In today’s fast-paced, high-tech world, people are longing to slow down, enjoy their lives and take time out for tea.
Tea, and the atmosphere it often creates, is like saying ‘Let’s talk.’
The owner of one rural tea room says the increasingly popular niche market is ready to rise to the challenge of creating places for face to face communication.
“We’ve come out of this ’80s and ’90s thing where it’s all about me, just this panic rush. Our world isn’t slowing down but we desperately want it to, and we want to re-connect to the past,” says Janice Regehr, who runs a tea room south of Birds Hill Park, just outside Winnipeg.
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“I think those connections to memories are linked to tea rooms. It’s all about taking time for conversation by taking time for tea.”
Regehr told a direct farm marketing conference in Brandon March 6 that tea room operators must change with the times.
That’s how her business, Pineridge Hollow near Oakbank, Man., was built. What started as a tea room five years ago has evolved to include a gift shop, plant store, craft workshop and newsletter.
Here are some trends she says tea room operators should ride:
- Clanning: People need to feel they’re part of a group. Owners might try to get a bridge club or a diners club going at their tea room.
- Cocooning: People are feeling less safe in the world, Regehr says, which opens up the possibility that tea rooms could be seen as havens.
- Revenge/indulgence: People are sick of hearing everything is high calorie. Tea rooms can do indulgence very well, Regehr says. “Go for decadence.”
- Millennium hysteria: With 2000 approaching, people are looking inward, shown by record attendance at church, and they’re looking backward to their roots. The popularity of antiques is soaring, Regehr says, and angels are showing up more in giftware lines.
“Anything that’s motivational and anything that connects us to our past is back because the future is frightening.”
