Today someone sent us a message and asked us very nicely why we no longer have the roll cake or tart on the normal opening day menu. Although we have explained in the past I think I am going to give an overview of how much the teahouse has changed over these three and a half years of opening.

I love visiting coffee houses, but sometimes when I want to write a diary or read a book I find it hard to find somewhere that is less crowded or quiet. I had the idea of opening a place that would be more suitable for this, which I believe also has an atmosphere that fits well with Japanese tea.  

When the doors first opened in late July 2016, it attracted more attention than we could handle. We used to have 10-15 people waiting inside, in addition to the old maximum seating capacity of 12 people. When you are trying to concentrate to prepare tea but there are people walking around and taking photos, even small sounds made by many people become overall quite noisy. One day in our first December (2016), J was quite sick and I had to open by myself. I decided to move the whole waiting queue outside of the teahouse. Straight away I noticed how much impact it had. I felt more relaxed to prepare tea and I truly believed the tea tasted better. Since that day, we have had the queue outside of the teahouse. That also had the benefit of a much easier working atmosphere and one that we believe customers could appreciate more - but brought us significant criticism. We were shouted at, swore at, the outside wall was kicked, and a lot of tears. If J is not the most positive and supportive person I have ever met, I do not think Cha-ology would still exist. 

After a year of opening, we introduced table reservation, starting with just one table and shortly moving to completely reservation only. In the beginning we only had a couple of no shows each month then gradually the numbers became higher and we introduced £4 deposit (which gets taken off the bill upon visit) and now increased to £10 (also taken off the bill upon visit) since December 2019. We also dropped to a maximum of 8 people seating about a year ago. This decision was made because we had complaints about allowing three people to sit and they felt awkward about minimal chatting. This was our fault, as we had already learned in the first year that a higher number of people would encourage more noise. 

Moving onto the sweets. Because of the big matcha boom around the world, mainly for sweets, it is very easy for a place that serves matcha and matcha sweets to be viewed as a dessert house. Our demand for sweets was way higher than the tea. Through explaining the tea menu, we saw that some people had no interest in the tea and only came for sweets or photos. When they were sold out, people became angry. Sometimes people would order just for the photos and take one bite of everything leaving the rest for us to throw away, or taking pictures for too long leaving hot items to become cold, or ice cream melting etc. For me, it was like a knife stabbed in the heart, as I prepared each of the items on the menu. We then decided to rethink the whole structure of the business and gradually move to a very small sweets menu, with the main ‘dessert’ items moving to preorder collection only. That way, we think customers who are interested in sweets can preorder and collect on a specific date and time, and there is no need to queue outside of the tea house and will not face the scenario of travelling to us only for what they wanted to be sold out. Also, with less time spent on making sweets we are able to have casual Sundays and are planning to open one extra time slot for one or two days in the near future. 

What I want to say is that these past three and a half years have been a big learning curve. To those who have been following us since the beginning and have stuck around, supporting and believing in us and the teahouse, we could not be more thankful and can only repay you with this atmosphere we try our absolute best to protect and to prepare high quality tea with care. 

There are so many so many things behind the scenes of a business, especially a small business that is run by only one or two people. Although we have lost customers through our changes and we make less money now, we have gained many customers who are interested in Japanese tea, and who appreciate the atmosphere this tea house provides. 

Things that haven’t changed since we opened the doors are our beliefs to prepare a delicious cup of Japanese tea with care and to spread the knowledge of it. We hope to continue to do so. 

This year is about reinforcing our beliefs. We are planning to make some changes to the tea bar and some small refurbishments around the tea bar+kitchen area in the next few months. 

In closing, it is a good time to say that starting from February there will be a number of price increases on the tea menu. We hope customers can appreciate the unique rarity of the atmosphere (which requires sacrificing customer volume), and the incredible quality of the tea we serve (along with the explanation and preparation). 

If you have stayed and read till the end, thank you for your patience and understanding. This photo is our new addition to the menu, gyokuro umami bomb, brewed with 5 grams of winter Yame dentou hon gyokuro in cold spring water for 5 minutes, followed with a hot serving and tea leaves with ponzu to enjoy. Available for both tea bar and platform table customers. We also have a new tea experience menu for the tea bar coming soon.