What's So Special About a Tearoom?

What's so special about a tearoom? Is it the building? The gardens? The menu? Is it about how many teapots adorn the entranceway or the teacups and saucers lining the shelves in the back? What about the table dressings? What does the waitress look like? Is the food homemade or is it brought in from somewhere? What about the atmosphere? Do they have soup? All are good questions and the answers vary from tearoom to tearoom. What makes people want to go to a tearoom?

People want enchantment and something different. If it was all about fast food they would be at any given establishment that spends thousands of dollars on advertising, telling anyone that will listen that the food chain is where it is at.

Offering something different in the way of a tearoom gives the public an opportunity to escape from the mundane and embrace some culture. Offering up quality tea and food leads to life-enhancing moments, good memories and promotes general well-being to all who care to take part in the adventure. Tearooms generate positive energy that is beneficial to everyone all the way from the customer, to the servers, to the owners themselves. Even people who come in contact with a person who visited a tearoom benefit, because that visitor will be in a good mood. People who have had an exceptional tearoom experience will be talking about their visit for days, months or even years later.

Impressing your guests comes easy when you as a server or hostess/host (the ladies would swoon on the rare occasion that my husband would serve) genuinely enjoy offering the unique experience of tearoom culture. The more you know about what you are serving the better. At the Ivy Tea Room, we offered a large variety of loose teas which we also sold in the gift shop. We made it a point to know everything we could about the teas including little stories about our products. An example is one tea named Ti Kwan Yin - the Iron Goddess of Mercy, who blessed a poor tea grower. Another tea was Wendy's Blend that was invented by my sister who knew that green tea was good for her but she didn't enjoy the taste of it. Her solution was to blend her favourite vanilla cream with blueberry green tea (which she didn't mind so much). Now she enjoys it every day.

Longevity is another matter. How many days/years can one do this for? It depends on the customer flow and how lucky the owner is at finding the right kind of servers to offer up the experience intended. The magic of a tearoom can only last for as long as the owner and the tea hostesses can keep the magic happening. Burnout and fatigue eventually do prey on those who are charged with delivering the ultimate tearoom experience.

We managed to last seven and a half years. This number matched the original group of ladies that first graced the tearoom with their presence. We will miss all of our customers. They came in all shapes and sizes from every walk of life. Some came from as far away as New Zealand, Japan, and Australia while others were as close as from across the street. We enjoyed visiting and serving our regular customers who would come in from nearby communities such as Port Elgin, Kincardine and Owen Sound. Thank you to all who visited and helped fulfil the dream of owning and operating The Ivy Tea Room & Craft Studio in the Village of Paisley.