I’ll be honest with you, as I sit here writing this post about my experience earlier this week with The Urban Tea Merchant, I have a feeling that tea afficianados/appreciators/advocates who previously were unaware, are in for a surprise; a Winnie-the-Pooh type of surprise.

Approaching its fifth anniversary, The Urban Tea Merchant is located at G3-825 Main Street, nestled neatly inside The Village at Park Royal, West Vancouver’s meticulously appointed merchant mecca.

From the outside, The Urban Tea Merchant is conservatively dressed and rather unassuming (see image to the right). But that’s where the music stops in this musical chair analogy.

Walking through the doors of The Urban Tea Merchant is, and I’m not kidding when I say this, an affable assault of the senses.

What first jumped to my mind, aside from the pleasant aromas, was a cross between a three-dimensional National Geographic exhibit and a stroll down New York’s ritzy Fifth Avenue.

Visually speaking, The Urban Tea Merchant’s décor is pretty much what you’d expect from a boutique that distributes gourmet French tea (The O Dor) – impressive.

What grabs you like a vice grip, is The Urban Tea Merchant’s selection of The O Dor, which can best described as:

• Vast (loose leaf The O Dor from China, India, Japan and Morocco - my favourite was China’s Yin Zhen)
• Diverse (jams, tea lattes, tea smoothies, tea-infused chocolates, Thomas Haas desserts)
• Pleasantly packaged in an array candy-colored canisters (each hand painted and holding around three ounces of tea)
• Exclusively priced (canisters cost ~$30)

But let’s put appearances and product aside for a second. There are two aspects of The Urban Tea Merchant (and The O Dor) that I want to focus on here:

1) The Experience

Tea drinking is nothing new. In fact, tea was supposedly discovered as far back as 2700 B.C. when the second emperor of China, Shen Nung, had leaves blow into his cup of hot water (or so the story goes).

I’m not old enough or interested enough to elaborate on that any further. What I can do, though, is connect tea to Winnie-the-Pooh to illustrate a point.

Originally hailing from Winnipeg, and a life-long Winnie-the-Pooh fan, I have always thought A.A. Milne, the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, to be quite the clever guy.

And when it comes to tea, he had a very valid point:

A Proper Tea is much nicer than a Very Nearly Tea, which is one you forget about afterwards.

And a Proper Tea (read: the experience in The Urban Tea Merchant’s Salon) is exactly what you get. In other words, it isn’t soon to be an experience I’ll forget.

But don’t take my word for it (the following is a quote one of our readers emailed me about her experiences with The Urban Tea Merchant):

The Urban Tea Merchant is one of my favorite places to meet my mom and girlfriends. The cafe has a quiet, calm atmosphere, perfect for catching up over a hot cup of tea. I have always been greeted warmly, experienced timely service and never hesitate to order the fresh-baked scone with tasty jam! (Laura)

What makes the experience jump out of the pot for you though, is the way in which the staff at The Urban Tea Merchant treat you. Which leads me to my next point…

2) The Staff

As sure as a hummingbird is drawn to a bowl of sugar water, so too are the staff I encountered at The Urban Tea Merchant eager to help you/educate you/please you when it comes to The O Dor and the tea experience.

I thought that the following review from Anna pretty much captured exactly what I’m trying to say:

If you enjoy and appreciate Tea you’re sure too love this place. The servers have a real passion for tea. They have Tea Bar set up near the back where a trained specialist will help you choose a tea if your just looking to buy and brew at home. They also have a section where you sit down and are given a list of teas and desserts. You then enjoy the atmosphere and hopefully your company! (Anna)

The questions I asked of both Candy Harvey and Casey James, who were both working on the day I was in, were answered not only in the appropriate amount of detail (so I could get back to my Mac and tell you), but with something you can’t teach - passion.

And, in my view (for what it’s worth), if your employees are passionate about what they do (reference Anna’s quote above) and you are selling a top-quality product (reference everything else I’ve written above), then I think, you’ve got a business with a lot of road left to run on.

Full points to The Urban Tea Merchant for causing me to wake up and smell the tea…with a pronounced touch of class.

Enjoy.

darren