We were lucky to catch up with Yin Guan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Yin thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

The mission of Broken Cup Teahouse is to bring people together to experience beauty in a cup.

On bringing people together: tea has been a part of hospitality in every culture you find tea in. The tea plant, Camellia sinensis, evolved 20,000 years ago in the corner of the world that is now southwestern China, northern Thailand and Vietnam, and eastern India. In human culture, there are remains of tea in Chinese royal tombs dating as far back as 400 BC. But the real rise of tea culture happened in the 700s, in Tang dynasty China, and can be linked to the rise of Buddhism. The popularization of tea is often explained as the caffeinated beverage of choice that kept Buddhist monks and nuns awake during meditation, but what people often miss is its role as a social beverage, an alternative to water and alcohol that could be enjoyed by monastics and laypeople together.

Even though tea and coffee are often lumped together solely on the basis of both plants containing caffeine, I think their cultures couldn’t be more different. Nowadays, coffee culture is characterized by a very individualistic grab-and-go vibe; people drink it first thing in morning to kickstart their day. Even when enjoyed during a break, it’s usually no more than 15-20 minutes, so as not to take away too much time from work. Whereas coffee is often used as a supplement and an aid for individual productivity and efficiency, traditional Asian tea culture has a different rhythm and purpose. The kind of tea culture I love the most and want to promote is a slow and intimate affair; it can take up a whole morning, afternoon, or evening. There is nothing more luxurious, I think, than sharing good tea with good company in a simple and unhurried way. This is the mission of Broken Cup Teahouse: to create a space and a culture that gives people permission to slow down and experience a different rhythm in an endlessly busy city, and to cherish the goodness and beauty of this moment.

The beauty of tea itself is the second part of our mission. Beauty, I think, is an underappreciated value. In today’s world, we value things like functionality, convenience, and efficiency – but beauty is often sacrificed for these other aspects. The kinds of teas that we source – handpicked and handcrafted single-origin, small-batch, premium full leaf teas – these are teas that are intentionally made the hard way, with a lot of manual labor that goes into growing and harvesting the tea in remote and mountainous places, little sleep during tea making season, enduring the heat of charcoal roasting pits during hot and humid summers, and so on and so forth. They are made in this way because the tea makers are invested in making beautiful teas, that cannot be mass produced or achieved by using shortcuts. So as a tea drinker and tea seller, for me it is important to honor the arduous labor, deep knowledge, and splendid craftsmanship of the tea makers themselves and share their stories. You do not have to be a connoisseur to taste the difference; simply by paying attention when you drink one of our teas, you will be able to experience their beauty in your cup.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Yin and I founded Broken Cup Teahouse in early 2022, after dreaming about it for the past 5 years. I have been drinking tea my whole life; growing up, I had a lot of green tea and jasmine green tea with my mom, and then later as a young adult I became a “serious tea drinker” about 10 years ago, after falling deeply in love with tea culture while working in Taiwan.

Falling in love with tea was a very organic process for me. You start with just one cup, then another… if you’re like me, fast forward a few years and you’ll be planning tea-themed trips across the world! In the same way that I am now introducing people to tea, I was first introduced to tea myself by others. So in this way, tea is a kind of cultural heritage and legacy, I think, that has been passed down through civilization for thousands of years, from one person to another, and from one cup to another. I really love tea and tea culture. It is a source of peace, wisdom, and deep and quiet happiness for me, and a way to share something beautiful with other people in a world that can sometimes be filled with hostility and hatred. So it is something I believe in and find worth dedicating my life’s work to.

A former mentor of mine used to say, when you think about what you want to do in your future, ask yourself what kind of table you want to sit at, who you’re sitting with and what kind of decisions you want to make. I realized that for me, it’s a tea table. I love the feeling of sitting together with people around a tea table, the simplicity of enjoying good tea and each other’s company. My dream is to open a small teahouse that is a place of beauty as well as a community hub, a place that connects people with one another and with good tea.

Currently, Broken Cup Teahouse is a pop-up teahouse that hosts public, private, and corporate tea events. We offer our teas for sale online at brokencupteahouse.com, and at local seasonal markets. You can also find our teas at a handful of spots around Boston, Cambridge and Somerville – I feel very fortunate to be supported in our mission by these partnerships with like-minded local small businesses; among them are a cafe, two specialty food stores, and even a cheesecake bakery. I am grateful to our small business friends who believe in our mission and products, share a love for quality grown and crafted food and beverages, and bring people together to appreciate them! You can check find the full list of our stockists at brokencupteahouse.com.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Our growth has been organic since day 1. Even when people find us on social media, it’s actually the “word of mouth” from our customers that helps us spread the word!

Even though we are small, we have a solid base of loyal customers who are excited about our teas and trust in our curation. Our email newsletter, for example, has a high number of opens in less than 24h after it is sent. I really believe in growing organically, through sourcing great products and taking the time to educate people about them. What I am interested in is not making a quick sale, but rather in building something long-term with a solid foundation.

I remember hearing the story of the Patagonia clothing brand, when the CEO was doing this counterintuitive strategy of capping the company growth at 7% a year. Luckily as a small business we have been growing faster than that! But I have always kept that idea in the back of my mind. Instead of trying to grow as fast as possible like some other businesses perhaps, I am trying to grow Broken Cup Teahouse in a slower but consistent and solid way, so that it can be around for a long time. My goal is not to try to rush and make Broken Cup Teahouse into a national tea brand within a few years; it’s more about using the business to make a social impact, and impact is something that can only be built over time.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

By nature I’m a pretty private person, so for a long time I intentionally avoided putting myself in front of the camera for Broken Cup Teahouse. I told myself that I didn’t want to make BCT about me, that it was about the teas, and that the quality of the tea should speak for itself.

Eventually, I realized that fostering human connection is a key aspect of the BCT project, and that I too am part of the community I’m trying to build. So there’s no reason I need to get out of my way to avoid the camera; I am part of BCT’s story, and BCT is part of my story.

I had never used Instagram before I started Broken Cup Teahouse. On Instagram, I realized that I wanted to help people connect with the brand on a meaningful level, both personally and emotionally. Putting myself and my face up there has been instrumental for that goal.

So the lesson for me was realizing that making myself visible, putting my name and my face out there for Broken Cup Teahouse, doesn’t have to be about ego or narcissism; it’s actually in line with the overall mission of BCT, which is not just about tea, but also about connecting people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://brokencupteahouse.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brokencupteahouse
• Other: Our online store: https://brokencupteahouse.square.site/ Our journal/newsletter: https://brokencupteahouse.substack.com/

Image Credits
Yin Guan Rafael Mollica