Ep. 104 Jule Gilchrist from Cuppa Tea

Barb
Are you ready to make the phone ring, the door swing and the till ding? One of the best kept secrets in any community is its network of local businesses. But no more secrets. From the skinned knee lessons that will make you wince, to the tell all exposees. These everyday people are doing extraordinary things in their businesses.

Barb
Today we’re sharing the secrets of Cuppa t’ Teas in Regina’s Cathedral neighborhood. These are the stories you thought you’d only hear on a Friday night over a cold bevi or quietly over a glass of wine. They are the gooders.

Barb
Welcome to The Secret Life of local. I’m your host Barb McGrath, Googlegirl and local business cheerleader. I’ve been helping local businesses thrive for over 20 years. From online businesses to multi location stores. You can turn browsers to buyers and thinkers to doers. Let’s find out how.

Barb
Today’s guest is Jule Gilchrist from Cuppa T’. So Jule get us started. Tell us a little bit about yourself and Cuppa T’ teas in Regina’s Cathedral neighborhood.

Jule
Well, I love tea. Back in the early 80s there was a tea store. And I was working and I would like probably half of my paycheck would go in there. Yep. And it was an oddity and it was way before its time. And then I am a, I would say ex social worker. So hey, when it was time for me to leave my career, this opportunity to have a tea store came up and I jumped at it. So that was 16 years ago. Okay. And I have never looked back. We are nestled in the cathedral area, which I absolutely love. Yeah. And we’ve kind of grown from there. And most of our teas come from Germany. So they have quite a stricter, higher standard, they tend to kind of test for a lot more things about 500. And I think it’s 27 items. One item shows up back to the country of origin. So they deal in a lot of clean tea. Okay, which is good because of the amount I drink.

Barb
Okay, but tell me about that, like what are they testing for? What would a tea that’s not clean be or have in it?

Jule
Contaminants? So they’re not heavily big on organics, they’re more into well, this isn’t a good substance if it shows up we’re sending it back. Some teas are grown in areas where the fluoride is too high. And that fluoride is absorbed into the tea. So if it has a little bit too much of that back to the country of origin. Believe it or not, the tea you drink has bug parts in it.

Barb
Oh my goodness. Are you serious? Okay. Yes. I don’t want to know this, I think.

Jule
And if it’s too high, we’ll go back to our country of origin. So they’re quite strict. Actually, any food you eat or give is gonna have some bug parts.

Barb
That’s so excellent. Talk about my appetite for the day. Oh, okay. So, when you first started the store, have you always carried teas from Germany? Like, like, how did you find this out? Because that’s not common knowledge stuff?

Jule
No, um, I carried from a wonderful company in Toronto. And they carry kind of more mid grade T, okay. And then we were kind of looking around just exploring. I had a business partner at that time. And she found a company in BC. And they were the distributors for a German company. We thought, What the hell, let’s try them because they’re different. Not many people carry their tea. So we tried them. And it was like, Oh, my God, this is good tea. Ah, okay. And then we looked at their fair trade practices, all that kind of stuff, how they kind of manufacturer where they get it from, what are their standards? And we kind of went, Yeah, sold. We’re on board.

Barb
Got it. Okay, so, so help me as the consumer. Understand what, from a flavor perspective? How when you consume tea and you’re like, Oh, my God, that’s good. Tea. What’s different about it, tea? You? What makes you? What makes you say that? Is it the amount of flavor like what is it?

Jule
It is the quality? Okay, so you can have a chai tea, which is full of spices, and it’s gonna taste nice and fresh and have layers of flavors. And you can just taste all the elements, or you can have just an over spice black. Got is kind of flavored with artificial stuff. And if there’s a lot of artificial things in there, you’ll notice that once you buy your tea a month or two down the road, it doesn’t taste as nice anymore, because it’s all that artificial crap that’s in there.

