What do you want from a teashop?

[littleteapotandcake]

I'm at the very early stages of looking at taking over a teashop in a small seaside town. I would interested in finding out what you like or don't like when you visit or any advice from anyone who has done/is running a teashop now. TIA

Stay open until at least 4.30. So many tea shops put the closed sign up too early.

If you’re also serving coffee please make it decent coffee not an afterthought

plenty of milk

scones warned in an oven or warming drawer but not in a microwave

cakes that don’t have biscoff biscuits stuck on top

Nice coffee , well made and served in white cups

I don't like tea , personally , but made in a teapot and ask if people would like a mug or a China cup and saucer

Home made cakes , scones , biscuits

Interesting sandwich fillings , obviously made with good bread , not that sliced rubbish

Most important

No dogs

Please not bowels although you can buy them cheaply on Ebay sometimes.

Cosy looking. Nice tables with chairs and also sections with sofas. Crockery can be mismatched but please a proper tea pot with loose leaves.

A good variety of teas, several black, green, herbal. Coffees, hot chocolate and also cold drinks. Fresh juices, smoothies, milkshakes.

Milk in small jugs

Different cakes, homemade ideally. Same with scones.

Mix of meat, vegetarian and vegan food

I love antiques on display, we have a cafe who has all kind of old/ancient phones, radios, clocks and it's always a great topic to talk about.

Books you can read, offer to buy one for £0.50-£1 if you want to take it home.

I wouldn't go for newspapers, they are quite expensive to replace each day. Depending where you are, you could get local ones which are often free or magazines/leaflets about the area if you have a good tourist foodfall.

Clean and spacious toilets.

Children books, crayons and paper. I personally wouldn't go for toys as they need cleaning (sticky fingers after a flapjack) and while I don't mind a certain noise, I don't really want lots of toddler toys making them.

I don’t want dogs when I go to a tea room.

Spotlessly clean toilets.

Tables cleaned promptly and properly between customers, rather than a quick wipe that doesn’t remove sticky rings.

Friendly and attentive service.

Enough space between tables to get coats on and off without elbowing other diners in the head.

Good quality tea, coffee and hot chocolate served hot.

Cups/mugs with a big enough handle to get larger fingers through the hole.

If serving tea in a large pot with milk in a jug alongside, don’t be stingy with the milk.

A low-carb option - omelette with salad is safe and simple enough (a bit boring but better than nothing at all).

If serving salad as a standard garnish alongside savoury dishes, think beyond the boring iceberg-cucumber-tomato-no dressing combo. It doesn’t have to be Ottolenghi, just a little bit different. And please, no raw onion!

A small number of fresh, locally produced items done well works better than trying to spread the menu too thinly and relying on everything mass-produced and microwaved.

Staying open until 6pm, even only in tourist season, could be a smart move if every other teashop in the place closes at 4pm.

Invest in a kettle. Lots of coffee shops now make tea with the warm water from their coffee machine instead, but decent tea does need hot water to brew properly.

Good home baking

Tea in china cups

Clea

No dogs

I live in a seaside town. There are a dozen or so tearooms and cafes competing for the trade. I run a holiday home business and know that the budget of many tourists is dwindling. Therefore, visitors who would have paid for a full cream tea are now buying from a supermarket and self-catering. Factor in your low season, business rates, energy costs, staff cost, insurance etc in your business plan. I work as a volunteer helping small traders facing legal disputes. Many pubs and cafes are in big financial trouble due to COVID and cost of living inflation impact. If you are going ahead, you should think about the following: long open hours into the evening, good ordering and recycling policies to reduce your food waste, good WIFI, vegan/ gluten free options, dairy free milk, decent Victorian sponge, renting cafe space to social/ hobby groups, becoming a community hub for local events, marketing to local accommodation suppliers (bring in tourists and you get a discount...that would work as an incentive for me. Discount coupons to tourist attractions/ hotels/ guest houses etc to hand out to their service users). I took my kids into the city the other day for a coffee and cake. We walked in a new cafe and they wanted £4.10 for a slice of cake. I walked right out the door, into Tesco and picked up a whole sponge for us to take home. Eating out has got expensive, and I refuse to pay those prices on principle. I appreciate a cafe will have running costs but there is a ceiling on how much I will pay for a piece of sponge. Best of luck if you do take this on.

Efficient friendly service . Dog friendly. What's on the menu is available. Clean etc goes without saying . Oh and I don't want gender neutral toilets .

