Teavana Bar, New York - New Starbucks Venture Coming to Tokyo

I heard today from news in Japan that Starbucks is opening their new venture of Teavana Bar in Tokyo soon. This reminded me of my visit in New York last summer (2014) when I visited their first concept store in New York.  I think this is another brilliant new idea Starbucks is coming up like their Starbucks Reserve venture (see my previous post about Starbucks Reserve.)

Teavana Bar is first opened in the upper east side of Manhattan in October of 2013. (see news about their opening)  The concept is that they make specialized tea drinks (like Chai Tea Latte) based on the selections of wide variety of teas from Teavana.  Teavana is a Georgia base tea company started in 1997 and bought by Starbucks in December of 2012; they have more than 400 stores mostly in US and Canada as of now(2015). If you have lived in US, you must have seen them in many of shopping malls where they sell selections of tea, and they serve the samples in extremely heavy teapot that breaks the arm by holding them.  I always enjoyed to have a bit of sample each time I walk by their shop. After Starbucks purchased Teavana, they have started a new venture to bring the tea industry and tea drinkers into specialized drinks.   I am a big coffee fan, and not too much of tea drinker; however, knowing what Starbucks have done to change the coffee industry, if there is someone who can change the tea industry would be them I think.

And here is my experience when I visited the first Teavana Bar.

Teavana Bar is located 2 blocks from Lexington Avenue/63rd. St. Station in upper east side of Manhattan.  It takes about 20 minutes via Subway from Times Square where most of the tourists visit, so I was surprised that they built their first concept store outside of busy location. (That was back in 2014, now there is another shop on Broadway.) I guess they wanted to test out their concept to see how the upper middle class people react.  As you get out of the subway station, you notice that the area is for wealthy city living; all the shops around the area are targeting high-end residential shoppers in the area, no hotdog stands.

Outside First Teavana Bar, NYC

Once you go inside, the shop is not big but you see the clean simple modern design with tea cans stacked up to the ceiling like their Teavana shops in the mall.

The look inside is somewhat similar to Starbucks

They let you smell their teas that is stacked up to the wall.

I was surprised to see that there are very few people in the shop.  When I visited last summer (2014), the shop has only been open for half an year, and this was the only Teavana Shop available anywhere back then.  I heard the news, and I even come all the way from Portland to visit. I expected some more people to be in the shop.

Less people helped me to enjoy more though.  I had a very nice chat with Barista and she has helped me to pick the right tea that I liked.  She asked me what kind of teas I like, I told her that I like coffee but that didn't help. I honestly don't know much about tea so I told her that I like Ooolong tea, and she let me select ones from the line of Oolong. I had a nice time chatting with Barista, and that selection process took me 10 minutes or so.  I thank that there were less people in the shop, if there are miles of people waiting behind me, I wouldn't have enjoyed this 10 minutes with the Barista.  I guarantee you that the experience will not be the same in Tokyo!

I have different options for how the tea is to be prepared for me. Sounds familiar, isn't it?

Barista asks me how I want the tea to be prepared, I decided to go with latte style.  She tells me that the selection of the tea that I selected goes very well with milk.  That is great.  She is now preparing the tea for me.  The process looked pretty similar to how espresso is being made.  I wonder if "Barista" is a good word for them serving tea, but with the effort of making the perfect cup, I would think a word "Barista" surely fits what they are doing.

The cup is nicely designed.

They have printed label like Starbucks

Now I have my drink ready.  The first thing I notice when I hold the cup is the texture of the cup.  It has the embedded design which has very nice feeling in hand.  There is a printed label sticker with the information about the order; we are all pretty familiar with this concept from espresso coffee by now, but first time I see on tea. 

As I said earlier, I am not too much of a tea drinker, but I truly did enjoy the fresh experience of Starbucks Teavana Bar. I hope this soon becomes a norm of choice when we look for a place to sit down for a nice afternoon tea in each city.