Barb
Yeah. And you know, that’s very true. It doesn’t matter what I’m eating. If there’s artificial flavors in there. I find I can identify them now. And many of those artificial flavors. They leave a bit of an aftertaste. Yeah. Hey 10 Yeah, no, thank you. If my food still continues on the net, no, I’m good. It doesn’t work. Okay, so nestled in Regina is 13th Avenue. Have you always been there? Yes. Ah,

Jule
Well Actually, I’m gonna have to say no, we were on 15th Avenue for 15th or 14th Avenue, maybe for a year or two. But I’ve been 16 years on 13th Avenue. Yes.

Barb
So how did you find the location or it just happened to be available and and it was you could just tell it was a perfect location to be.

Jule
I’ve always wanted to be on 13th and I was taking a walk. There was a place for lease. Boom. And it was that I think it was that day she put it up and it was like a phone call introducing myself. And away we went from there. Oh, wow.

Barb
Oh, isn’t that something? It sounds like how we butter cabinet the lake. We went for a walk. We saw it. It’s like, oh, hey, what do you think? Mixing you know, work and owners. Sometimes those impulse decisions are some of the best decisions that you make, right? Yes. Yeah,

Jule
I even did that with tea. I was ordering tea. And it was actually a chai. And it was the Marcelo one. And I wasn’t thinking and all of a sudden I just said, you know, black Chai? Well, there is a tea that is black Chai, and my German distributor sent it and it was like, Ah, this is the wrong t and I thought, Oh, what the hell let me try it. It is the best Thai. Really, I call it my best mistake.

Barb
It sounds like a good one. Okay, so let’s talk about that. What are your favorite teas? What are your go twos?

Jule
Oh, depending on what mood I’m in.

Barb
So then that means that you carry teas for pretty much every mood, every style. Right? And so what are you feeling so to speak?

Jule
So typically in the morning, I like a black tea. And depending if I have a sweet tooth moment or not, will depend on whether I like to make flavored tea or just plain tea. Okay, so we’ve got some beautiful plain teas, what we call traditional teas. They have no flavors added or anything. They’re just the tea plant. I’m least favorite to see long because it’s got coppery notes to it. Yeah, so one of my favorites, I would say would be one of my Psalms and it’s more earthy, like and I have a Scottish breakfast and a queen’s blend that I quite love.

Barb
And they’re Scottish breakfast sounds very interesting. Yes.

Jule
And they’re just plain beautiful blends of their earthy notes. Sometimes if I need a little bit of a boost, I’ll do a pu erh. And oh, that one is more of what I say acquired taste because it’s really earthy. Okay. So it’s one that is almost like a compost tea. When they pick it, they let it in a sense, kind of pack it or put it away. And it’s a little bit moist. So it continues to ferment. Okay, so it’s quite earthy. It’s called pu erh. And some of my staff call it poo tea, because sometimes it can be a little ripe.

Jule
Excellent. I can just see customers lining up to get that one after we’re done.

Jule
We usually give a sample if they’ve never tried it before. We give a sample and say don’t buy here’s a sample. If you like it, you’ll come back.

Barb
Right? Yeah. Because it can’t be something that you can get everywhere. Okay, so let’s talk about that. So T store T is one of those things that you can probably buy just about anywhere. Grocery Store. Online. So absolutely. Somebody who, who knows their tea, they’re coming to you hands down. But how do you get that customer who, you know, they’re just dabbling in tea. They don’t know the difference between a box of tea and a good tea. How do you find that customer? How do you get them through the door the first time?

Jule
Usually word of mouth, we have quite an awesome group of people that say, oh my god, if you want good tea, this is where you go. Yeah. Because you’ll taste the difference. And that’s what I hear from a lot of customers. Otherwise, we do a lot of kind of just advertising on well known advertising just over on Facebook or on Instagram or on Google. So those kinds of things. And we have a sandwich board that we tucked in the middle of the sidewalk there, well, not the middle but on the sidewalk there and that brings people in. So those kinds of things and people get teased as gifts and all of a sudden it’s like oh my god, I got this. So a variety of ways. We just don’t rely on one way.

