We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Maureen & Emilie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Maureen & Emilie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?
The catalyst for Midnight Teas(e) was the enthusiasm of our friends. For years we only-half-jokingly entertained the idea of opening a tea shop, but it always felt like an unrealistic dream. When we told a friend about our idea, she was so certain of our abilities and idea that she, in turn, inspired the confidence in us that we needed. Not enough can be said about the power of surrounding yourself with supportive friends and family. Cautionary advice and honest criticism is equally as valuable as uninhibited cheerleading, and we’ve been immensely lucky to have access to both. We approached asking for support from our friends and family with a simple premise: everyone who loves us has something they are willing – or even eager – to offer. Sometimes it’s financial support, but sometimes it’s handing out flyers, tasting our tea, giving user-experience feedback on our website, filming social media content, or even dressing up like a goat-headed monster lady and saying nice things about us on Instagram. Sometimes it feels intimidating to ask for help, but just think what you would do if someone you cared about asked the same of you. Probably, you’d be happy to help, even if only in a small way, and all the small things add up.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
First thing’s first: We will not be able to resist adding at least a couple of tea-themed puns into this interview. We couldn’t resist making tea puns on our product packaging, so we definitely won’t hold back here. Onward.
Midnight Teas(e) is an online retail tea shop carrying witchcraft and occult lore-themed loose leaf tea. We are a woman, witch, and LGBTQ+ owned business, and we are first-time business owners living in Salem, MA. We started this business because we *love* tea. Not like: Love. l o v e . Drink it every day, talk about it every day, think about it every day. Perhaps you, too, have a whole cabinet in your kitchen devoted to your “tea stash.” So opening our own tea business has been, in many ways, a very easy decision.
We both grew up in families that owned independent businesses. Seeing that sort of non-stop dedication shapes a kid, as does seeing the possibiliTEAS of supporting yourself doing something you love.
Maureen worked as an Assistant Manager of a David’s Tea for a few years, as well as an Operations Manager in other food-service type places. Emilie doesn’t have the same level of retail experience, but she the Graphic Design, Marketing, and Social Media person. We are also best friends (you’ll read about that shortly).
Our brand is a pretty clear reflection of our personaliTEAS: A blend of gothic, spooky concepts with fun, lighthearted, and sometimes (often) pun-based tones – clearly. Our teas are inspired by the legends and folklore of the magical world as well as supernatural and cottagecore aesthetics. While the branding of our teas is cute and creative, we take the quality of what we offer very seriously. We spent months finding teas we loved and we held taste-testing sessions with friends and family to vet the list down to only the most desirable. There’s nothing more disappointing than getting a fun new tea and finding out that they put more effort into the label art than they did into finding a good tea that wasn’t already stale or crushed to bits. (We put a lot of effort into our label art, to be fair, but the tea is primo.)
Our goal is to eventually turn our online shop into a brick-and-mortar tea room that doubles as a dry venue space for artists of all kinds. (What, dry venue space? Where did that come from?) That’s the purpose of the (e) in Teas(e). We want our shop to be a place where people can go enjoy the nightlife of Salem without the pressure of alcohol. We have nothing against drinking (Emilie likes mimosas), but there are many millions of drinking-age adults who do not drink. Depending on where and when you get the estimate, it’s about a third of US adults. We also want to offer “mocktails” that aren’t just juice. In other words, we want to provide a fun place where you can enjoy a carcinogen-free drink (alcohol is carcinogenic, Google it, isn’t that crazy?) without everyone one else looking at you and asking why you’re drinking water and are you drinking water because you’re pregnant don’t you just want even one drink are you sure it’s-
You get it.
How did you build your audience on social media?
If you’re just starting out building your social following, the best thing you can do is (as cliché as it sounds) be yourself. It’s all right to learn from the best and imitate what works, but ultimately no one wants to follow a copy-cat. People want originality and creativity, and every person in the world has access to that because we’re all individuals. Just because other tea companies write flowery descriptions for their tea that sound more like guided mediations doesn’t mean you have to, too.
That being said, our social media prescence is based almost entirely on an extremely niche internet meme called Goat Girl. She’s a friend of ours who dresses up like a goat-headed lady in like a 1950s house wife outfit who occasionally goes viral among the goth, metal, and witch communities on Instagram. She also is a street performer you’ll see sometimes around Halloween in Salem, MA, collecting signatures in a book. It’s spooky, and people seem to really like it. She’s the brand representative for Midnight Teas(e) and many of the people who follow her have also shown interest in buying tea from her. So, essentially, mascots work.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
Ok. This one is a doozy. Do you remember Pokéwalkers? They came out with Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver in like 2010. This was peak college-age Millennial-who-grew-up-on-Pokémon hype. They were like Tamagotchi pedometers and frankly I think they put Pokémon Go to shame. Anyway, Maureen and I were living on campus our Sophomore year and one of the school clubs was hosting a big zombie-themed nerf-gun game where if you got tagged became a zombie, but if you got nerfed you were in time-out. For some reason, I thought this would be a hilarious opportunity to wear my Star Wars Stormtrooper armor, and it was also a great way to rack up steps on the Pokéwalker. So I get to the event and there’s a girl there named Maureen who also has a Pokéwalker and she’s like, “Why don’t you clip it onto your Stormtrooper belt?” because I didn’t have pockets. So I do and it’s awesome and there’s a very cute photo of this moment somewhere. Anyway, one of the co-organizers of this zombie event was a person Maureen was dating at the time. Unknown to her, that person was trying to cheat on Maureen WITH ME. Eventually this all got found out and sorted out, and Maureen and I became life-long, inseparable, platonic-life-partner best friends and that other person went straight to Hell, from whence they came. The end.
– Emilie
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.midnighttease.com/
- Instagram: @midnightteasesalem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/midnightteas/
Image Credits
Emilie Rodgers, Maureen Bonsignore, Jeff Masella, Plenilunix, Courtney Brooke