The Earl Grey set will soon have a wider range of places to choose milk or honey and decide between one lump or two.
More New Yorkers drink coffee than tea, but regular tea drinkers still represent about half the city’s population, said Joseph Simrany, president of the Manhattan-based Tea Association of the U.S.A., and for entrepreneurs opening tea shops here, that fraction should form the backbone of an underserved customer base.
While the proposed tea places will vary in styles and menus, all will emphasize that tea is more than a companion beverage to coffee.
“There is an underdeveloped niche for people who want to relax and dine in a whimsical and fun atmosphere,” said a business plan for Alice’s Tea Cup, which opened its tea cafeacute; on the Upper West Side at 102 West 73rd Street five years ago and just added an Upper East Side location at 156 East 64th Street last year.
Alice’s mission is “to create a fun and relaxed atmosphere while allowing busy people a chance to unwind, have a meeting, or spend some quality time with friends or family,” the plan said.
Robin Abrams, executive vice president at the Lansco Corporation and chair of the Real Estate Board of New York’s retail committee, foresees a tea shop influx.
“I think tea cafes will be one of the next retail trends,” Abrams said.
Tea salons have already cropped up in chichi areas of Manhattan, Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights. But Manhattan will likely see the majority of the new breed of beverage sellers, Abrams said. “I think it’s really focused in Manhattan much the same way the coffee tenants opened 15 years ago,” she said.
A Lansco broker, Jon Callegari, negotiated space for Tavalon Tea Bar at 22 East 14th Street off Union Square West early this year. He said the tea retailer has done well, and is looking for other retail spots in high-traffic locations in the city.
About 100 specialty tea retailers are already established in New York City, excluding the hundreds of coffeehouses and fine restaurants that sell high-quality tea, said the Tea Association’s Simrany.
Other well-known tea rooms include Wild Lily Tea Room in Chelsea, singer Moby’s vegetarian Teany cafeacute; on the Lower East Side and the West Village’s Tea & Sympathy. Before the Plaza Hotel closed, afternoon tea there was an institution for generations.
Still, no key retailer has paved the way for a tea revolution.
A Boston tea purveyor, whose business was founded in 1897, said tea does not rival coffee. Why else would he sell coffee at his Timeless Teas cafeacute; and store?
“Tea is still rather, I would say, foreign in this country,” said owner Ysuff Salie. “It’s not as known as coffee.”
Despite his success, Salie sees no reason to enter the New York market given his thriving Web-based business.
“This is about the fifth time tea shops have done this,” said broker Faith Hope Consolo, chairwoman of the retail leasing and sales division at Prudential Douglas Elliman. “There are a dozen in the whole city; that’s how poorly it was received until now.”
What the tea market lacks, she said, is a cult following. “You have no one that is the guru of tea that has come into the market,” Consolo said.
Consolo is negotiating 12 deals for wholesaler T Salon & T Emporium in Harlem, Greenwich Village, the East Village, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Brooklyn Heights, LaGuardia and Kennedy airports, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, to be rolled out over 12 months, she said. The inaugural one will open in Chelsea Market in December.
The owner, Miriam Novalle, whom Consolo calls “The Tea Lady,” opened a 4,000-square-foot showroom this year on the fourth floor of the Chelsea Arts Building at 134 West 26th Street. The Tea Lady recently closed the formal tearoom at 11 East 20th Street.
“She is going to make this, she feels, a tea town,” Consolo said.
Like coffee, tea has morphed into more of a hybrid beverage.
“It’s almost like a Starbucks meets Jamba Juice in tea because they have these drinks that are tea-based, but taste more like a treat than a serious tea drink,” said Bruce Spiegel, senior managing director of commercial leasing at Rose Associates. He speculates that tea could become the new alternative for the fast-beverage market and a viable retail operation in Manhattan.
“I think there’s a big demand for it,” Spiegel said. “There certainly has been an influx of certain kinds of tea companies and tea shops.”
Not all brokers have the same perspective on the beverage market.
Jeffrey Roseman, executive vice president and a principal of Newmark Knight Frank, the firm that represented the Chelsea Arts Building in the T Salon & T Emporium deal, said it was “ridiculous” to think that tea shops would become as ubiquitous as coffee shops.
While “tea is a very viable product,” he said, “I’m not sure I see tea breaking out of the shadows of coffee. There’s just not that much pent-up demand.”
Roseman said that about three years ago, his company represented the Boston-based tea retailer Tealuxe when it opened an unsuccessful retail business on 115th Street and Broadway.
“They came into New York and got their head handed to them,” Roseman said.