Barb
Right. And I think you know, that’s pretty common for just about any local business. There’s no one place where all of your customers, you know, exist. And so when you’re looking for foot traffic and phone calls, or maybe online purchases, you have to be found in all of these different places. Right? So talk to me a little bit about the foot traffic aspect. Do you have a lot of folks who, you know, you’re fairly close to Regina is downtown, they go for a walk at lunch, you know, they see the sandwich board, they pop in. What do you put on the sandwich board? Is there a call to action on your sandwich board? Or is it a recipe? Or today’s flavor? Like, tell me a little bit about that? What does that look like?

Jule
We used to have summer teas or fall teas, or favorite teas, or a tea subscription box. So we changed it up. Recently, I’ve been lazy. And I have not made any changes. I’ve been working on the Google side. Exactly. And so it’s yes, we change it up. And we do put recipes on there. If we’re doing recipes, it’s going to be either on our Facebook or Instagram, okay, is where you find our recipes. Otherwise, it’s like, hey, we have this. So someone will walk by and say, Hey, what’s that T there? And they’ll point to the board and they name it. And hey, and we kind of go from there.

Barb
Ya know? And it’s, you know, anything that’s going to intrigue traffic to pull them in, right?

Jule
Yes. And it’s changed. Like years ago, we would do radio, we would do ads and paper. And then it started to change. We do more on Instagram and Facebook, and now more on Google. So it’s developing, it’s changing. And yeah, you have to, you have to go with the flow.

Barb
Yep. Yeah, you really do. And I think almost any local business is seeing that now. Where it used to be as simple as if you’re a plumber, you got the phone calls. But now they’re looking for the website. They’re looking on Google, they’re checking if you have any social media channels. And so as consumers, we want to understand more about the businesses that we’re dealing with. And yet we hear from so many local businesses that it feels like everyone is shopping online. And one of the things that I always talk about is, if you if that’s what you’re hearing from your customers, what is the convenience that online is providing that in store? Isn’t it? Is it ours? Is it product selection? What are they going online for? Because, you know, if you’re a tea drinker, and you want quality tea, I can’t get a quality tea from an Amazon or a box at the grocery store. Right. And so I think so many local businesses are starting to see that. Are you starting to see that or hear that? Well, with

Jule
COVID? That’s when things really changed hard and fast. Yeah, we did. We did a lot of online stuff, we got a lot of phone calls, we did a lot of no contact deliveries. Now, and it’s the shop local, there was a really big push on shop, local support local. Now as things have opened up, I’m finding that less people are on the bandwagon of shopping local. I just saw on one of my feeds that there’s a store that’s closing, they just didn’t have the foot traffic. So it’s one of those things that yeah, you gotta be creative. And the questions you ask if I had the answer to that might be a millionaire.

Barb
No, isn’t that the truth, though? It’s interesting. You talk about another business closing, one of the things that we saw from a marketing agency standpoint was that COVID masks came off. And there was this bubble. All of a sudden consumers were out. They felt safe. They went and did their shopping, our phone rang, could we help? Could we work on SEO? Could we work on social media for businesses, and after about a three month time period, that bubble burst? And so by a boat, June, so you know, a month ago, six weeks ago, the bubble started to burst. And then the call was okay. Things haven’t come back the way we hoped. You know, what are our options? Or, you know, people aren’t coming through the door, we don’t have foot traffic. What can we do specifically to get people back in store because the basket size tends to be larger when they’re in store versus just ordering online? Absolutely. So one of the things that we’re starting to hear and of course, you know, even with the writers talking Boat? What was it? 13 players and five staff have tested positive for COVID. So, you know, we don’t know what’s gonna happen with this next wave. And so I think as business owners, we almost all naturally start to recoil to protect ourselves, because oh my god, are we doing this again? Right? And how many more times are we doing this since getting a little carried away? But that’s a whole other story. So I mean, as business owners, we’re protecting ourselves, because yeah, we’ve seen, I saw more businesses have to close their doors when that bubble burst, then the whole time that COVID was, you know, more active than it is right now. And I don’t even know if that’s a fair statement. So have you thought about that? You know, like, how, how will you protect yourself? Will customers go back online and contactless? What are your thoughts?