As a frequenter of tea shops, I would want:

• nicely warmed PLAIN scones (a favourite tearoom of mine changed hands recently and now only serves fruit scones - they lost a regular customer there!)
• A pot of hot water to go along with the teapot (so you can top up at leisure)
• good selection of cakes - But nothing too fancy, traditional ones are fine. They can be on display but covered.
• nothing too chintzy and cluttered. Mismatched China is fine but I don’t like places which look like major dust traps.
• don’t neglect the bathroom! Clean lines and clutter free.
• NO DOGS
• NO MUSIC. The same place that stopped serving plain scones (mentioned above), had music blaring out too. I did ask if they could turn it down and the staff didn’t look impressed- it was essentially for their benefit.
• tables that are big enough to accommodate everything- nothing worse than trying to squeeze on all the plates, cups, teapots etc. Make sure they don’t wobble too!

Think that’s about everything. Good luck!

Exactly. If you are going to offer to heated scones (so wrong - a good, fresh scone with a spread of cool, slightly salted butter is a thing of beauty) then always check the customer wants it warmed.

Its all about the staff.

Staff with hair tied back . Hate being served by someone with loose long hair.

Don't allow them to ask if "You guys OK?" . I am definitely not a guy.
Don't allow staff to return to the kitchen empty handed. Clear and clean tables when passing. It will result in a quicker turnover of customers and looks like you care about appearances.

I think I err on the side of robust and friendly over twee and knick-knacky.
Clean
Choice of plain food for fussy children - squash, plain cheese/ham sandwich etc
It's great to have luxury cakes but some healthy options, salads and fruit,etc.
Choice of cup or mug for tea
Good quality decaf tea and coffee options
Not too crowded with spindly little chairs and tablecloths and doylies everywhere. DH is tall he can hardly sit down in a place like that.
Sofas
Hire out to knitting clubs etc in the evening
Dog and pushchair friendly would be a bonus.

PS I'll eat all the cheese scones

Decent tea, not one cheapo teabag swimming in a litre of water. Nice cakes and biscuits. Scones that are still warm with jam and cream.

We have a lovely tea room near us. Mismatched China and old cutlery. Everything made to order. Dog friendly. And best of all there's shelves full of lovely china and locally sourced bits n bobs...all for sale.

A shelf selling a selection of those chick lit novels about women who give up their busy busy city life to go and run a tea shop they inherit from their Godmother 😂
No dogs inside.
No music or very low level music.
Decent selection of cold drinks different to the usual can of Coke/Fanta/Sprite or Orange/Apple juice.
I like milkshakes. The ones that are basically milk mixed with nesquik.
Sandwiches made to order so I can have a tomato sandwich (literally just butter and sliced tomatoes).
Open past 4pm.

As a coffeeshop owner I agree with most of your points but in my shop cheese scones outsell the fruit every day, often 2:1.

A lot of the requests on here are unfortunately not economical at all. You don't want public WiFi so people are sitting all day hogging a table to work whilst spending the absolute minimum.

Free water in glasses...your water isn't free, buying glasses costs and cleaning glasses costs. Unless you are licensed you are under no obligation to offer free tap water.

Sort furnishings, what a nightmare to keep pristine!

Ultimately, you'll be running a business and obviously a lot of the points like cleanliness, friendliness etc are important, some of the others are not economical or good business sense.

We offer items that are free from gluten but we can't realistically offer complete GF as we have no space for an extra fryer, toaster, sandwich press, microwave etc, it's just not viable in a multi use kitchen

Our biggest draw is our cakes, we have a 2m patisserie fridge and make everything ourselves on the premises, we have lots of regulars who travel miles for our cake!

Feel free to pm me!

Really good coffee and tea. Fresh delicious cakes and good bread/ingredients. Cheerful service. Cleanliness

Clean is the most important factor.
I have been in so many over the years with grubby curtains, dusty ornaments and sticky tabletops.
I understand the desire for it to look cosy and welcoming but at least keep it clean!
Honestly, it puts me right off.

An option for filling reusable water bottles up.
A savoury afternoon tea option and a sweet afternoon tea option.
Proper hot chocolate
A selection of cakes, scones and sandwiches.
Traditional as well as more unique items and flavour combinations.
Somewhere that has it's own style and doesn't just blend in with every other cafe and tea room in the town.

What I mean is, just about every tea room you go in will offer cheese, plain and fruit scones etc and chocolate, Victoria or coffee and walnut sponge and egg, cheese or ham sandwiches. Obviously you need the crowd pleasing options, but sometimes it's fun to have different items, like raspberry scones and biscoff cake etc. A lot of places do cake of the day or scone of the day where you sometimes get the fun and unusual flavours as well as the classic favourites.

Clean single sex toilets please.
No chintzy stuff around.
Rustic plain furniture.
No linen.
Homemade local cakes.

Please use proper numbers. This one gives me the rage. I won''t come back!!

Coffee 4.1
Salted Caramel Cake 3.7