How Start a Tea Room or Tea Shop Business 1-2-3
With your own tea room, you can work in a relaxed, creative environment and mingle with some very
well-educated, well-traveled people. You have lots of profitable options with tea shops - traditional Victorian
or English tea room, Asian-inspired tea room, sophisticated tea bar or lounge, specialty tea cafe, etc.
Learn how to open your own tea shop with help from Famous Tea Room Business Owners and Sommeliers
Pane Pettigrew, Mark Ukra, Cynthia Gold, Maria Uspenski and others. Not only have they run successful tea room
businesses, they have experience training others.
You would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. See what you get
>>
Step-by-Step Instructions on How to Get
Started: Create a tea room business plan in a snap, know the most profitable location for your
shop and get effective systems for running your daily business, including budgets & bookkeeping
with awesome samples and checklists 
- Resources to Contact and How to Start with Minimal Cost: find financing, how to hire employees,
get discounted equipment
- How to Get Customers ad Turn a Profit Quickly: through low-cost publicity tactics, effective
customer relations and a website that promotes your products and services internationally
Tea Room Business Start-Up Guide
Starting a Tea Business Checklist:
1. Get a business license. Check with your
local government office to find out which licenses, zoning and signage permits you need for your tea
room. Some offices have application forms you can download from their websites.
2. Register your business name with the
county clerk, or you can incorporate your
business.
3. Put together a business plan. You can find downloadable business plan
templates online, which make business plan writing easy. Also, viewing sample business plans form other
tea room businesses can be helpful in writing your own. Sample Tea Room Business Plan.
4. Set up a business bank
account with your local bank. It is important to keep your team room business and personal finances
separate, and often your banker can help with small business loans or financing.
5. Find a profitable location for your tea shop or tea room. Ideally, you
want a high-traffic location that is convenient for your customers. Having a competing tea room or coffee
shop nearby can actually be an asset, since the existing establishment is already bringing qualified
clientele to the area. A commercial real estate broker can help locate shop vacancies and calculate
affordable rents.
6. Arrange a meeting with an accountant to discuss tax strategies and ways
to maximize your business tax deductions. You
can get referrals from other business owners you know or sometimes your banker. See also: Business Accounting Software.
7. Meet with an insurance agent to discuss insurance you may need for your
tea shop. The IIABA (Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America) can be a good place to start.
You can also get free quotes online for business insurance.
8. Set up your business phone system. Whether you use a
toll-free 800 phone number, a
multi-line phone system, VoIP or simply add an additional phone number to your existing service, you'll
want a designated line to establish a professional business image.
9. Order Business Cards. One of the cheapest ways I
know of to advertise a business. See how you can design your own professional business cards online, plus
simple tips for increasing your sales. See also: how to design your own logo.
10. Get a website. Save money by creating your own website with simple online design
programs, or outsource the job to an affordable website designer. Whether you sell tea products online - or you use a website
to display cafe menus or business hours, it is a valuable, low-cost marketing resource that can help you get
more customers.
Tea Business Resources:
Marketing Your Tea Business
If you are serious about growing your tea business, and you don't want to pay thousands of dollars to an ad
agency, the Small
Business Marketing Guide shows you how to attract a steady stream of buyers - on the
cheap.
Get the 1-Day Marketing Plan outline and over 29 proven success systems
that you can use over and over to increase profits and sell more tea, including:
- Proven ad writing checklist and how to create an irresistible offer.
- How to turn incoming phone calls into clients and turn one-time buyers into lucrative lifetime
customers.
- How to use other people's customers to get new business.
- The secret to getting free referrals when you ask - 90% of the time.
- Maximum profit pricing strategy and how to double your sales with simple packaging
techniques.
- 4 techniques for doubing sales - with no additional customers.
Get Free Publicity
Besides advertising in your local yellow pages and running ads, you can save money by writing a brief press
release or "letter" to your local paper announcing the opening of your candy store. You can also use press
releases on an ongoing basis to publicize events, news and activities within your tea shop or tea room.
Offer a special discount or free offer for first-time customers, and publications will find this more
newsworthy. This means that they're more likely to publish news about your company. You can write your own
press release - you can find press release samples here: How to Get Free Press.
Set up a simple website for under $50/year to
advertise your tea room. Help people find you in the search engines: get listed in 20 search engines for free or in
300 search engines for $4.
Local Search
is becoming more and more popular. People are many times using online search instead of the traditional yellow
pages to find local businesses. Local Search sources that are affordable and receive substantial traffic
include: Google Local, Yelp, Super Pages and Insider Pages.
Postcard
Marketing
Do a postcard mailing to introduce your tea shop to neighborhood shoppers (businesses and/or individuals).
Using low-cost online services makes this an easy marketing task. First, choose a special offer that you want
to announce to potential customers. Second, design your postcards online using professional postcard
templates with VistaPrint (you
can get 50% off here). And third, get targeted leads from a lead generation company like Resource Nation.