Jule
You know, it’s so volatile right now. It’s good. Don’t know. So what we’ve done because of the recession, and everything going on in Europe, shipping is a nightmare. And I don’t get my knickers in a knot about it. It is what it is, you go with the flow. And so what I’ve started doing is never in history, and I’ve been at this location over 16 years. Have I ever had to put an order in for Christmas in April? Yeah, we usually do it in August. We get it by the beginning of October and life’s happy. Well, we’re hoping we get it in October. So when I can I’ve just been stocking up because I don’t know. It’s so unpredictable. So it’s kind of a stocking up. Not so much like, whoo. You know, some people say you need to be bone dry, sell what you have. And I’m going oh, no, I need to stock up because I have no idea what this fall is going to bring. So we’re getting creative. We’re doing like advent calendars, and, you know, fun Christmas boxes. We’ve got some cool stuff like pumpkin spice and all those kinds of things. So even though recession COVID shipping all that’s gone. Blowing up around us. We’re just kind of going okay, well, we can’t change that.

Barb
What can we change? What can you influence? I love that jewel, what can you influence? And you can influence the world immediately around you? Right? Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Okay, so an advent calendar for tea for Christmas. That’s awesome. I love that. So is there a different T for each day? Absolutely. That is so cool. Oh, my goodness, I’m already thinking about the D lovers on my left. That would be perfect. Okay, when will they be available?

Jule
Um, I’m supposed to, like I don’t have it? Well, I have some of the teas ready that are going to be shipped. But it’s one of those things that they should be available probably towards the end of October, okay. And I find as a small business that it is collaborating with people. So it doesn’t have to be in their local businesses. They may not be in Regina, but they’re local businesses.

Jule
So I have a lady out in Kelowna. And sometimes we share shipments together. Because sometimes the minimum order might be three to $5,000. Well, I really don’t need that much. A lot of tea or tea products. It’s like, okay, $5,000 worth of a particular cattle. No. So she and I get together and we split stuff. Yep. And so it’s collaborating. It doesn’t necessarily mean that someone right beside me, this person happens to be in BC that I share shipments with. But then again, we also have local, so I’ve got Traditions just down the street here. They’ve got beautiful pottery and stuff. Well, I don’t carry the munchables. I send everyone over there. Ah, yep. And sometimes we’ll collaborate like Mother’s Day. They made tea in a cup. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah. So it’s kind of getting together and doing stuff with people. There’s a couple gift boxes that are here in Regina that people will purchase tea for me. I’ve got a lady just out in a small town. She works with a funeral home where they give a box and it has cherished things in there. So we’ve done a blend with roses, symbolizing the love of that person. So people are getting creative and it’s all over the map and you just kind of look for those little niches and you just kind of jump on and have fun. Yep.

Barb
Okay, so you know, but that really brings up a good point. So you guys don’t serve in stores. So I can’t pop in and buy myself an iced tea as I’m walking down the street. But if someone else on the street carries it, and you know, hey, you can go to a cup of tea to buy this particular blend. That’s, that’s great cross promotion for you guys, too, because they’re carrying that higher quality product. And you know, driving some foot traffic and awareness. So is that what traditions do or is that similar?

Jule
Traditions is more that it’s a purchase, take home. Okay, but we do have 13th Avenue coffee house and Stone’s Throw. They purchase my tea. So if someone says, Well, I’d like to try this. It’s like, well, there’s a couple places you can go to.

Barb
Exactly.

Jule
We did a post with the stone’s throw they did. Earl Grey cake. Oh, well, it was huge. People coming here cannot have a slice of the cake. No, you got to go to Stone’s Throw.

Barb
Oh, isn’t that brilliant? And you know what? I’ve had tea from 13th Avenue, and I never made the connection. Right? Oh, that’s brilliant. I love that. How in the heck did you guys come up with that?

Jule
Um, you know, I don’t know if they approached me or I approached them. I can’t remember. I was a while back. But just this year, Larry’s bread machine. He is a food truck at the farmers market. And he specializes in croissants and breads and that kind of stuff. And I said, Hey, you want to serve my iced tea? And he said Absolutely. Yep. So he’s got iced tea on Saturdays for people. So it’s just kind of doing that kind of stuff.

