The Happy Teacup: from a school project to a business

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By: Emily Lougee

Staff Writer

Two Hudson Valley students turned their school assignment into a business.

The idea started as a hypothetical business students, Jamie Gauthier and Alan Robinson had to work on for the Professor Joanna Mather’s Intro to Entrepreneurship class they were taking together.

Each group was assigned to create a business. Gauthier had suggested that their project be an organic tea shop. The class was structured so that each student would work on developing businesses that lead up to a trade show at the end of the semester.

“While working on the project we just decided to go for it and bring it into the real world,” Gauthier said.

On September 1, the two Hudson Valley students brought their school project into the real business world as a kiosk, in Colonie Center Mall just 4 months after passing their class with an A.

“People ask us how we are going to compete with [local tea sellers.] The market is big enough that we do not need to complete,” Robinson said.

“Right now we are more like a wine store, where [the local tea shops] are more like going to a vineyard. Everything they sell they make themselves. We definitely do that a little mixing, but our main focus is working with distributors to get that tea out to the masses,” said Robinson.

In order for them to sell tea, the they work with local suppliers to get the tea leaves they need. The two also work with different people to turn the leaves they buy into their company’s own custom blends of tea.

“I quality test all of our tea personally, so whenever we go to a new distributor we make sure to get samples of what we are buying to make sure it is up to par with what we are trying to sell,” Robinson said.

The company has had a few incidents where they have gotten low quality product from a supplier and bought tea something was labeled as organic and they found upon further investigation that it was not. In both cases they prioritized quality and sent it back.  

“We make sure that what we label the tea as is exactly what it is,” said Robinson.

The Happy Tea Cup sells a variety of different types of tea, such as black tea, green tea and herbal teas. Some of their teas also have some healing properties.

“We have a ginger [tea] that helps stomach aches. Teas are good for sore throats and headaches,” Gauthier said. They also carry an antioxidant tea, believed to be beneficial to the body in many ways. The Happy Teacup offers hot or cold tea with the option of ordering order a flavor they already have or mix flavors together to create your own. They sell bags of loose leaf tea. Before opening the Happy Teacup, Robinson found it was very hard to find organic tea, and that when he did it was very expensive. Gauthier and Robinson were able to get a good deal with Coline Center that allowed them to keep their prices affordable. They also offer discounts for students and they have a point system similar to many successful businesses. For every dollar you spend, you get two points, and when you reach one hundred and fifty points you save five dollars on your total order.The Happy Teacup is open from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. every day of the week except Sunday when the hours are 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.. Both Gauthier and Robinson work at the kiosk during its hours of operation. Running/ working at a kiosk while still taking classes is a lot to take on. In order to know how to run a business, one needs to have the right knowledge to make it work. Gauthier and Robinson got that knowledge from Hudson Valley and their respective degree programs. This kiosk not only shows them that they can do it, but it also shows other students that they can do things like this and succeed.