We were lucky to catch up with Amy Kaiser and Mary Hoffman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Amy and Mary, thanks for joining us today. How has Covid changed your business model?

When COVID hit, we were a thriving Tea shop that served lunches, tea, coffee and pastries. We also sold gifts and accessories.

At that time, we were open 4-5 days a week and sold about 20 bags of our bulk tea.

When we were told in March 2020 that we had to close our doors, we were already discussing other options. Our customers were fantastic doing what they could to support us.

Even though they were ordering curbside, we were ending up having to give away food at the end of the day, which didn’t help our bottom line.

As the time went by, we were struggling and had to make some hard decisions. In June of 2021 we posted that we would be closing our doors. Our customers contacted us, their opinion was to drop the lunches and keep serving and selling our Tea, Coffee & Gifts.

We thought, why not, we have the stuff and could restructure our business plan.

We did a lot of late night talks on how this would work and how it would succeed.

We no longer serve lunches, are open 3 days a week, expanded our gift & tea lines and we now sell upwards of 80 bags of bulk tea a week.

We do a lot of outside Tea talks and wellness events. We also focus more on the health benefits of our teas.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We are honest, helpful and upfront.

We work with each customer individually to find the tea that suits them, whether it is for enjoyment
and/ or health reasons.

We give out samples for them to take and try at home.

When they order a pot of tea to enjoy in house, if they don’t like it we replace it with no extra charge.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Word of mouth, if you give a person respect, help and most importantly good quality Teas & Coffee, they in turn tell their friends, family & coworkers.

We do tea programs and serve samples of our tea at libraries, health fairs and other events.

We participate in the area towns events as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: In progress, should be up in a few months
• Instagram: Gardennooktea
• Facebook: Garden Nook Tea
• Other: email: [email protected]