Barb
Exactly. So tell me about these iced teas, because I do see you post them on. Especially on Instagram. I see them but you’re making blends and you’re doing recipes and stuff. So how do you come up with those recipes? And do you have a favorite summer recipe?

Jule
The recipe sometimes we find them on? Like googling, Instagram, whatever will find a recipe, but typically it’s sometimes it’s trial and error because I’ll blend teas well. What happens if I put these two together and see what it is like? I do a lot of that. Okay. In my house it’s called surprise tea.

Barb
It’s like that. You know, you used to go to buy like a $1 candy bag and you never knew what was in it. And was that $1 Candy Vegas tea? Yes. Like it went to the pitcher today.

Jule
And if it doesn’t taste good, the plants love it. So we’re good. To waste. Exactly. Typically, because I’m so busy right now I’m incredibly lazy, especially in the summertime. So when I make my tea, I make cold brews. Okay, and one of my favorites is our mango in a cup. And literally, in 1.5 liters of water, it’s six teaspoons of tea, throw the tea and put my cold water in, stick it in the fridge. It’s there the next morning.

Barb
So brew for 12 hours and or 24 hours. I’m seep I guess.

Jule
As long as it’s four hours or more, you’re good.

Barb
So it doesn’t change. So okay, that’s a question I’ve always had about tea. So if I leave, especially if it’s in hot water, does it continue to add flavor if it stays there for a long time?

Jule
In hot water? Yes, it does.

Barb
Okay, but in cold water.

Jule
No cold water, it still gets a little stronger. And after about 12 hours. It’s pretty well done. Okay. Yep. So depending on how strong you’d like your tea, I don’t make my iced tea by boiling it, cooling it down and putting it in the fridge.

Barb
you don’t need to then.

Jule
That’s too much work.

Barb
So cold water.

Jule
Yeah, just fridge water, my tea leaves, in the fridge, done. If I’m entertaining like sometimes I’ll have family over like my son and stuff. And I’ll just make the tea in the morning and by supper. It’s ready. So when anyone contacts us or comes into the store, we give them tons of ideas and how to make their tea experience easy, enjoyable, fun and yummy.

Barb
So one of the things that I really enjoy when I come to the store is the solution base so jewel I got a sore throat jewel like feel a cold coming on. I’m having a hard time sleeping Right. And so you become that kind of tea doctor of, oh, well, how does this smell? What do you think of this? Do you like these ingredients? And do you find that you do that then for a lot of your foot traffic, they come in with a specific want. And that sort of drives where the purchase goes.

Jule
Yep. Every time.

Barb
I start calling you, Dr. Jule. Awesome. I love it.

Jule
And it doesn’t matter if it’s for oh, I got an upset stomach, or I like this flavor. We’ve tried every tea so we can pretty well match people up. Yeah, and we’re pretty accurate.

Barb
Nah, that is awesome. All right, we are pretty much at a time. So what I need to do is get you to tell everyone how to find you both foot traffic and online because you talked about your social channels and your website and some of those things. So tell us away.

Jule
We’re at 2732 – 13 Avenue. And we do have a website, which is www.cuppatteas.com. You’ll find us on Instagram at cuppa.t. And we’re also on Facebook as well. But that one’s a really long one. So you go on one of those you’ll find us either way. Just call us.

Barb
And the phone number?

Jule
It is 306-352-4411.

Barb
Awesome. Well, Jule, thank you so much for joining me today. You know, it was really interesting for me hearing more about your business and peeling back some of those layers. Because most often, most often when you’re talking with a local business, you don’t know all those behind the scenes little secrets like sharing orders and tea coming from Germany who would ever know so thank you for sharing so openly with us.

Barb
And on that note, if you want to sell your story, then you need to tell your story. And there’s no better place to start than being a guest on The Secret Life show. If you’d like to be a guest, email me at Barb@abovethefold.live, or reach out on Facebook or Instagram at abovethefold.ca. I’m your host, Barb McGrath, Googlegirl and founder of the Get Found for Local program. Remember, you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.