucks bought Teavana in 2013. I worked under the Teavana brand of Starbucks for a few years~ when it started to become clear that an end was nearing for the tea brand that brought loose tea back to popularity in the US. That's when I created an exit strategy for myself with a burning desire to open my own ye ol' tea shoppe. I left in 2014 to work for a local Phoenix shop, Souvia Tea. I wanted to learn hands on, from another small tea business how to make it successful, at this time I also was running a small food truck I had built (bagel sammies & natural sodas if you must know)! Eventually sold the food truck & cashed in my Starbucks retirement to open Cha Cha's Tea Lounge! Ta-dah~ you made it to where we are today... well close enough, Cha Cha's was in a smaller space a 1/2 block away from the current location a few years ago, moved into the new larger spot in 2021, & I officially sold it as of May 2023!
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For now, I'm working on following some words that my ocean loving father passed down: He would say all life comes from water, we need to be near the womb. Since selling Cha Cha's Tea Lounge, I continue to work with the community in dt phx & work daily with earth & water elements while starting this new online matcha tea community & resource.
