Starting a vegan tea house in a city of cafes

Notes on why we opened in Brunswick rather than the south, and what it has cost us in shop visits and gained in workshop quiet.

The Vegan Teahouse was supposed to open in Fitzroy. We had a lease on a narrow shopfront half a block north of Gertrude Street, walked the room with a builder, drew the elevations, and pulled the application four days before we were due to sign. The pull was unromantic. The numbers did not work for the kind of shop we wanted, which was a workshop first and a counter second.

Brunswick gave us a different room. Higher ceilings, more bench, a smaller front door, and a council that does not mind herbalists drying nettle on a roof rack. The trade-off is foot traffic. We get one third the walk-ins of the Fitzroy shop we did not take. We make about half again the products. Most of our sales now come from the workshop side: small wholesale to four cafes, a quarterly online release, and the regulars who walk over from Sydney Road for a tin of camille and a chat.

We are vegan because we are. There is no animal product in any blend, never has been. The bigger philosophical choice was to commit to whole-leaf, whole-flower botany rather than tincture and capsule. Tinctures and capsules are easier to retail, longer shelf life, simpler to price. They are also harder to taste. Tea is honest about itself. If we have brewed a bad batch you will know on the first sip. That accountability is the point.

The name is plain, and that is on purpose. We are a vegan tea house in the loosest sense of the word. We sell tea, but tea is the most accessible form of what we do, not the boundary of it. The shelves carry single-herb tisanes, two blended tisanes, dried botanicals for cooking, and a small range of culinary salts and shrubs. The seasonal release calendar shifts every three months. The bench is open Wednesday through Saturday, the workshop runs the other days.

If you ever want to start a small vegan tea house, the only advice that has held for us is to take the smaller room. The smaller room forces decisions. We make twelve products well rather than thirty products poorly. The room is the editor.